Pediatric Mental Health, Trauma, and Safety Resources
The IPN Task Force on Health offers links to the following respected resources to support health care providers, families, caregivers, children, and adolescents.
Society of Pediatric Nurses
The mission of the Society of Pediatric Nurses (SPN) is to advance the specialty of pediatric nursing through excellence in education, research, and practice. The SPN Healthcare Policy and Advocacy Committee has collated resources on the topic gun violence and gun safety.
- Recommended audience: Pediatric nurses in any practice setting, parents.
- Cost to access: No cost to access.
- Registration: Not required.
- This site has a variety of resources for talking to children and teens of all developmental levels about gun violence and gun safety.
The National Center for School Mental Health
The mission of the National Center for School Mental Health (NCSMH) is to strengthen policies and programs in school mental health to improve learning and promote success for America's youth. From its inception in 1995, the Center's leadership and interdisciplinary staff has promoted the importance of providing mental health services to children, adolescents, and families directly in schools and communities.
- Recommended audience: School nurses, community health nurses.
- Cost to access: No cost to access. Some resources require a free registration.
- Registration: Some resources offered without registration; more robust resources require a registration.
- The site is meant to address in mental health in schools. They offer regular webinars. The SHAPE page contains mental health quality assessments, a resource library, screening and assessment measures, and tools to improve school mental health. The site has a focus on cultural responsiveness and equity.
ACES Connection
ACESToohigh is a site that shares reports on research about adverse childhood experiences, including developments in epidemiology, neurobiology, and the biomedical and epigenetic consequences of toxic stress. We also cover how people, organizations, agencies and communities are implementing new practices that are based on findings from the research. This includes developments in education, juvenile justice, criminal justice, public health, medicine, mental health, social services, and cities, counties and states.
- Recommended audience: People who are implementing — or thinking about implementing — trauma-informed and resilience-building practices based on ACEs research.
- Cost to access: Free, with an option to join.
- Registration: Option to join to get newsletters, etc.
- This site is intended to serve as a resource for people who are implementing — or thinking about implementing — trauma-informed and resilience-building practices based on ACEs research.
Selection Process
The IPN committee is recommending these web resources after a thorough review by the Health Issues Taskforce. The taskforce developed an evaluation matrix based on the National Network of Libraries of Medicine recommended criteria for evaluating health websites found here. The matrix uses the following criteria for evaluation: accuracy, authority, bias/objectivity, currency, coverage, and accessibility.
