Join Brook Holston, producer at Shadow Creek Films, for a sneak peek of two upcoming documentaries about the power of adverse childhood experiences across the lifespan. Paper Tigers follows five students for a year at Walla Walla's Lincoln High School, highlighting the peril and possibility of education at the intersection with ACEs. Resilience is a science documentary exploring the power of toxic stress on brain development. These films will be released to the public in 2015.

Foundation for Healthy Generations is absolutely thrilled to introduce lunchtime keynote speaker Ron Sims on Wednesday, September 17th at our upcoming conference, Coalescing for Change! Sims is a nationally recognized champion for health equity, social justice & health care reform and an incredibly inspiring speaker.

 Ron Sims is a civic volunteer active in health, education, environmental and social equity issues. Appointed by Governor Jay Inslee, Sims serves as the chair of the Washington Health Benefit Exchange Board. The board is responsible for the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in Washington State.

 Sims is on the Board of Regents of Washington State University. He was appointed to the board by former Governor Chris Gregoire. Sims also serves on the Puget Sound Leadership Council, a seven-member citizen group that governs the Puget Sound Partnership, a state agency coordinating with federal, state, local, tribal and private resources in restoring the ecological health of Washington State's largest estuary.

 Sims is on the Board of Directors of the Washington Health Alliance, formerly the Puget Sound Health Alliance, a nonprofit organization he helped found where employers, physicians, hospitals, patients, health plan providers and others from throughout the region come together to improve health care quality.

 Sims served as the Deputy Secretary for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development from 2009 to 2011. He was appointed by President Obama and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. As the second most senior official at HUD, Sims managed the day-to-day operations of an agency with 8,500 employees and an operating budget of nearly $40 billion.

 Prior to his appointment at HUD, Sims served for 12 years as the elected Executive of Martin Luther King, Jr. County in Washington State, the 13th largest county in the nation with 1.8 million residents and 39 cities including the cities of Seattle, Bellevue and Redmond.

 As County Executive, Sims was nationally recognized for his work on the integration of environmental, social equity and public health policies that produced groundbreaking work on climate change, health care reform, affordable housing, mass transit, environmental protection, land use, and equity and social justice.

 Born in Spokane, Washington in 1948, Sims is a graduate of Central Washington University.

The Healthiest Next Generation

Washington State Governor Jay Inslee will be a featured keynote speaker on September 18th at our statewide conference to share his vision about improving the health of Washington's children - the true future of our state. The Healthiest Next Generation initiative is one of Governor Inslee's top priorities focused on collaborating with and supporting our communities, schools and early learning centers to be places where all children are eating well and enjoying active lives, with the goal of replicating successful programs throughout the state.

 Foundation for Healthy Generations was an early and ongoing supporter of the Healthiest Next Generation Initiative, working with state staff and the Governor's office on the drafting of the legislation and supporting its passage in the 2014 session. We are proud to provide continued support to this critical work and to welcome Governor Inslee to Coalescing for Change: Community Based Health Solutions on September 17 & 18 at the SeaTac Hilton.

We are thrilled to announce Tina Rosenberg, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, winner of the National Book Award and author of Join the Club: How Peer Influence can transform the World, as our keynote speaker Wednesday, September 17th. Join the Club has been hailed as “timely, thoughtful and important” by the New York Times and well-thumbed versions of it have been passed around the halls of Healthy Gen since its publication in 2011.

 Tina Rosenberg draws on academic research and stories from her own reporting for her book and her New York Times "Fixes" column for a fresh, surprising, and inspirational talk that will transform the way you think about behavior change. Rosenberg was also the first freelance journalist to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.

 Rosenberg's perspective is truly a global one. Through her speaking and writing, she displays what can be learned from the political and social experience of countries all around the world. Her other two books, Children of Cain: Violence and the Violent in Latin America and The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism, dive into issues of global democracy, and ultimately how nations do -- and should -- deal with a repressive past. A compelling presenter, Rosenberg gives audiences the opportunity to engage with her on these issues.

The Longevity Project

We are excited to announce that Howard S. Friedman will be a featured plenary speaker at lunchtime on Thursday, September 18th at our upcoming conference to discuss his newest book The Longevity Project: Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-Decade Study. It summarizes his 25-year scientific study of the pathways to health and long life. This book has won worldwide recognition, including first place in the "Wellness" category in the Books for A Better Life awards competition in New York. Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point, has called it "an important-and deeply fascinating-book."

 Dr. Friedman is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside and has received major scientific awards for his health and well-being research, including the James McKeen Cattell Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science, an international award for applied research; and the "Outstanding Contributions to Health Psychology" senior award from the American Psychological Association (Div. 38).

 Professor Friedman has won many teaching awards, including:

• the Distinguished Teaching Award, awarded by the UC Academic Senate;
• the University Honors Program Professor of the Year;
• and most recently, the Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman Award, for "inspiring students to make a difference in the community," which is a national award. He is the first professor at any campus of the University of California to win this Beckman award.

Professor Friedman is the President-Elect of the Western Psychological Association. He is Editor of The Oxford Handbook of Health Psychology (Oxford, 2011); Editor of The Journal of Nonverbal Behavior;  and Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Mental Health (Elsevier).

A magna cum laude graduate of Yale University, Friedman received his doctorate from Harvard University, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow. Among other honors, Professor Friedman is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research.

 Meet 4 of our National Expert Workshop Presenters!

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Learn More About APPI: The Washington State ACEs Public-Private Initiative