SALINAS, Calif. — At a workshop with nationally acclaimed pediatrician and advocate Dr. Ken Ginsburg at the National Steinbeck Center on Monday, Salinas-area health care providers, educators, counselors, and Hartnell College nursing students learned tools and strategies for working with children and young adults who have suffered from trauma.
The all-day workshop, “Our Kids Are Not Broken: Recognizing and Building on the Strengths of Marginalized and Traumatized Youth,” was sponsored by donations through the Natividad Foundation (NMF) and presented by CHOICE, the violence intervention program at Natividad Trauma Center that promotes alternatives to violence to reduce retaliation and re-injury among youth and young adults injured by violence. “To be effective with working with young people, it’s imperative to eliminate shame, build confidence and learn not to lecture. If you lecture, children resent it. They rebel,” Ginsburg said. “Our job is to make our kids feel smart and make the program we’re offering them manageable.”
Monday’s workshop was the third time Ginsburg has presented for NMF. “Building on the strengths and resilience of young patients has changed my clinical care. It has changed the questions I ask, and I get to hear more of each person’s story,” said Dr. Eric Sanford, community medicine co-director for Natividad Family Medicine Residency Program.
A pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, Ginsburg also serves Philadelphia’s homeless youth as director of health services at Covenant House Pennsylvania. He has authored more than 125 publications, 34 original research articles, and is the author of five books, including several published by the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Jose Moran, director of community relations for Boys & Girls Club of Monterey County, attended the workshop and said that Ginsburg is the nation’s leading teen strength-based approach expert. “What Dr. Ginsburg said reaffirms what we’re instilling in our members on a daily basis,” he said. “These strategies help us inspire and empower our youth and bring us together with other organizations to change lives in our community.”
Ginsburg said that relationships need to be approached with unconditional love and high expectations. “The world changes when kids learn that people are capable of trust — when young people realize they are worthy of being loved.”
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Natividad Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing people together to strengthen the Natividad, the one place that safeguards the lives and livelihoods of everyone in Monterey County. The foundation develops innovative programslike Indigenous Interpreting+SM, provides specialized medical technology, enhances the county’s state-of-the-art trauma center and supports its high-quality rehabilitation center. Its partnerships with funders, community leaders and the hospital transform health care into solutions that heal people, unite a community and stand as models for the nation. For more information, visit www.natividadfoundation.org
Natividad is a 172-bed acute-care hospital owned and operated by Monterey County. As the safety-net hospital providing health care to the residents of Monterey County for more than 130 years, Natividad provides health care access to all patients regardless of their ability to pay. The hospital operates with a medical staff of over 300 physicians and has several specialty clinics and outpatient primary care clinics operated by the Monterey County Health Department. Natividad is a Level II Trauma Center providing the immediate availability of specialized personnel, equipment and services to treat the most severe and critical injuries.
