NADINE BURKE HARRIS

Nadine Burke Harris

Nadine Burke Harris is founder and CEO of the Center for Youth Wellness (CYW). She has earned international attention for her innovative approach to addressing adverse childhood experiences as a risk factor for adult disease, such as heart disease and cancer. Dr. Burke Harris serves as an expert advisor on the Too Small to Fail initiative, and Governor Jerry Brown’s Let’s Get Healthy California Task Force. Her work has earned her the Arnold P. Gold Foundation Humanism in Medicine Award presented by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). She is also a committee member for the AAP’s Medical Home for Children Exposed to Violence Committee.

 

BOOK TITLES IN COLLABORATION WITH IDEA ARCHITECTS

  • The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity

THE DEEPEST WELL: HEALING THE LONG-TERM EFFECTS OF CHILDHOOD ADVERSITY

 

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris was already known as an innovative, crusading physician delivering targeted care to vulnerable children. But it was her patient Diego—a boy who had stopped growing four years earlier after a sexual trauma—who galvanized her to dig deeper into the connections between toxic stress and the lifelong illnesses she was tracking among so many of her patients and their families. A survey of more than 17,000 adult patients’ “adverse childhood experiences,” or ACEs, like divorce, substance abuse, or neglect, had proved that the higher a person’s ACE score the worse their health—and now led Burke Harris to an astonishing breakthrough. Childhood stress changes our neural systems and lasts a lifetime.

Through storytelling that delivers both scientific insight and moving stories of personal impact, Burke Harris illuminates her journey of discovery, from innovative research labs nationwide to her own pediatric practice in San Francisco’s poverty-ridden Bayview-Hunters Point. For anyone who has faced a difficult childhood, or who cares about the millions of children who do, the innovative and acclaimed health interventions outlined in The Deepest Well will represent vitally important hope for change.
The Deepest Well book cover

“At this point in my career, I only want to work with people who I really enjoy working with. People who I learn from and who I feel like they up my game. And that was actually the reason why I wanted to work with Doug and work with IA, because I felt like there was a lot that I could learn about crafting the message that I wanted to get out there. And on top of that, Doug is just such a wonderful person that when you have the opportunity to work with him, you want to take it.” –Nadine Burke Harris

“Doug is just such a wonderful person that when you have the opportunity to work with him, you want to take it.”