On Thursday, April 11, Masten presented her ideas to a full auditorium at the University of Louisville, which included psychology students as well as visiting high school students.

Resilience science began around 1970 as a search to explain how some children who face severe adversity seem to thrive while others do not. In recent years, resilience research has transformed practice in clinical psychology, pediatrics, psychiatry, school psychology, counseling, social work, family social science and disaster response.

“As I studied children and families dealing with war, disasters, poverty, violence and homelessness, I found a consistent set of surprisingly ordinary but powerful factors at work,” she said. “Resilience didn’t depend on special qualities but on a capacity to adapt that we develop over time as we are nurtured, learn and gain experience.”

Masten’s current resilience research, along with others in her field, shifts the focus to positive outcomes, strength-based, promotive and protective processes, and building capacity at multiple levels: within individuals, in religions and other cultural systems and in community and society systems.

According to Masten, a “short list” of psychosocial factors that play a part in nurturing resilience in children include ones you might expect to see such as effective parenting and safe, effective schools and communities, but also things like purpose, sense of meaning, hope, faith and optimism, positive routines, rituals and cultural traditions, and positive view of self, identity and capabilities.

Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACES, has become a buzzword in modern social science and child development studies, and includes experiences such as physical abuse, emotional abuse, low education or parental incarceration. Masten spoke about the importance of also examining and measuring positive childhood experiences, (PCEs), such as having at least one caregiver with whom you felt safe, beliefs that gave you comfort, and at least one teacher that cared about you.

Resilience is not something that just lives in the individual, said Masten, but is embedded and interconnected more broadly in families and cultural, community and society systems.

Masten used the pandemic as an example of a turbulent time that catalyzed a “striking mobilization of multisystem resilience, demonstrating the capacity of a system to adapt successfully to challenges.”

Masten’s findings have shaped policy and practice in many fields outside psychology such as pediatrics, school counseling, social work and disaster response. People in more than 180 countries including Ukraine have taken part in her online course about the resilience of children in war and disaster.

A licensed psychologist in Minnesota since 1986, Masten holds a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Minnesota and a bachelor’s degree from Smith College. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021 and has received mentoring and lifetime contribution awards from the American Psychological Association.

The $100,000 Grawemeyer prizes also honor seminal ideas in , , ���Ի���. Winners visit Louisville to accept their awards and give free talks on their winning ideas.

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Ann Masten, a professor in the University of Minnesota’s Institute of Child Development, earned the prize for showing that our capacity to overcome potentially harmful experiences comes from ordinary but powerful adaptive processes inside us and from our supportive connections with others.

Resilience science began around 1970 as a search to explain how some children who face severe adversity seem to thrive while others do not.

“As I studied children and families dealing with war, disasters, poverty, violence and homelessness, I found a consistent set of surprisingly ordinary but powerful factors at work,” she said. “Resilience didn’t depend on special qualities but on a capacity to adapt that we develop over time as we are nurtured, learn and gain experience.”

Supportive relationships, a sense of belonging, self-control, problem-solving skills, optimism, motivation and a sense of purpose all play a part in creating the “ordinary magic” that makes us resilient, she found.

“Her work is inspiring because it reveals that the human capacity to overcome adversity does not rely on rare ingredients,” said Nicholaus Noles, psychology award director. “The seeds of resilience, of success, are within all of us, and we need only time and the right kind of relationships and experiences to overcome the obstacles we face.”

Masten’s findings have shaped policy and practice in many fields outside psychology such as pediatrics, school counseling, social work and disaster response. People in more than 180 countries including Ukraine have taken part in her online course about the resilience of children in war and disaster.

A licensed psychologist in Minnesota since 1986, holds a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Minnesota and a bachelor’s degree from Smith College. She was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021 and has received mentoring and lifetime contribution awards from the American Psychological Association.

Recipients of next year’s are being named this week pending formal trustee approval. The annual, $100,000 prizes also honor seminal ideas in music, world order, education and religion. Winners will visit Louisville in the spring to accept their awards and give free talks on their winning ideas.

This work was supported by a grant awarded to Dr. Lora Haynes by the Association for Psychological Science to engage in the teaching and application of the science of psychology. Haynes, from the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, directs UofL’s RFP, now completing its sixth year. The program is co-directed by the Rev. Valerie Mansfield from Unity of Louisville.

Following months of planning meetings with a 23-member Resilience Summit Planning Committee in Flint, and weekly UofL RFP Travel Team meetings here in Louisville, this collective effort culminated in a full 3-day resilience conference – a first for Flint – titled, Triumph over Trauma: Celebrating the Resilience of our Community. This summit took place March 14–17 and was sponsored by:

• Genesee Health System
• the Genesee Intermediate School District
• ReCAST (a Resiliency in Communities After Stress and Trauma grant provided by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA))
• Hurley Children’s Hospital
• Safe Kids of Greater Flint

The summit involved more than 800 attendees from the following three tracks: 

• Community (youth, young adults, parents, grandparents, seniors, representatives from faith-based organizations)
• ����ֱ�� (principals and school administrators, university and school support staff, K-12 teachers, early childhood educators, charter school personnel, bus drivers, lunch room staff, home school liaisons) 
• First Providers (public health professionals, nurses, pediatricians and physicians, mental health professionals, home visitors and outreach workers)

Attendees came from the city of Flint, Genesee County, and from as far away as Washington, D.C., Maryland and California.

During the conference, Haynes presented two keynote addresses, and the 12-person travel team was responsible for presenting four breakout sessions, hosting a World Café conversation on resilience, facilitating a discussion of the documentary Resilience: The Biology of Stress and the Science of Hope, and supporting conference presenters and staff wherever possible.

The team also attended a Public Health Symposium held at the University of Michigan–Flint, and met with professionals and community members outside of the conference. Members had the opportunity to spend time with key management and staff at the Genesee County Health Department and the Plumbers Union to discuss their efforts in response to the Water Crisis.

They toured Flint and the surrounding area, which included parts of the city that continue to be most affected by the crisis, and also delivered donations of bottled water, lead testers, door prizes and gift bags, UofL and Louisville ‘swag’, t-shirts and snacks.

Team members from UofL include: 

• Danielle Deal, Double Major in Psychology and Political Science
• James Armes, BA University of Louisville, Major in Psychology, Minor in Anthropology
• Jordan Blaine, BA University of Louisville, Major in Psychology, Minor in Philosophy, current MSSW student in UofL’s Kent School of Social Work, current MA student in University of Louisville’s Interdisciplinary and Graduate Studies w/concentration in Bioethics
• Savanna Cooper, University of Louisville, honors student, Major in Psychology, Minor in Social Change
• Catherine Leinenbach, University of Louisville, Major in American Sign Language Interpreting Studies, Minor in Psychology
• Mimi Stanis, University of Louisville, Major in Nursing
• Elias Chavez, University of Louisville, honors student, Major in Mechanical Engineering, Minor in Social Change
• Brittany Phillips, University of Louisville, Major in Sociology, Minor in Pan-African Studies
• Kassidy Haynes, Meyzeek Middle School, youth MST representative, BETA Club
• Valerie Mansfield, BA, Associate Minister, Unity of Louisville; Co-Director of the Resilient Families Project (RFP) @ Wayside Christian Mission’s Hotel Louisville
• Lora D. Haynes, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of Louisville; Director of the Resilient Families Project (RFP) @ Wayside Christian Mission’s Hotel Louisville; Departmental Director of Internships and Service-Learning; Departmental Director of Distance ����ֱ��
• Nannie Croney, BA, University of Louisville, Double Major in Pan-African Studies and Political Science, Minor in Communication, current MSW student in University of Louisville’s Kent School of Social Work, current Wayside Christian Mission and RFP Practicum Student (did not travel to Flint)

What is next

Since returning from this trip, the RFP travel team has been focused on efforts and opportunities to sustain this work – to share their experiences, grow their network of connections, and continue collaborations with friends and colleagues in Flint and here in Louisville.

Six members of the original team have committed to travel to Flint for another four days (May 8–11). They will be attending the Genesee County Health Department’s full-day Public Health Conference at the University of Michigan–Flint on May 9, and will be meeting with members of the Genesee Intermediate School District and the Michigan Association of School Nurses. This team will also attend a Pediatric Public Health Initiative Update Meeting at Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine in Flint.

Additional time will be spent engaging with community members about their personal experiences with the Water Crisis to explore how their crisis and recovery efforts have been driven by resilience, happiness and hope. This team will continue to learn, engage, and share resources surrounding individual, family and community resilience from multi-generational and life-span perspectives, with the aim of continuing to address the current crisis and future recovery in Flint, especially for Flint’s youngest members.

Information provided by Lora Haynes.