August 2023

By Kira M. Newman, Photo: from article, Greater Good Magazine, August 7, 2023 Last month, around 1,000 people from over 56 countries gathered at the International Positive Psychology Association’s 8th World Congress (IPPA) in Vancouver, Canada, to share cutting-edge insights on the science of well-being. This year more than ever, there was an acknowledgement that the ways we think about happiness—and the studies that have been conducted—are mainly based on Western ideas and Western...

Little thoughtful gestures can make someone’s day. alashi/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images By Margaret Echelbarger, The Converstion, July 12, 2023 The big idea From expressing gratitude to surprising someone with a mug of hot chocolate on a cold day, adults tend to underestimate how positively others will respond to their random acts of kindness . I’m a behavioral scientist who teamed up with my research partner Nicholas Epley on research that showed how children and teens share this...

By Wendy Ruan, 8/10/2023, https://positiveexperience.org/blog/ This summer, nearly 500,000 school children and their families have access to free meals because the federal government approved an extension of the Pandemic-Electronic Benefits Transfer (P-EBT) benefits in Massachusetts. The extension can help parents provide food security for their families, reduce financial stress, and promote overall well-being. Balanced nutrition is key to child development, and P-EBT promotes positive...

The ETSU Ballad Health Strong BRAIN Institute is delighted to welcome Nikita Gupta, our guest speaker for the September Resilience Speaker Series, presenting “Caring for Ourselves While Caring for Others: Minimizing Burnout and Replenishing Empathy.” The presentation will offer a space for participants to reflect on burnout and compassion fatigue, and how they are experienced in our body and nervous system. Participants will explore and practice body-based strategies for restoration and the...

The ETSU Ballad Health Strong BRAIN Institute is pleased to announce that Wallace E. Dixon, Ph.D., Founding Director, has been selected, along with Jane Childers, Trinity University, to edit the special P/ACEs issue of the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. Please see the website here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-experimental-child-psychology/about/call-for-papers Dr. Dixon is looking for some action editors and reviewers. If you are interested, have questions or...

Based on the epidemiological data, we can see that the United States has the highest number of COVID-19 in the world, with 13,386,255 cases. Furthermore, there were 8613,630 cases and 204,873 during the pandemic, while there were a total of 1529,691 cases and 29,313 deaths in rural areas (Diego et al., 2021). If left untreated, the number of cases and death will continue to rise, especially in rural communities since they have the lowest healthcare resources. For this intervention, I...

For PHC6541, this Multi-Level Public Health Resilience-Building Intervention targets undergraduate students attending the University of Florida during hurricane season, as research indicates this population is particularly vulnerable at that time, such as lacking reliable transportation and living several hours or more away from home (Simms et al., 2013). The proposed Instagram account, @ufdisasterpreparedness, seeks to build resilience by strengthening and connecting undergraduate students...

It’s hard to escape the fact the employers of all kinds are struggling to engage and retain staff. Pre-pandemic, top-down strategies aren’t working to address these issues, and leaders need to think and act differently—to practice empathy, inclusivity, mindfulness, and gratitude—but it is difficult to know where to begin. In Social Current's upcoming webinars on building a resilient workforce , we will delve into core strategies and provide concrete action steps for supporting staff. Join us...

By Lily Ramsey, Photo: from article, News-Medical, July 31, 2023 A global study co-led by researchers from The University of Queensland and Harvard Medical School has found one in two people will develop a mental health disorder in their lifetime. Professor John McGrath from UQ's Queensland Brain Institute, Professor Ronald Kessler from Harvard Medical School, and their colleagues from 27 other countries, analyzed data from more than 150,000 adults across 29 countries between 2001 and 2022,...

Livestock is a front in the effort to reduce agriculture’s carbon emissions — cattle, in particular, burp up huge amounts of the climate-warming gas methane. | Mario Tama/Getty Images By Garrett Downs, Politico, August 7, 2023 President Joe Biden’s Agriculture Department is pulling off a feat unimaginable a mere decade ago: gaining wide support within the conservative farming industry for a program to fight climate change. The winning formula involves paying farmers to test out green...

The Goucher College library in Towson, Md., in 1953. (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division) By Alexandra Petri, The Washington Post, August 7, 2023 This was not always a place of punishment . People used to come here on purpose. Students, like yourself. Back then, it was called a library. These things on the shelves gathering dust were once prized. Sometimes, they were arranged by a special code called Dewey Decimal. They were passed excitedly from hand to hand, and we were...

Community health worker Hawa Abraham in her office in the Bronx, N.Y. Sarah Stacke for STAT By Ambar Castillo, STAT, August 7, 2023 A nurse supervisor at Montefiore Comprehensive Health Care Center in the Bronx was delivering her start-of-shift updates and mantras — “Covid is not finished with us … clean, clean, clean!”— to the clinicians and administrative staff bunched up nearby. Hawa Abraham, not one or the other, stood among them. It was going to be another busy day at the clinic, with...