Blog

I'm feeling excited if not a little trepidatious. I'm launching a peer support group this month in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for adult identifying women who are interested in working together to recover from the lies we learned about ourselves and others as a result of childhood trauma. Talking about trauma in my community usually receives a trauma response of resistance. And yet I interpret that as validation of the need for what I want to do: to increase awareness and action towards addressing...

High blood pressure -- or hypertension -- is a major risk factor for heart attack and stroke that affects as many as 100 million Americans and 1 billion people worldwide. Decades of research have demonstrated that the relaxation response -- the physiological and psychological opposite of the well-known fight-or-flight stress response that can be achieved through relaxation techniques like yoga or mediation -- can reduce blood pressure in people with hypertension. Exactly how these...

This story is part of an occasional series on the opioid crisis. From the moment they are arrested, people with an addiction to heroin and prescription painkillers and those who are taking medications to beat their addictions face the prospect of painful opioid withdrawal. At least a quarter of the people in U.S. prisons and jails are addicted to opioids. Those who are released rejoin their communities with dangerously reduced tolerance and nothing to blunt their drug cravings, making them...

Program Provider Sadie Williams works with financial coach Judit Trinidad as they practice family engagement for Oakland Promise Brilliant Baby Program enrollees.

My marrying an alcoholic never made sense to me. My mother developing the disease of alcoholism never made sense to me, either. And why my loved ones couldn’t get it together to stop or wrest control of their drinking was equally confusing. Yet I churned around and in and through this muck for almost four decades before my world was split wide open. It was 2003 and one of my loved ones entered a residential treatment program for alcoholism. I remember experiencing a giddy – “I knew it, I...

In response to the increasing demand for BCR expertise and insight we plan to provide more opportunities to share lessons learned. In addition to our regional expansion, see BCR in action later this month. Join us for the next BCR Town Hall in DC on Thursday, April 19th at 3:00pm (EST) in person or via livestream. Read more for details.

There is a paradox with living as a human nowadays. A 2014 article from the United Nations states that about 54 percent of the human population lives in urban areas (more by now), a proportion that is projected to increase to 66 percent by 2050. By 2045, the report says, more than six billion people will crowd cities. People flock to cities for obvious reasons, all very understandable: more job opportunities; more choices; more culture and cultural diversity; larger communities. Yet, and...

The Martin Luther King Jr. who arrived in Memphis in 1968 was an activist whose mission had evolved from demanding the right to vote and to integrate public buses to demanding economic justice for poor people. In Memphis, King was advocating for more livable wages and better working conditions for city garbage and sanitation workers. It was the beginning of a larger agenda he was building out called the “Poor People’s Campaign.” King was killed in Memphis before he had a chance to realize...

On a recent Sunday, Bari Hillman, who works during the week as a clinical psychologist at a New York mental health clinic, was perched at a clear, plastic desk inside a 16-year-old’s Manhattan bedroom, her shoeless feet resting on a fluffy white rug. Dr. Hillman was helping a private school sophomore manage her outsize worry over a long-term writing project. The student had taped the project outline on the wall above the desk, at Dr. Hillman’s prodding. It was designed to serve both as a...

The dream was always the same, Arthur Chavez says. He was following a bumblebee through a forest, stumbling over puddles and branches. When he caught the bee, he’d find himself onstage, wearing a suit, in front of an applauding crowd. After the third time, Chavez decided the dream was a sign. He quit his job at a Fullerton gas station and enrolled in community college, on his way to a bachelor’s degree. His first semester as a transfer student at Sacramento State, he started participating in...

When a woman has a baby, she loses an organ. The placenta, grown by her body for nine months of gestation, snaps off from her uterus and drops toward the birth canal. The meaty purple bag ribboned with thick blood vessels is pushed through the cervix five to 30 minutes after the baby and, depending on the culture, is carried away to be buried, rendered, or discarded. And that’s just the part about the placenta. The physical trauma doesn’t stop there. Expulsion of the placenta leaves a large...

Today, at the 2018 National Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit, National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., announced the launch of the HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-term) Initiative , an aggressive, trans-agency effort to speed scientific solutions to stem the national opioid public health crisis. Toward this effort, NIH is nearly doubling funding for research on opioid misuse/addiction and pain from approximately $600 million in fiscal year 2016 to $1.1...