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Published in PLOS ONE, the study analysed questionnaire and interview data from the Determinants of young Adult Social well-being and Health (DASH) study, one of the UK's largest longitudinal studies of ethnically diverse young people. Information about smoking and experiences of racism was collected from over 6500 pupils at 51 London schools. Surveys were completed when pupils were aged 11-13 and then again with 4785 of the pupils at age 14-16. Over 600 participants were then followed up...

When Chinyere Oteh welcomed her first child in 2009, she found herself in a predicament familiar to many new stay-at-home mothers: Stress was high, but money and time were short. “I thought to myself, I can’t be the only person trying to figure out how to have a healthy family life as well as make ends meet,” Oteh said. That’s when she remembered an article she had read on time-banking. Time-banking is a model for trading skills, goods, and labor instead of money—a sort of barter system...

In 2013, ProPublica published an investigation of the subprime lender World Finance . World was charging annual interest rates that could exceed 200 percent, often trapping customers in cycles of debt by enticing them to renew the loans over and over. In states where laws barred such high rates, the installment lender loaded many loans with nearly useless insurance products that bloated the cost. The company boasted over 800,000 customers, part of an installment loan industry that claimed to...

Philadelphia is a step closer to opening what could be the nation's first supervised site for safe drug injection. But turning the idea into reality won't be easy. City officials gave the proposition the green light Tuesday. They were armed with feasibility studies , harrowing overdose statistics and the backing of key leaders, including the mayor and a newly elected district attorney. "There are many people who are hesitant to go into treatment, despite their addiction, and we don't want...

Making sure that children don’t enter the adult jails and prisons should be a critical part of how the country thinks about ending mass incarceration, according to leading criminal-defense lawyer Bryan Stevenson. “We’ve allowed our most vulnerable children to be thrown away, to be traumatized and to be locked up in these jails and prisons, and we’ve got to change this narrative that some children aren’t children,” Stevenson said. Stevenson, the founder and CEO of the Equal Justice...

A hug may be comforting to many children, but for a child who has experienced trauma it may not feel safe. That’s an example used by Julie Kurtz, co-director of trauma informed practices in early childhood education at the WestEd Center for Child & Family Studies (CCFS), as she begins a trauma training session. Her audience, preschool teachers and staff of the San Francisco-based Wu Yee Children’s Services at San Francisco’s Women’s Building, listen attentively.

OhioMHAS and the Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities (DODD) are still accepting proposals for the Fifth Annual Trauma-Informed Care Summit, “Creating Environments of Resiliency and Hope in Ohio,” scheduled for May 22-23 at the Residence Inn by Marriott Columbus-University Area. The purpose of the summit is to move our systems beyond trauma informed to trauma competent. The deadline to submit a proposal is Feb. 2. Click HERE for more information and to access the online submission form.

We speak with Yance Ford, who on Tuesday became the first trans director to be nominated for an Academy Award. His film “Strong Island” is up for best documentary. Ford, who is African-American, chronicles what happened to his own family after his brother, William Ford Jr., was shot dead by a white mechanic in Long Island, New York, in 1992. The killer was questioned by police but never charged. “My brother’s case, 25 years ago, simply affirms what we are seeing now,” Ford says. “It doesn’t...

The Trauma-informed School movement is at a critical stage where student discipline policies must reflect the educational neuroscience and trauma-informed practices being implemented in our schools. Otherwise, you haven't made it yet to the trauma-informed stage. Use this link as a litmus test: https://medium.com/@drjimwalters/trauma-informed-student-codes-of-conduct-e1ecbb18cb6f I welcome others to share their work in this area.

The Center for Youth Wellness (CYW) has launched its new National Pediatric Practice Community on ACEs (NPPC) member website ( nppcaces.org ). The website supports CYW’s efforts to grow a national, co-designed peer group of pediatric-serving medical practitioners interested in ACES screening and in expanding knowledge, building capacity, accessing resources and shaping the field of ACEs research and trauma-informed care. NPPC’s goal is to support pediatric medical providers in making ACEs...

There's been quite a bit of research linking financial insecurity to poor health outcomes. The connection is, on its face, an obvious one, as a depleted checking account can cause stress, which can manifest in our bodies and minds. A new study by researchers at Boston Medical Center furthers that unfortunate connection: It finds housing instability, including chronically late rent payment, can affect the mental and physical health of family members of all ages. "People talk a lot about...

Volusia County, Florida — This was one of the last places in the South to end segregation, a land today of gun enthusiasts and NASCAR, where Jews are still cautioned not to draw attention by hanging mezuzahs on their doors, and local history books say little, or nothing, about African-American life here. The most notable change in the county’s demographics in the generations since Jim Crow is that black sharecroppers who used to tend white-owned farms have been replaced by thousands of...