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Having just earned a teaching degree from Pennsylvania’s Millersville University, Rian Reed set out in 2011 to find a position working with special-needs students. Born and raised in a suburb outside of Philadelphia, she had built an enviable academic record, earning induction into the National Honor Society in high school and speaking at her university commencement. She sought to use her leadership skills and creativity in a classroom in her own community. So Reed, a biracial woman who...

Tucked into the new tax law is a provision that offers companies a tax credit if they provide paid family and medical leave for lower-wage workers. Many people support a national strategy for paid parental and family leave, especially for workers who are not in management and are less likely to get that benefit on the job. But consultants, scholars and consumer advocates alike say the new tax credit will encourage few companies to take the plunge. The tax credit, proposed by Sen. Deb Fischer...

As they worked on assembling a new report on American poverty, a consortium of researchers fanned out across the U.S. to talk to people living in pockets of concentrated need—from rural Maine and the Lummi Nation of the Pacific Northwest to major cities like Chicago, Baltimore, Atlanta, and Detroit. One of these site visits took the team to a neighborhood in San Jose, California, where Mexican immigrants struggle with tech-boom-fueled housing costs: Think $600 a month for a couch to sleep...

One of the prevailing views on the disparities between whites and blacks in terms of medical care and mortality is that people of color suffer from worse health outcomes solely due to a lack of financial resources. It is true that low education and socioeconomic status are often associated with worse health outcomes, and the correlation is quite high. Additionally, people of color are substantially more likely to reside in areas with low economic opportunity, and are also significantly more...

A national coalition of researchers, policymakers, and educators has forged a consensus on why schools need to be more responsive to students’ social, emotional, and developmental needs, and it will now finalize recommendations for how to carry out that vision. The Aspen Institute National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development has convened working groups and visited schools around the country that are using strategies around social-emotional learning and student...

In today’s “always-on” culture, the boundaries between our personal and professional lives are often blurred. Many jobs demand constant connectivity, and we feel stress from work long after we leave the office—unless we learn to “detach.” Research suggests that detachment, or disengaging psychologically from work when we leave, is important in promoting recovery from stress and preventing feelings of agitation, or emotional strain. The failure to detach from work—by continuing to think about...

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris debuted her book, The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity , at the Philadelphia Free Library this evening in a talk and book signing. This first stop in an ambitious book tour that crisscrosses the country reflects a mission that Burke Harris has pursued for nearly a decade: to spread the knowledge about the science of adverse childhood experiences, and about how people can use this knowledge to help solve our most intractable problems.

[Editor's note: Dr. Harise Stein at Stanford University edits a web site -- abuseresearch.info -- that focuses on the health effects of abuse, and includes research articles on ACEs. Every month, she will post the summaries of the abstracts and links to research articles that address only ACEs. Thank you, Harise!! -- Jane Stevens] Lynch BA, Agunwamba A, Wilson PM, et. al. Adverse family experiences and obesity in children and adolescents in the United States. Prev Med. 2016 Sep;90:148-54.

In a space that used to be an abandoned state hospital, Lora Lesak has created an early childhood classroom filled with natural light and comfortable chairs — a room designed to feel like a home. As director of Developmental Health Services for Allentown’s Community Services for Children, she says that’s exactly what children who’ve experienced trauma need. “We have gotten children that have needed to remain in the hospital for two weeks to be weaned of substances — whether it’s cocaine,...

Morgan Langley leans toward a large computer screen. He isn’t sure if the video clip is still there, posted to a random YouTube channel named after a ’90s punk-ska act, but after a few moments, he finds it. Out of a black screen flashes a white Ford Mustang with blacked-out windows and chrome rims. Langley, who is an executive producer of one of America’s longest-running reality shows, “Cops,” narrates. “This kid here is actually selling a thousand pills of ecstasy to an undercover cop,” he...

In its annual count of the city’s homeless population, New York in 2015 listed how many people fit into 10 different groups: nearly 4,000 chronically homeless, more than 8,000 severely mentally ill, 1,500 veterans, and so on. But when the list got to victims of domestic violence, the annual federally mandated count showed one striking number: zero. Far from the reality on the ground — nearly a third of homeless families with children have experienced domestic violence, according to the...

Editor’s note: Last July, Martha Park wrote about the Dumas Hotel , a revered building in Roanoke, Virginia, with an uncertain future. The hotel appeared in the The Negro Motorist Green Book from 1936 to 1967 and survived the city’s sweeping urban renewal efforts from the same period. Today, downtown is thriving . But on the other side of the train tracks, residents in historically black Gainsboro—where the Dumas Hotel still stands—aren’t so sure they’ll benefit from the boom. Below, Park...