Blog

I wanted to share with you some new publications from Prevention Institute that came out a few weeks ago that connect community safety and early childhood development. These resources build on existing science to address community-level factors and build a pathway to safer communities in the long term: The imperative of safety: How community safety supports optimal early childhood development : This fact sheet highlights the research on the impact of violence and safety on early childhood...

King County Executive Dow Constantine this morning announced an executive order to place juvenile justice under the purview of the public health department. He unveiled the plan at a press conference with Seattle Mayor Tim Burgess, King County department leaders, and advocates for alternatives to youth detention. The executive order directs County departments to come up with “a plan and timeline to restructure juvenile detention” under the oversight and direction of Seattle and King County’s...

Alysia Ferguson Garcia remembers the day two years ago that ended in her making a call to Child Protective Services. One of her students walked into drama class with what Garcia thought of as a “bad attitude” and refused to participate in a script reading. “I don’t care if you’ve had a bad day,” Garcia remembers saying in frustration. “You still have to do some work.” In the middle of class, the student offered an explanation for her behavior: Her mom’s boyfriend had been sexually abusing...

More than half of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer Americans say they have experienced violence, threats or harassment because of their sexuality or gender identity, according to new poll results being released Tuesday by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. "There are very few nationally representative polls of LGBTQ people, and even fewer that ask about LGBTQ people's personal experiences of discrimination," says Logan...

A newly released report by the United States Sentencing Commission found that black male offenders received sentences that were significantly longer than “similarly situated” white male offenders when tried in federal court, even when their crimes were absolutely the same. On November 14, the nation’s Sentencing Commission (USSC) released its new publication, Demographic Differences in Sentencing . Among the key findings of the 43-page report, the commission discovered that sentences...

I grew up in southwestern Ohio, surrounded by woods, corn and soybean fields down the road from a small town. Although my childhood home fits what some might see as a stereotypical description of small town America, I never thought of it that way. Now, as a program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) working to promote healthy, equitable communities, I’ve had the opportunity to travel to a number of rural places and small town across the United States and see the vast...

It’s a Sunday evening in Austin, Texas, in a calm gray room the perfect size and shape for a circle of around 30 adults. It’s a fairly diverse group, though there are more men than women here. Most of the guests look about 30 or younger, and a majority seem to already know each other. Right now, I know nothing else about the people I will spend the next three hours with, but I’m expecting I will soon—we are all here to “authentically relate” to one another. We’re gathered here for a game...

When someone acts out or becomes violent, the first question often asked by parents, teachers, friends, family and others is: “Why did you do this?” Winona State University social work professor Ruth Charles and several other community leaders are working to change the framing of the question, asking instead: “What happened to you that would make you behave this way?” First defined in a study that began in 1995, adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), established a link between childhood...

I am a general urologist in Muskegon, Michigan. Muskegon is a small to midsized community on the shore of Lake Michigan. In many ways, Muskegon is much like any other Midwestern community. It is a historically industrial city, trying hard to adapt to the challenges of the new global economy. In January 2014, our local hospital opened a Level II Trauma Center. Since that time, the service has admitted and treated 25 pediatric patients with gunshot wounds. Many more gunshot victims have been...

Thank you Chris Serres for reporting on the troubling development at St Joseph’s Hospital in Brainerd. (11.2.17) This may be our community’s (nation’s) most serious health problem. St Joe’s failure to admit mental health crisis patients reflects the growing nightmare of how medical institutions are dealing with mental health at a management level. Refusing help to our most troubled citizens (people in crisis) means more sad & awful things happen to the rest of us. People in crisis are a...

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” – Nelson Mandela, Former President of South Africa Learn about the CASA guardian ad-Litem program and how you can make life better for abused and neglected children where you live. Today, there are 500 abused and neglected children in Ramsey & Hennepin County child protective services without a guardian ad-Litem. Being a State Ward child is painful. Being a voice for that child is...

Two major interstate freeways cross at the edge of the Seattle neighborhood where I live. Last autumn, as winter began to close in, the homeless encampments growing along the freeways wrapped around the hill and took root under the interstate bridge six blocks from my house. Constructions of pallets and old furniture and blankets began to accumulate, and rubbish spread across the walkways leading to the bus stops. We commuters made our way past the campsites, heads down. Eye contact with the...