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As a youth in foster care, I am used to major decisions about me being made in my absence. Countless times, I was not made aware of my court dates, where my future would be decided. But not being able to participate in court can have a far-reaching impact on foster youth like me. Last year, I tried reaching out to my attorney to find out my court date and to discuss some challenges I had with my case workers. However, he never answered, and attended my hearing without me. I later found out...

Living in a more densely built area significantly lowers your risk of obesity. Such is the unavoidable conclusion of a new survey of British cities that compares obesity rates with housing density. The study, carried out by specialists at the universities of Oxford and Hong Kong, found that obesity rates were markedly lower in areas where homes were more tightly clustered. This might not come as a shock, given the long touted health benefits of walkable neighborhoods . What makes the study,...

A couple of summers ago, I traveled to the steamy cauldron of central Florida to speak at the WorkHuman conference. Nearly 1,500 human resource professionals were in attendance, eager to hear from luminaries like Arianna Huffington and Rob Lowe (probably more than they wanted to hear an academic recite his research findings). Beaten down by dispiriting, depleting, and demoralizing workplaces, they were hungry for ways to create more energizing and elevating environments. WorkHuman is the...

Toni Morrison is no stranger to tough subject matter—once called the "voice of America's conscience," the Nobel Laureate has, across 11 novels, scrutinized the black identity in the United States. Still, Morrison's latest work, The Origin of Others, may be her most comprehensive examination of race in America to date. While Morrison has typically steered clear of autobiography, The Origin of Others, based on her 2016 Norton Lectures at Harvard University, interweaves Morrison's memories with...

WASHINGTON — The number of young people locked into adult jails and prisons has plummeted nearly two-thirds since 2009 and the number automatically sent to adult courts for criminal trials has fallen by nearly half from 2007 to 2014, a new report says. The numbers of youth tried as adults will likely fall even further by 2020, when four states — Louisiana, South Carolina, North Carolina and New York — fully implement reform laws passed over the last few years, said the new report from the...

At the heart of Benchmark’s Partnering for Excellence (PFE) Annual Conference is the commitment to bring together professionals and those with lived experience. This includes being sure that professionals hear from young adults who have experienced child welfare and “grownups” who share their story often or who may have never shared their story publicly before. This year was no different. But, what was different this year was the bonding that took place between those with lived experience.

During his tenure as surgeon general, Vivek Murthy was known for his work battling the nation’s opioid crisis , including issuing a 400-page report on addiction and mailing letters to doctors imploring them to join him in fighting the opioid epidemic. After President Donald Trump fired Murthy in April, however, he has focused on a different national crisis: loneliness. “As prevalent as loneliness is, many people don’t recognize that people that they know may very well be suffering from...

Nearly 20 years later, I still remember the struggle of growing up with a parent who had depression. As a child, I didn’t understand what my mother was going through. I remember her seeking treatment and asking my dad where she was. At the time, he told me she was dealing with “women problems,” and I took that to mean any number of things. When I asked my dad about it recently, he admitted that he had no idea what to say and was afraid I wouldn’t understand or might have more questions he...

A survey of homeless people accessing services at Cork Simon has found almost 80% had experienced four or more adverse childhood experiences, such as physicial [sic] or sexual abuse or substance misuse in the family. Some service users, the survey showed, began using alcohol at the age of 12 and were using drugs such as cannabis by the time they left school in their mid-teens. It further found more than 71% of those questioned had, at some stage, had suicidal thoughts and more than half had...

Located in Davis, herSpace offers private sessions and small group interoceptive yoga classes as a healing modality for the treatment of trauma, secondary trauma for caregivers and general well-being for all. A guided meditation and intention setting class is also on the weekly schedule. The practice of yoga from a trauma-informed perspective, is an empirically validated method of bringing your body into the healing process, to integrate and transcend the effects of trauma. The concept of...

The Wisconsin voting rights case before the Supreme Court has been cast as the definitive test of whether partisan gerrymandering is permitted by the Constitution. But a closer look at the case and others like it shows that race remains an integral element of redistricting disputes, even when the intent of those involved was to give one party an advantage. Consider Gill v. Whitford, the Wisconsin case that was argued last week before the nation’s highest court. During its journey through the...

For the past few years, America has started to take a closer look at our soaring prison population. Decades of tough-on-crime policies mean we now incarcerate 2.3 million people — the highest rate of imprisonment in the world. And who are the fastest-growing group of prisoners in the U.S.? Women and girls . This story was published in partnership with Teen Vogue . The U.S. makes up just 5 percent of the global population, yet nearly one-third of all the female prisoners in the entire world...