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And heroin led to the most deaths among 15- to 19-year-olds, CDC says The rate of opioid drug overdose deaths among older teenagers in the United States has taken a turn for the worse, a new federal report finds. The number of drug overdose deaths among 15- to 19-year-olds rose 15 percent for males from 2014 to 2015 and 35 percent for females from 2013 to 2015, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Heroin was the most common cause of fatal opioid...

Despite rhetoric at the federal level, Illinois’ struggles are a reality that will not end in the foreseeable future. Because Illinois had been without a state budget for more than two years, vital organizations that serve our children, families, and communities have either scaled services back dramatically or have disappeared. Yet the basic needs for attention to health for children with special needs, their families, and the communities in which they live are still very visible. From the...

Every day seems to bring a new tragic story of a person with serious mental illness killed by police. In Seattle, for example, there were recently back-to-back deaths: a 30-year-old pregnant woman shot in front of her children, and a 20-year-old man killed right before his high-school graduation during what appeared to be his first psychotic episode, with a pen in his hand police mistook for a knife. Sometimes, the consequences are not death but violent confrontations, arrests, and...

White supremacist racism is shaking Charlottesville and the country. It is difficult to make sense out of such nonsense. Protesters chanted “take America back,” “you will not replace us,” and “blood and soil,” a well-known Nazi rallying cry. But they came to fight, not speak, fueled by anger and projecting their own deep anxieties onto the feared “other.” This type of hatred is not new in America. Behind the racist slogans are historical tropes that the broader White America clings to, not...

When a white person kills a black man in America, the killer often faces no legal consequences. In one in six of these killings, there is no criminal sanction, according to a new Marshall Project examination of 400,000 homicides committed by civilians between 1980 and 2014. That rate is far higher than the one for homicides involving other combinations of races. [For more of this story, written by Daniel Lathrop & Anna Flagg, go to ...

wo years ago, I published a report showing that schools in San Francisco were becoming increasingly segregated by race. In the public debate that followed, no one disputed the facts. However, I was struck by the apathetic, and even hostile, responses from many readers.

A new PBS Documentary on POV titled Tribal Justice that spotlights tribal courts that incorporate indigenous customs and beliefs into their justice systems and the families that are affected. The documentary, directed by Anne Makepeace, follows Abby Abinanti and Claudette White, chief judges in two of the more than 300 tribal courts across the country, as they navigate cross-jurisdictional issues in their courts and communities. Tribal Justice has its national broadcast premiere on the PBS...

For many teachers, a pall has been cast over the first few days of school. This weekend, a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., turned deadly when a 20-year-old man drove his car into counter-protesters, fatally injuring one woman and hurting 19 others. The Associated Press reported that the high school teacher of the man accused of the incident said he had been fascinated with Nazism in school, and had "deeply held, radical" convictions on race in the 9th grade. Even before the...

Health care professionals across the country, like Rahil Briggs and Edward Machtinger, increasingly realize the value of acknowledging trauma to improve care for patients in need. Drs. Briggs and Machtinger are participants in Advancing Trauma-Informed Care , a national initiative led by the Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS) and made possible through support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Through the collaborative, leading national champions of trauma-informed care are...

"The program focuses on treating people and educating them about trauma in their lives, and how that trauma has contributed to their addictive or criminal behavior. Women must apply for the program, through their probation officer, and register a high score on the “adverse childhood experience” scale. Program officials said most women on the program scored at least eight out of 10 on the scale, making them a very high risk for behavioral and mental-health problems."

“Trauma is too often the elephant in the exam room and the reality of patients’ lives.” This sentiment rings true with health care professionals across the country who increasingly recognize the value of acknowledging trauma to improve care for patients in need.

George Zimmerman admitted at his 2012 bail hearing that he misjudged Trayvon Martin’s age when he killed him. “I thought he was a little bit younger than I am,” he said, meaning just under 28. But Trayvon was only 17. What may be most tragic about Mr. Zimmerman’s miscalculation is that it’s widespread. To many people, black boys seem older than they are: In one study, people overestimated their ages by 4.5 years. This contributes to a false perception that black boys are less childlike than...