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The 500 Cities project is a collaboration between CDC, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the CDC Foundation. The purpose of the 500 Cities Project is to provide city- and census tract-level small area estimates for chronic disease risk factors, health outcomes, and clinical preventive service use for the largest 500 cities in the United States. These small area estimates will allow cities and local health departments to better understand the burden and geographic distribution of...

Eat well. Exercise. Do your best to get enough sleep. Don’t smoke or drink too much. Do all these things and you can maintain your psychological and mental health. These are the messages we all hear every day from the medical and mental health community. They are all based on the assumption that as long as you avoid engaging in damaging behaviors, you will remain emotionally strong. I can’t take issue with any of these important suggestions, of course. But lately, I’ve been realizing that...

It was a 344-page book that set Sherry Riva on the path to launching Compass Working Capital , a nonprofit that provides financial services to struggling families, in 2005. “ Assets and the Poor ,” by Michael Sherraden, argued that poverty is a problem of wealth, not just income, and its message resonated with Riva, who had already logged a decade working with low-income women and their families. This new way of thinking about poverty became the blueprint for Compass Working Capital. The...

Each year in the United States, more than 59,000 people die from acts of violence, including more than 42,000 deaths from suicide and 16,000 deaths from homicide.1 Many of these and other violent deaths can be prevented. An essential first step is to ensure the availability of complete, accurate and timely information about these deaths from violence, particularly about populations at risk and the circumstances and factors contributing to these deaths. To collect this critical information,...

Communication is essential to achieve successful human interactions. However, the type of communication we have highly determines the outcome of our relationships. It all simply boils down to how we are connecting with each other. 1. Listen Listening is the first step toward mindful communication. To mindfully listen means to wait patiently for the other person to finish before we speak. Also, it means keeping our mind focused on the speaker, instead of wandering away. 2. Practice...

White supremacy, the system of power behind the suspicion and exclusion of Asian and Asian-American Buddhists, is the same system that justified the founding and building of the U.S. through the genocide of indigenous peoples and the labor of enslaved Africans. Undeniably, America has been created by excluding people whose differences were deemed inferior—a process known as racial othering—so as to establish a seemingly natural superiority of white people. White supremacy has systematically...

Love's Cry is a powerful poem on domestic violence. The poem video is even more powerful. This Wednesday, March 8th, is International Women's Day. Please click "read more" to view the Love's Cry video. If Love's Cry speaks to you, please share the video on your social media sites. Please let me know your ideas on how Love's Cry can be shared with domestic violence and women's organizations, the media as a psa, and more. Together we can make a positive difference. Thank you! Diane Kaufman, MD...

The days of privileging creativity over science in design thinking are over. The rise of behavioral science and impact evaluation has created a new way for engineering programs and human interactions—a methodology called behavioral design. Advances in two academic fields afford this opportunity. The first is behavioral science, which gives us empirical insights into how people interact with their environment and each other under different conditions. Behavioral science encompasses decades of...

When a loved one or community member dies by suicide, the entire community of survivors is powerfully affected. Children, as part of this community, may be deeply impacted and need adult guidance. It is normal to feel nervous and uncomfortable when broaching the topic of suicide loss with children. How could it not be? Suicide is a complicated topic that brings feeling of sadness, regret and many unanswered questions. To read the ten guidelines written by Sarah Montgomery and Susan Coale,...

In 1992, Zindel Segal, John Teasdale, and Mark Williams collaborated to create an eight-week program modeled on MBSR. Jon Kabat-Zinn —who developed MBSR—had some initial misgivings about the program, fearing the curriculum might insufficiently emphasize how important it is for instructors to have a deep personal relationship with mindfulness practice. Once he got to know the founders better, he became a champion for the program. In 2002, the three published Mindfulness-Based Cognitive...

Research suggests that we turn towards pain and discomfort, we can experience less of it. Plus — a guided meditation for being mindful when things get tough . Research into mindfulness has shown the benefits of staying present, and of gently turning towards difficulty. Mindfulness-based relapse prevention (MBRP) trains people with addictive habits to manage their cravings mindfully by staying present to the sensations of craving, rather than trying to distract from them, avoid them or defeat...

Here is the final schedule for Echo's conference. It is brimming with powerful and timely workshops for the world we find ourselves in today and full of deep reflection on how we got here. Come hear the voices that have so long been silenced. Add your voice to the long tradition of nonviolent resistance to injustice. None of us can afford to stand by. Please contact us if you need a partial scholarship - we want to fill the halls of The California Endowment with those who are passionate...