Blog

In the twilight months of the Obama administration, the Department of Justice made an unprecedented announcement : The Bureau of Prisons would phase out the use of privately run contract prison facilities after inspectors concluded that those facilities were “both less safe and less effective at providing correctional services than those run by the government,” as the Washington Post put it at the time. The evaluation by officials should surprise no one: Research suggests that private...

The Healing our Children World Summit (free, online event) starts March 1

Life has been so sweet of late and that, for me, has been emotional. I feel a mixture of joy and disbelief. This time of mothering a teen as a parent with ACEs. I sit the edge of my bed sorting socks and memories. A middle-aged mother in so many kinds of transition. Some mornings, I hear her feet soft on carpeted stairs, see her long hair rolling down her back almost touching the hips. I remember when she did not have hips. The years I gathered her up each morning, carrying her down the...

When Ayman Mohamed arrived at the Tarbiya Institute in Roseville for morning prayer on Feb. 1, he saw his religion had been attacked. On the mosque’s white front walls, “Muslims Out” and other hateful messages about Islam had been spray-painted in black. Even a nearby truck had been vandalized. Shocked and saddened, the mosque’s director of Islamic studies opened up the building and ushered in his congregants for the day’s first prayer. His message to his stricken congregation: Stay strong,...

With the Affordable Care Act’s repeal-replace-reform-repair debate crawling along, House Republicans and the White House do seem to favor one point: sharp cuts to Medicaid . Under most GOP replacement plans, including the one unveiled last week by Speaker Paul Ryan, federal spending on Medicaid, the public-health insurance program that’s most associated with low-income Americans, would be sharply curtailed and converted to either a block-grant funding formula or a capped, per-capita formula.

Even though studies show kids whose fathers take an active part in their lives are less disruptive and better adjusted socially , most programs that aim to up parenting skills are geared towards mothers. And a lot of dads aren't eager to sign up for parenting classes. So researchers at New York University created a parenting class for dads that wasn't called a parenting class. Instead, it was pitched as academic readiness training for preschoolers. But the fathers, who were mostly...

In 2011, I was hired, straight out of college, to work at the White House and eventually the National Security Council. My job there was to promote and protect the best of what my country stands for. I am a hijab-wearing Muslim woman––I was the only hijabi in the West Wing––and the Obama administration always made me feel welcome and included. Like most of my fellow American Muslims, I spent much of 2016 watching with consternation as Donald Trump vilified our community. Despite this––or...

We are beset by vexing public health problems in West Virginia: the opioid and heroin epidemic, the damaging effects of obesity and tobacco-related illnesses. We pay dearly for those problems directly through rising health care costs and increased taxes to cover those costs, and indirectly in human terms, as productive lives are cut short by illness, disability and death. Furthermore, we are encouraging these rising health costs by pricing substances like tobacco and sugary drinks without...

There’s a long and complicated narrative of black communities in America finding ways to support law enforcement, even as the law is enforced unequally to their disadvantage. A unique new study from the Urban Institute provides a vivid portrait of how these conflicting feelings sort themselves out. “ How Do People in High-Crime, Low-Income Communities View the Police? ” asks a difficult question, and comes up with some answers that many might find surprising. On one hand, large percentages...

Why do the girls of Girls act that way? That’s the question underlying five years of baffled cultural responses to Lena Dunham’s epic of questionable decisions, cruelty, narcissism, and grace. Girls has never given a straightforward answer to the question. Despite unflinching confessional dialogue and occasional backstory development and sharp cultural satire, Hannah Horvath and her friends still have an air of Athena, sprung into existence fully formed. Asking why these girls spill drinks...

Conference submission deadline extended Now accepting submissions until March 14, 2017. To complete Call for Papers - BE PREPARED Have these ready before you start - you cannot stop and go back to finish later. If you stop, you will need to start all over again Speaker and Co-speaker Names Demographics Biography(300 words or less) Title of presentation Description(200 Characters or less) Abstract for Website (300 words or less) 3 Learning Objectives List of research or articles that would...

Schools are the best opportunity to address ACEs on a large scale. Other than time at home, school is the place where children spend the majority of their time. And if a child's home life is full of strife, school might be the only place where the child feels safe. ACEs are common, and yet, it can be difficult to know which students need extra support. And rather than create additional programs that single out anyone or any group of students, and potentially having students fall through the...