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SEE MORE HERE: http://rwjf.ws/2krNVFG DEADLINE: March 01, 2017, 3:00 p.m. ET Release Date: February 1, 2017 Purpose The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is seeking proposals from organizations who can serve in the role of a coordinating office to enhance hospitals’ role in population health. The Foundation (RWJF) is committed to building a Culture of Health in America, which includes fostering cross-sector collaboration to improve population health, well-being, and equity. We recognize that...

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” Today, the first day of Black History Month, faith leaders from across New Jersey are joining together to condemn one of the major injustices of our time: the stark racial disparities within our state’s youth prisons. These grave racial inequities were laid bare in a recent report by the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, entitled “ Bring Our Children Home: Ain’t I A Child .”...

Editor’s note: This is the first of a two-part series featuring the mentoring programs at Building Healthy Families, the local organization dedicated to providing family support programs in Wallowa County. BHF is currently in search of mentors, and in this opening piece the Chieftain speaks with Maria Weer, executive director of BHF and three of the program’s mentors about the need for mentoring and the mentoring experience. Wallowa County Chieftain “January is National Mentoring Month. It’s...

Making cities more age-friendly means getting those in charge on board with the idea. The Milken Institute is asking mayors throughout the United States to pledge to make their cities welcoming environments for older adults to age in place. So far, some 150 mayors of cities of all sizes have promised to support neighborhoods that promote inclusivity and are sensitive to the physical, social and economic well-being of older adults. The pledge is a tool designed to change hearts and minds...

Every other year around this time, including this year, volunteers fan out across their communities on a single night, attempting to count the homeless. As part of that count, they also attempt to eyeball who’s a homeless veteran. Later, this count is put together with a tabulation of how many people pass through services geared to the homeless in a year, like shelters, to get a federal estimate of both how many homeless there are across America, and also how many veterans are homeless. See...

New research finds that chronic bullying is related to lower academic achievement, a dislike of school, and low confidence by students in their own academic abilities. Investigators tracked hundreds of children from kindergarten through high school and found that nearly a quarter of kids in the study experienced bullying. While pop culture often depicts more frequent bullying in high school, the study found that bullying was more severe and frequent in elementary school and tended to taper...

Mental health problems continue to carry a heavy stigma. People who experience them are often feared, excluded, shamed and discriminated against. Overcoming that stigma is a high priority, not least because it’s a barrier to engaging people in treatments that might help them. People suffering from mental health problems are not the only ones to experience the stigma of mental illness, however. Those who treat them sometimes share the burden. Just as the shadow of death falls on workers in...

In Chicago, where the number of shootings last year soared, it's often young people who become both perpetrators and victims. The Cook County Juvenile Justice Center holds about 200 to 300 young residents awaiting trial at the Temporary Detention Center. Among these residents are Leonard and Nigel, both 17 years old. Because of the rules of the juvenile court, Nigel and Leonard's full names and specifics about their cases can't be disclosed. The two, along with several other detainees, were...

Practicing mindfulness, we see the suffering that is caused by the destruction of life everywhere, and we vow to cultivate compassion and use it as a source of energy to protect the lives of people, animals, plants and minerals. When we see suffering, compassion is born in us. People often use their anger at social injustice as a basis for action, but that is unwise. When you are angry you are not lucid, and you can do many harmful things. According to Buddhism, the only source of energy...

Visit advancingparenting.org to learn about a small nonprofit organization pioneering passive/public parenting education. Read about what we do, why we do it, and our plans for the future. Parenting tips on cars will be read 1000s of times by 1000s of people of all ages. This is the essence of passive/public parenting education.

What's the best time for students to have recess? Before lunch, or after? What happens if it rains? If students are misbehaving, is it a good idea to punish them by making them sit out recess? Those are just a few of the issues addressed in new guidelines designed to help schools have good recess. The recommendations come from a group called SHAPE (Society of Health and Physical Educators) America and from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Recess might seem simple — just open...

In case you don't know what makes for healthy sleep habits, a U.S.-based expert panel has defined them for you in a new report. The key indicators include: sleeping at least 85 percent of the total time spent in bed; falling asleep within 30 minutes or less; waking up no more than once a night; and being awake for 20 minutes or less after initially falling asleep. The National Sleep Foundation report also outlined research needed to identify and describe more indicators of good sleep quality...