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Glenn Towery had already served 11 years for stealing a car at gunpoint when he was transferred to Kern Valley State Prison in 2009. Riding up I-5 to the San Joaquin Valley, 150 miles north of his native Los Angeles, he probably smelled the sulfuric odor of industrial cow lots. But once he arrived, he would inhale something worse: a fungus that might kill him. Towery complained of flu-like symptoms for a year before he was diagnosed. He’d wake coated in sweat. “It feels like something heavy...

Though the words “parental leave” appear regularly in press releases and news articles, most companies and employees still think and talk primarily about maternity leave: time for a new mother to recover from childbirth, breastfeed her infant, and—unwittingly—become an expert in family management. “My husband doesn’t know what size shoe my kid wears.” “My husband doesn’t know what time the baby naps.” “My husband doesn’t have the daycare number stored in his phone.” These were just a few of...

Richard T. Cole, who most people know as Rick, is a remarkable man who’s had several careers, sometimes simultaneously. I was first aware of him when he was press secretary and chief of staff to Governor Jim Blanchard in the 1980s. Later, he was a senior executive at Blue Cross Blue Shield, and worked with Mike Duggan back when the man who became Detroit’s mayor was overhauling the Detroit Medical Center. But Rick Cole is also an academic with a doctorate who was a professor and department...

Like many parents, Camille Proctor went to her first support group for parents of children with autism to feel less alone. Her son Hunter had just been diagnosed, and Proctor had lots of questions. All of the other parents at the various support groups she went on to visit were white; Proctor is African American. When she asked questions about how she should teach her son to interact with police, given that the wrong response by a black boy or man could be deadly, she just got blank stares.

A n expert on the way trauma at home also hurts children in the classroom encouraged Vermont educators to build a coordinated program to help affected students. Lynn Dolce spoke recently about the growing problem of “ toxic stress ” before more than 250 school superintendents, special education directors, and state employees who work in education and health. A group of children in Montpelier. File photo by Jasper Craven/VTDigger “This is not a mental health issue, this is a public health...

It's clear that coming from more humble beginnings can make ordinary life tougher in a lot of ways, and now a new study suggests that the experience of poverty and adversity can also alter biological mechanisms related to brain function, giving rise to increased chances of developing depression. By analysing the brains of adolescents, researchers have found that those growing up in households with lower socioeconomic status accumulated greater amounts of a chemical tag on a gene linked to...

In 2015, the demand for rental apartments reached its highest level ever since the 1960s . The pinched access to mortgage credit after the Great Recession is one reason why. Another is that many Americans—especially the poor and people of color —haven’t felt the effects of the economic recovery, and may not be able to rustle up the funds for a down payment. A third reason is that Millennials, now the largest generation ever since the baby boomers , are especially loath to buy homes. The...

From VOA Learning English, this is the Health and Lifestyle report. Health experts say there is evidence that many white women in the United States are dying too soon. In other words, they are dying before the average age of death in society as a whole. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics studied death rates nationwide. The center found that life expectancy rates for every population group has either gone up or stayed unchanged. Every...

[Photo by Evan-Amos ] The Village of Newburgh Heights, outside Cleveland, is a working class community of about 2,500 residents. It's also home to the most progressive parental leave policy of any municipality in the nation. As of last week, full-time public employees will be eligible for six months of paid parental leave after the birth of a child. [For more of this story go to http://www.npr.org/2016/05/24/479349640/small-ohio-town-passes-progressive-parental-leave-policy]

The next generation of senior citizens will be sicker and costlier to the health care system over the next 14 years than previous generations, according to a new report from the United Health Foundation . We're talking about you, baby boomers. The report looks at the current health status of people ages 50 to 64 and compares them to the same ages in 1999. The upshot? There will be about 55 percent more senior citizens who have diabetes than there are today, and about 25 percent more who are...

Check out the latest WI DHS TIC News and Notes for the week of May 23, 2016

My parenting was not ideal yesterday. I'd slept three hours the night before after a condo deal fall through days before closing. I don't know where we'll be living in a few weeks. The house we are in did sell. This is high stress. All day I was distracted, distraught and on the phone over 50 times with real estate people, the bank, attorneys, friends, town hall and rental places. Not fun. It felt like my heart was a pulled muscle I couldn't unclench. I cried a little but mostly felt an...