Blog

By Michael Kimmelman and Lucy Tompkins, Photo: Christopher Lee, The New York Times, June 14, 2022 One steamy morning last July, Ana Rausch commandeered a shady corner of a parking lot on the northwest side of Houston. Downing a jumbo iced coffee, she issued brisk orders to a dozen outreach workers toting iPads. Her attention was fixed on a highway underpass nearby, where a handful of people were living in tents and cardboard lean-tos. As a vice president of Houston’s Coalition for the...

By Dave Davies, Photo: Octavio Jones/Getty Images, National Public Radio, June 14, 2022 The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the racial inequities that plague American health care, with Black people dying of the disease at a rate more than double that of white people. Author Linda Villarosa has been writing about the racial disparities in health outcomes for decades and recently covered the topic for the New York Times' 1619 Project . She says that while she used to think poverty was to blame for...

By Rae Ellen Bichell and Cara Anthony, Photo: Joe Martinez/KHN, Kaiser Health News, June 13, 2022 Several months ago, a lab technologist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital mixed the blood components of two people: Alphonso Harried, who needed a kidney, and Pat Holterman-Hommes, who hoped to give him one. The goal was to see whether Harried’s body would instantly see Holterman-Hommes’ organ as a major threat and attack it before surgeons could finish a transplant. To do that, the technologist mixed in...

By Sydney Trent, Photo: Julia Rendleman/The Washington Post, The Washington Post, June 13, 2022 T he cell was smaller than a parking space, bound by three dirty beige concrete walls and a steel door with a narrow slot to push in meals and shackle hands. There was a narrow cot, a toilet, a sink. The filmy glass on the barred window allowed little sun; the always-on fluorescent ceiling light allowed no darkness. Each day brought the clanging of chains, the shuffling and shouting of guards and...

By Blake Hounshell, Photo: Joseph Prezioso/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images, The New York Times, June 10, 2022 The banner headline on Friday’s print edition of The New York Times was pretty direct: But for journalists, not every story is as black and white as a mob storming the United States Capitol to try to overturn a free election. Often, there are areas of gray. Gerrymandering is a classic example. It’s not always easy to identify heroes and villains when writing about the redrawing of...

House Approves Ban On Electric Shock Devices For Those With Developmental Disabilities

Calling all pediatric and family medicine providers! Our team at University of California San Diego wants to learn from you! Please share your experiences screening for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in primary care in this short online survey . Please follow this link to open the survey and enter your responses. You will be entered to win a $100 Visa Gift Card! Your responses will help shape our approach to ACEs in research and practice. The survey should take you about 5-10 minutes...

On Sunday, June 12, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators led by Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT) and John Cornyn (R-TX) announced an agreement on a framework to reduce gun violence that has the potential to break the decades-long impasse on passing gun legislation. The details provided were sparse, providing one-sentence descriptions on nine elements (see attached). The specific framework language included here appears in italics. Legislative language is expected before the July 4 recess. Funding...

This week's "History. Culture. Trauma." podcast continues to examine trauma and resilience, not just at the individual level but at the systems and cultural level," says Ingrid Cockhren, podca st co-host and CEO of PACEs Connection. "We examine these questions," she says. "How has the trauma of slavery and genocide impacted our current society? Why are the cultural manifestations of trauma, that is, community violence, school shootings, etc., so pervasive?" Juneteenth marks the day—June 19,...

By Nic Austin, Photo: Shutterstock, LGBTQ Nation, June 12, 2022 In Birmingham, Alabama, families, and friends of students of Magic City Acceptance Academy attended the charter school’s inaugural graduation ceremony. MCAA is a charter school that promises an “LGBTQ-affirming learning environment” for students who “have dropped out, are not thriving at traditional schools.” Although the classes are small, 12 seniors graduated this year, the hearts of the school’s community remain large as...

By Linda Jacobson, Photo: Heather Long, The 74, June 12, 2022 School closures in Vermont didn’t drag on as long as those in other parts of the country, but that didn’t lessen the strain. Social distancing, masks and confining students to their classrooms caused an “explosive amount of mental health needs,” from lack of focus to outright aggression, said Heather Long, a former counselor in the Orange East Supervisory Union district. “I started to watch as more and more restrictions were being...

By Raquel Torres, Photo: Nick Wagner/San Antonio Report, San Antonio Report, June 12, 2022 Celeste Ibarra, mother of 9-year-old Aubriella Melchor, has witnessed her daughter deteriorating since the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School. Aubriella hid in a bathroom stall as the gunman walked past and began shooting. Now, Ibarra said her daughter hardly eats or sleeps, and when she does sleep, she has nightmares of the gunman coming after her. She said she still hears the echoes of the...