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On a bitter cold recent afternoon — in front of the central bus stop in Bangor, Maine — about a half dozen people surrounded a folding table covered with handmade signs offering free clean syringes, coffee, safe drug-injecting supplies and Narcan, the most common brand of the drug naloxone that reverses an opioid overdose. They're with a group called the Church of Safe Injection and they say their gospel is harm reduction, helping people use drugs safely and creating a community of people...

As a teenager, I struggled with bulimia. Not only did I eat to manage my emotional states, but I also binged and then tried to compensate for my dietary transgressions. This never-ending cycle was so draining that I could not think of anything else but food. Stopping binge eating required a shift in my beliefs about my worthiness and my ability to cope with stressful situations. I used food to suppress three negative emotions in particular: powerlessness, anxiety, and emptiness. Fortunately,...

The future of California's ambitious but troubled high-speed rail project is murkier than ever. Always controversial, the California High-Speed Rail project, which promises to whisk passengers from Los Angeles to the Bay Area in about 2 hours and 40 minutes at speeds that hit 220 mph, has experienced cost overruns and delays since it was conceived a decade ago. When approved by California voters in 2008, the project was projected to cost $40 billion. Since then, however, the price tag has...

Words like trauma-informed and resiliency get thrown around a lot these days. And for many, the visions they call up are a bit too glossy. You see resiliency and trauma-informed aren’t always pretty. Resiliency can look like closing the bathroom door and collapsing in tears… but then washing your face and going back into the world, carrying the belief that you can survive and the hope that things will get better. It looks like begrudgingly going on that walk with a friend, when the little...

In his second year of clinical practice, Joseph R. Betancourt, MD, MPH, was tasked to prescribe flu vaccinations for a largely Latino population—an assignment he felt prepared for being a native Spanish speaker whose family was from Puerto Rico. “My first patient was a 72-year-old Latina woman,” recalls Betancourt. “She was a perfect candidate for the flu shot. I wanted to ensure that she was engaged, educated and knowledgeable because I had always been taught that was what mattered most. I...

January 16, 2019 - With its $69 billion acquisition of Aetna in the books, the newly expanded CVS Health is now investing heavily in developing and deploying new models to address community wellness and the social determinants of health (SDOH). The company’s new Building Healthier Communities will benefit from a five-year, $100 million investment from CVS Health, the CVS Health Foundation, and the Aetna Foundation. CVS Health’s community-based initiatives will leverage Aetna’s data analytics...

A new study provides evidence of bias at the intersection of race and gender in 4-year-old children. This pattern of bias — known as gendered racial bias — mirrors harmful patterns of bias observed among adults, according to researchers at Northwestern University. For the study, researchers examined the preschoolers’ responses to images of other children who varied both in race — black and white — and gender. [For more on this story by Janice Wood, go to...

How do you incorporate the specific needs of homeless children into the design of a school? That’s the question the Oklahoma City-based nonprofit organization Positive Tomorrows asked itself when it was daydreaming about a new building that could meet the many needs of its students. Positive Tomorrows has been educating homeless kids and providing social services to families since 1989. “There is no model for this type of school,” said Gary Armbruster, principal architect and partner at MA+...

People exercise for many reasons, and one of the major ones is for its mood-boosting benefits. But as someone who lives with co-occurring mental illnesses, I was skeptical as to whether these benefits would actually work for me. However, as I read more and more research about the therapeutic benefits of working out, I decided to give exercising on the regular a shot. Developing an exercise routine as a way to cope with my PTSD and eating disorder became a pivotal moment in my healing process...

My parents moved from Mississippi to the Midwest during the Great Migration north for a better life. Like many African-Americans, they were looking for employment and an opportunity to live the American Dream. Their journey would lead them to an upper duplex in the heart of Milwaukee’s central city on North 9th Street and West Keefe Avenue. The area is Milwaukee’s 53206 ZIP code. When my parents and I lived in 53206 during the early 1970s, Milwaukee was considered one of the best places in...

This story is part of a series about how schools, teachers and students are coping with the immigration crisis. HONEY GROVE, Texas — Abigail Rubio, 16, was eating lunch in the cafeteria of Honey Grove High School when she found out ICE was raiding the trailer factory where her dad worked. “Did y’all hear about what happened at Load Trail?” a friend asked. Abigail, or Abby as friends and family call her, went on social media. On Snapchat, a friend asked if she’d talked to her dad yet. The...

I remember the first time I filled out the ACEs questionnaire. I was horrified to discover that I was in the “four or more” category, with all kinds of negative health and mental health outcomes on my horizon.