Blog

CentraCare Health has partnered with Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) to raise awareness of childhood trauma and its effect on health. Research has shown that life experiences – especially during childhood when brains and bodies are developing rapidly – play a major role in overall health later in life. The health and social effects of these events, known as ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences), are featured in a series of five documentaries – much of which was filmed in St. Cloud and the...

Incarceration in the United States peaked in 2008. Since then, many jurisdictions have expanded alternatives for low-level offenders, decriminalized some minor offenses, and reformed police practices. As a result, the nation’s incarceration rate has declined from 1,000 inmates per 100,000 adults to 830 inmates per 100,000 adults . The FIRST STEP Act, signed into law last year, is federal criminal justice reform that is designed to reduce sentences for nonviolent offenses — a sign that this...

Ron Clewer couldn’t believe what he was hearing. A single mom, a black woman in her early 30s, had just told housing authority officials in Rockford, Ill., that she would kick her 15-year-old son out of her apartment if it meant she could keep the place for herself and her two younger children. It happened because private security guards hired by the housing agency had stopped the son, and, when they found he wasn’t carrying identification, searched him. They found the remains of a marijuana...

U.S. officials at the southern border will begin sending some asylum applicants back to Mexico on Friday as the Trump administration implements new measures preventing migrants from waiting in the United States while their cases are processed. The initiative, announced by the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday night, follows high-level talks between the two governments late last year as U.S. border officials struggled to contend with waves of Central American migrants fleeing...

All children are born innately spiritual and loving. They are sponges and quickly absorb the nuances in their environment. As tiny, dependent beings they view their parents/caregivers as the living embodiment of God. Hence, we parents, play a very crucial role in our child’s spiritual development... For more on this important topic for enriching children's lives and avoiding ACE's in the home, See my blog post: How To Raise A Joyous, Spiritual Child .

What could make people be able to empathize? People who have experienced very little loss in their lives can miss the ability to grasp the pain others live with every day. If they had tragedy happen in their lives my wish would be that from that tragedy they would henceforth be able to empathize with those they have dismissed throughout their privileged lives.

Less than five years ago, Aubree Rosenberg had something few people in their 20s have: a living will. She was presented with the document by her father after being discharged from the hospital following a suicide attempt. Having spent years in and out of treatment facilities, battling multiple mental health diagnoses and addiction to alcohol, benzodiazepines, and opiates, Rosenberg, who is now 26 years old, describes the moment as having changed her life: “For my father to do that was a huge...

Cissy's note: The TedTalk below is given by one of my good friends, Alissa. When she first told me about the restorative justice work she was doing with Dr. Jill Levenson, speaking with convicted of sexual offending, where she shared about her experiences as a survivor of sexual assault, (aka, without her "professional shield," as she says), I was concerned. Was it safe, wise, and helpful? What would the impact be on her? Part of me felt that it's not the place of survivors to help...

Around the country, women physician researchers make 7 to 8 percent less per year than men. At the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, efforts to eliminate such a gender disparity have cut the difference in salaries from 2.6 percent in 2005 to a statistically insignificant 1.9 percent in 2016. But even with that improvement and seemingly small pay gap, women faculty are likely to accumulate much less wealth over their lifetimes, Johns Hopkins researchers found. The researchers used...

There isn’t currently a federal right to education. The Supreme Court made that much clear in the 1970s. But should there be? For one side of the debate Thursday at the American Enterprise Institute, guaranteeing a federal right to education is the only way to fix the sinking ship of inequitable American education. For opponents, it’s a “utopian abstraction” that will inevitably result in increased federal meddling in local decisions. The crux of the debate was the Supreme Court’s 1973...

An economy that’s rigged to benefit the richest 1% has left most of America behind. While wages for workers have remained flat for decades, expenses for healthcare, housing, and most basic needs have risen. Alongside record concentrations of income and wealth at the top, America’s racial wealth divide has persisted – or worsened. As people of color make up a larger share of the diversifying US population, that persistent racial wealth divide is bringing down America’s median wealth . But...