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This post originally appeared on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Culture of Health Blog . There’s no bus service in his small town in rural North Carolina, so Dean* drives 10 miles to The Free Clinics ("Clinics") in Hendersonville every couple of weeks whenever he has money for gas. Staff there helped him find affordable medications and treatments for cancer and for his shoulder, which he injured by falling 20 feet on a construction site. He’s unable to read due to learning...

Their titles vary — community health worker, care navigator, community paramedic, peer specialist — but the core benefit they provide to patients is the same: a knowledgeable care provider, often with lived experience, and an advocate for better health.

Students in U.S. schools were less likely to be suspended in 2016 than they were in 2012. But the progress is incremental, and large gaps — by race and by special education status — remain. This data comes from an analysis of federal data for NPR in partnership with the nonprofit organization Child Trends. And it comes as the Trump administration is preparing the final report from a school safety commission that is expected to back away from or rescind Obama-era guidance intended to reduce...

The following interview is part of a cutting-edge series of video interviews called Parenting Today: Raising Strong, Resilient Kids being aired exclusively on Mad in America. This series has as its aim educating parents about the current mental disorder paradigm as it relates to children. It also offers many useful tips about how to raise resilient children and how to become a more skilful parent. In this series of more than thirty interviews, we share information about the diverse resources...

Editor’s Note: This updates a story published on Nov. 14 by ProPublica and the Malheur Enterprise that was based on an incomplete set of data provided by Oregon’s Psychiatric Security Review Board. The board initially provided the names of 334 people it released from 2008 to 2017. In fact, the board freed 526 people during those years. Looking at the full records, we found that the criminally insane committed new crimes and harmed others more often than we had initially calculated. An...

Funding opportunities for programming focused on healing ACEs

With one in three Newark students considered chronically absent last year, a team of researchers has set out to discover why so many students are missing so much school. To solve that riddle, the team has held focus groups and surveyed high school students at summer school programs, churches, and supermarkets. Many researchers have conducted similar studies, but this team is different — it includes students interviewing their peers about their shared struggles with attendance. “We’re...

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We begin today’s show with the mounting outrage over the death of a 7-year-old indigenous Guatemalan girl in Border Patrol custody, as lawmakers demand answers for the conditions that led Jakelin Caal Maquín to die after being detained at the U.S.-Mexico border. Maquín died on December 8th, two days after she and her father presented themselves at the U.S.-Mexico border alongside 161 other Central American asylum seekers. She had been held in detention for more than eight...

It’s the best news you’ve probably never heard. Oakland, long synonymous with gun violence, is suddenly emerging as a national leader in the field of violence prevention. Since 2012, shootings are down more than 50 percent and are on pace to reach their lowest levels in decades. California leaders have much to learn from how people in Oakland came together to rewrite the violence reduction playbook. [For more on this story by Reygan Cunningham and Mike McLively, go to...

OKLAHOMA CITY (KOKH) — Two measures introduced in the state senate aim to reduce trauma experienced by children in schools. The legislation is sponsored by Senator Allison Ikley-Freeman, D-Tulsa, who before entering politics worked as a therapist at a nonprofit mental health agency. Senator Ikley-Freeman told FOX 25 her goal is to create a “more trauma-informed culture” within the state’s public schools. In Senate Bill 72 schools would be prohibited from using mechanical restraints to...

The Family First Prevention Services Act , which was signed into law as part of the Bipartisan Budget Act on February 9, 2018, offers an historic opportunity for child welfare leaders to re-imagine a child welfare system for the 21 st century. By placing an emphasis on prevention, early intervention and evidence-based practices for children and families, this groundbreaking legislation is requiring child welfare providers to rethink the policies, practices and systems of yesterday and...

If one is looking for the most traumatized youths in Philadelphia, a good starting place might be Judge Lori Dumas’ courtroom. Dumas’ program – Working to Restore Adolescents’ Power (WRAP) – is designed for juvenile victims of sex trafficking who have also been charged with crimes. Dumas sits with each defendant for face-to-face meetings to build trust. An interdisciplinary team that also includes a prosecutor, defense counsel, and treatment providers seeks to avert criminal proceedings in...