Blog

The kidney doctor sat next to Judy Garrett’s father, looking into his face, her hand on his arm. There are things I can do for you, she told the 87-year-old man, but if I do them I’m not sure you will like me very much. The word “death” wasn’t mentioned, but the doctor’s meaning was clear: There was no hope of recovery from kidney failure. Garrett’s father listened quietly. “I want to go home,” he said. It was a turning point for the man and his family. “This doctor showed us the reality of...

In parts of the country hit hard by addiction, some public health officials are considering running sites where people can use heroin and other illegal drugs under medical supervision. Advocates say these facilities, known as supervised injection sites, save lives that would otherwise be lost to overdoses and provide a bridge to treatment. There are at least 13 efforts underway in U.S. cities and states to start an official supervised injection site — with advocates in several cities saying...

Dozens of people packed into a Philadelphia courtroom on June 6th to voice their objections to a proposed criminal justice algorithm . The algorithm, developed by the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing, was conceived of as a way to reduce incarceration by predicting the risk that a person would pose a threat to public safety and helping to divert those who are at low risk to alternatives to incarceration. But many of the speakers worried the tool would instead increase racial disparities...

The Trump administration said Thursday that it had complied with a judge’s order and reunited all of the eligible children under the age of 5 that it had in custody with their migrant parents. But Nazario Jacinto-Carrillo’s desperate voice and haunting questions, repeated over and over on a phone line from Guatemala, made clear that the crisis over child separations remained far from resolved. “When are they going to give them back?” Mr. Jacinto-Carrillo asked of the thousands of children...

In areas of the country disproportionately affected by the opioid crisis, treatment programs are less likely to accept patients paying through insurance of any type or accept pregnant women, a new Vanderbilt study found. While the opioid crisis has escalated across the U.S., there has been growing concern that treatment capacity has not kept pace. In 2016, more than 42,000 Americans died of an opioid-related overdose, more than any year on record. Opioid agonist therapies, like buprenorphine...

The W. Haywood Burns Institute (BI) strongly rejects the disturbing and dangerous new policy direction of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) that insinuates that public safety is threatened by efforts to reduce racial and ethnic disparities (RED). This misunderstanding of the purpose and outcome of RED work is the culmination of months of changes at OJJDP that unmask this administration’s egregious disregard of the gravity and pervasiveness of RED and the...

California counties support vulnerable children and families. Children with Special Health Care Needs Defined as “ Those who have one or more chronic physical, developmental, behavioral, or emotional conditions and who also require health and related services of a type or amount beyond that required by children generally " More than one million children in California have a special health care need, and many of these children and families face severe challenges. Health care and other support...

Did you know that adult obesity is strongly linked with early childhood adversity? Check out the video interview Mary Giuliani gave on this topic with Anna Runkle, where she shares her story and how she has been able to maintain 160lb weight loss for 15 years. Also, on Tuesday 7-17-18 Mary is launching an all new online course: Permanent Weight Loss Formula :Guiding Women To Reach & Maintain A Healthy Weight For Life. This course is based on ACEs Science and is focused on how to reach...

In 2016, an estimated 16.2 million adults in the United States had at least one major depressive episode – 6.7 percent of all U.S. adults. But with appropriate professional andself-help strategies, recovery from depression is possible. Self-help for depression can help alleviate symptoms and put someone on the path to recovery. Here are 5 self-help strategies for depression: Exercise. Both aerobic exercise like walking or jogging and anaerobic exercise like weight lifting can help alleviate...

Seven documents juvenile justice agencies used to track disproportionate arrests of minority youth and compliance with other rules were among the two dozen federal guidance documents the Justice Department recently disavowed, sparking questions and concern across the field. Those documents were part of the batch of two dozen that Attorney General Jeff Sessions pulled back last week. While Obama administration guidelines in support of affirmative action in college admissions grabbed the...

MONDAY, July 9, 2018 (HealthDay News) -- Children whose parents spend time in prison are more likely to lead risky lifestyles as young adults, a new study suggests. The findings are important because more than 5 million American children have had a parent in jail or prison, according to the researchers. "The United States has the highest incarceration rates in the world. With the climbing number of parents, especially mothers, who are incarcerated, our study calls attention to the invisible...

This op-ed wisely recognizes that trauma and resulting mental illness is borne unevenly by different communities and that reducing stigma alone is not enough. "Suffering is compounded when the groups that are most in need of treatment for mental illness are the very groups who are less likely to receive it." ...