Blog

In the first of my two part review of this best-selling UK book I praise Darren McGarvey's independence of mind. I admire the way he uses his first hand experience of poverty and abuse to question the left's exclusive interest in structural economic factors. I think McGarvey is right to argue that economic change is important but that it is unlikely to happen soon. Meanwhile we must acknowledge that what people do as individuals has a major impact on their lives and their families.

At Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, a first-floor chapel with a raised ceiling, generous windows and a carpeted central area is the site for twice-weekly guided meditation open to staff, patients and family members. In Kansas City’s Crossroads Art District, the building that houses Truman Medical Centers (TMC) Behavioral Health includes conference rooms called “Jazz” and “Vine,” located so that people can reach them without passing through clinical space, interrupting patients or...

I have written a two part review of a book which is currently a well-deserved publishing sensation in the UK - Poverty Safari by Darren McGarvey. He grew up in a poor household with an abusive mother in a deprived community in Glasgow. He is now a rapper and political commentator. In the first part of my review I look at how he argues passionately for structural economic changes but also promotes the idea of personal responsibility. In t he second part I look at ACEs, toxic stress and ...

In the wake of President Trump’s call for increased attention to workforce development during the State of the Union address, the Urban Alliance released a white paper with recommendations focused on job training and career planning for youth and young adults. The white paper, “ Job Training Starts Now: Why High School Students Need Youth Employment Opportunities ,” offers eight recommendations for addressing the lack of employment training, education and opportunities available to young...

“We are wondering: What’s the post-Harvey era going to look like?” said the Washington Post journalist Sarah Ellison on a panel at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, which ended earlier this week. The festival itself, for one, looked different. In the 2017 edition, amid throngs of feminists clad in pink pussy hats, Harvey Weinstein proudly participated in the inaugural Women’s March in Park City. This year, following a wave of sexual-assault allegations by women in the industry, the former...

In these polarized times, liberals and conservatives tend to talk past each other . Leftists tend to envision a brighter future, while right-wingers lovingly look to a more-perfect past. "Forward," urged Barack Obama . "Make America Great Again," replied Donald Trump . Here's a thought: What if we could decouple those deep-seated propensities from actual policy positions? Specifically, what if liberals advocated for a progressive platform by evoking conservatives' nostalgia for a...

There’s a device called the Mosquito that emits an annoying sound at a very high frequency—so high that only young people can hear it. It’s marketed by its manufacturers as a means of discouraging kids from loitering in streets and other public spaces. (Shopkeepers have blasted Barry Manilow , to similar effect.) The UK’s first children’s commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley-Green, called it “an ultrasonic weapon designed to stop kids gathering,” and cited its use as proof that the nation’s attitude...

In November 1865—barely six months after Appomattox, and three weeks before the official ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment—the New York Tribune’s front page bore a provocative headline: “South Carolina Re-establishing Slavery.” The story laid out the new system being put into place in most of the former Confederacy—“Black Codes,” criminal laws targeting black citizens, coupling a long list of minor offenses with a schedule of prohibitive fines. If a black defendant could not pay the...

Hispanic women with prediabetes and overweight or obesity who were assigned to an intensive lifestyle intervention for 1 year experienced a greater reduction in body weight if their mental health remained stable or improved vs. similar women whose mental health worsened during the same time, study data show. “We found that all participants lost weight in the first 6 months, regardless of changes in their mental health measures ,” Matthew O’Brien, MD, MSc, assistant professor of medicine and...

The fresh fruit, frozen vegetables and salad Karen Seabolt eats help her “do more of what I need to do to live a better life,” she says. The 66-year-old from Tulsa, Oklahoma, has diabetes and is paralyzed on her right side from a stroke. As a diabetic, Karen needs to eat the fresh fruits and vegetables her doctors recommend, and the $15 dollars per month she gets from SNAP—the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—help her do that. “It really comes in handy towards the end of the month.

Public health experts often talk about the “ "social determinants of health" : community traits such as housing quality, access to nutritious and fresh food, water and air quality, education quality and employment opportunities. These factors are thought to be among the most powerful influences on a person’s health. Local communities in every state across the U.S. face similar poor economic realities: 52.3 million Americans live in economically distressed ZIP codes. This means that about 17...

Council for a Strong America is a national, bipartisan nonprofit that unites five organizations comprised of law enforcement leaders, retired admirals and generals, business executives, pastors, and prominent coaches and athletes who promote solutions that ensure our next generation of Americans will be citizen-ready. Council for a Strong America has a 20-year track record of strengthening families, communities, the economy, and our national security. One if of the programs, ReadyNation is...