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Guidelines for teenagers should stress the importance of vigorous physical activity and fitness to cut the risk of heart disease, new research suggests. Current NHS guidelines say people aged 5 to 18 should do at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity each day to improve their current and future health. But in a study of adolescents aged 12 to 17, University of Exeter researchers found significant differences between the effects of moderate activity (such as brisk...

In September 1944, trains in the Netherlands ground to a halt. Dutch railway workers were hoping that a strike could stop the transport of Nazi troops, helping the advancing Allied forces. But the Allied campaign failed, and the Nazis punished the Netherlands by blocking food supplies, plunging much of the country into famine. By the time the Netherlands was liberated in May 1945, more than 20,000 people had died of starvation. The Dutch Hunger Winter has proved unique in unexpected ways.

An announcement Tuesday by three of the nation’s corporate titans — Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase & Co. — that they are joining forces to address the high costs of employee health care has stirred the health policy pot. It immediately sent shock waves through the health sector of the stock market and reinvigorated talk about health care technology, value and quality. Though details regarding the undertaking are thin, the companies said in a release that their...

EVERETT, Wash. — Unable to walk or talk, barely able to see or hear, 5-year-old Maddie Holt waits in her wheelchair for a ride to the hospital. The 27-pound girl is dressed in polka-dot pants and a flowered shirt for the trip, plus a red headband with a sparkly bow, two wispy blond ponytails poking out on top. Her parents can’t drive her. They both have disabling vision problems; and, besides, they can’t afford a car. When Maddie was born in 2012 with the rare and usually fatal genetic...

It's admissions season, and across the country, thousands of admissions officers sit in front of screens, reading files full of transcripts, test scores, extracurricular profiles, letters of recommendation, and, of course, essays. I was once one of these officers, spending emotionally exhausting 12-hour days reviewing thousands of applications from Ivy League hopefuls over a span of five months. When I was a new admissions officer, the importance of each application component was drilled...

The date of the last time I used heroin correlating so closely with my daughter's birthdate felt like a horrible secret, like the worst math in the world.' To other mothers, I'd confide the minimum: "I'm in recovery," or "I 'got clean' before I had my daughter." I felt invested in a false narrative fairy tale of my recovery having happened overnight, as if the moment I found out I was pregnant the dark part of my life ended and the beautiful part began. In reality, my past and future bucked...

https://www.grandparentsplus.org.uk/Handlers/Download.ashx?IDMF=75a6b874-6666-4224-8770-48905670dbaf The Kinship Care: State of the Nation Survey This report is based on a survey of members of the Grandparents Plus Kinship Care Support Network, which includes almost 4,000 kinship carers. The results are based on responses from 671 kinship carers living in England and Wales, making it the largest ever survey of its kind. Carried out in February 2017 using both online and postal...

There was a time in the Columbia River Gorge when a group of chronically truant high school kids would have been a problem that engendered a flurry of finger-pointing. Oregon’s Wasco County Department of Youth Services would have blamed the school district for failing to educate the students; school district staff, in turn, would have said the kids needed to be in detention. And everyone would have found reasons why these high-risk youth were failing. “There were many excuses for students...

Part of the fun of being deeply immersed in the world of trauma and resilience is that you get to learn about pioneers around the world doing great work. Better still, sometimes you're able to persuade them to bring their work to LA! Kirstie Seaborne is based in the UK, where she supports parents and professionals in "responding to children under pressure." She does this by helping adults rewrite their embodied response to challenging behaviors. Kirstie already had a career in dance and...

After thirty years in health philanthropy at a small Kansas grantmaker, the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund , I realize that there is still much to learn. That is my principal advice to my colleagues continuing in philanthropy—do all you can to avoid certainty. Self-doubt is a tremendous asset, and far too few have it in our field. There is a strong tendency in philanthropy to believe that the rules you impose, the models you develop, and the forms you use are “right” and immutable. In...

California schools ravaged by fire, floods and mud this year have mostly re-opened and are diving in to a new semester, but district leaders say they’ve learned some crucial lessons about handling natural disasters that all schools could benefit from. “A disaster could happen anywhere at any time in California,” said Steven Herrington, superintendent of the Sonoma County Office of Education, where two public schools were destroyed, nearly a dozen schools were damaged and hundreds of students...

Significant racial disparities between African Americans and white people caught up in San Francisco’s criminal justice system have narrowed in the three-plus years since statewide Proposition 47 reduced some nonviolent felonies to misdemeanors, according to a study released Thursday. San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón, one of the state’s biggest advocates for the proposition, commissioned the grant-funded report. “I’m pleased we learned that the work we are doing is being done on...