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Teachers across the country are being priced out of local housing markets by low pay, according to a new analysis of 124 of America’s largest districts by the National Council on Teacher Quality. Three key findings: In 80 percent of the districts analyzed, a teacher with a master’s degree and five years of experience cannot comfortably afford a mortgage. More than a quarter of new teachers cannot afford to rent one-bedroom apartments where they work. Teachers must save for an average of 10...

Max Weissman, an adolescent counselor in Asheville, says cyberbullying is an issue that comes up all too often — by parents, educators and victims themselves — though often not directly. “Hardly anyone has come to me for therapy for bullying, though I’d say half the people I work with have been bullied, and that’s a topic we talk about,” he says. Weissman has had his own private practice, Counseling WNC, for two years, but he’s been counseling and working with adolescents in and out of the...

We live in a democracy, but many Americans do not vote. Turnout in presidential election years hovers around 60 percent, and it can be much lower otherwise. What’s going on? Perhaps many voters do not feel informed enough to make decisions. At first glance, it would seem that a little information is all that’s needed, like simply reading up on candidate positions or quickly researching the best way to get to a polling place. But could there be an emotional obstacle to voting? [For more on...

A relatively small force of community social workers played a significant role in preventing 165,000 premature deaths across the U.S. in 2015. Our recently concluded research indicates that they did this by guiding at-risk men and women to preventive treatments and early detection of common killers, such as colon cancer and diabetes. Let's set aside, for a moment, the moral victory represented by each life saved and look at what this means from the standpoint of exploding medical costs and...

There might have been a secret reason Albert Einstein could make a decision as scary as the one he made in 1939, when he went against his personal pacifist convictions and encouraged President Franklin Roosevelt to pursue the research necessary to make an atomic bomb. “I was well aware of the dreadful danger for all mankind, if these experiments would succeed,” Einstein later wrote. A strange life hack might have contributed to his coolheaded attitude toward the bomb: Einstein is said to...

When the mind senses a potentially harmful situation, it tells the body to prepare by increasing its heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure. This response helped earlier humans outrun or fight predators and enemies. Today’s stressful situations, more likely a challenging interaction at work or a misbehaving child, result in the same physical reactions even though we are less likely to experience physical danger. The problem is, when this stress response is repeated frequently over time,...

There are few more controversial or politically charged topics than parenting. Advice columns and radio/television shows abound providing tips on the best way to raise children. Parenting, especially in this day and age of social media, when every move is constantly scrutinized, has become a touchy subject. In the arena of juvenile justice, however, parenting has long been considered an important focus of intervention. The relationship between parenting styles and behavior is one of the most...

In this last episode of season two, Carey talks with Dr. Aparna Kota , a pediatrician with Kaiser Permanente . Dr. Kota works in San Francisco, where she is a local leader for child abuse prevention and advocacy. She is also on the board of Safe and Sound (Formerly the SF Child Abuse Prevention Center) and she is an associate clinical faculty at UCSF where she teaches medical students and pediatric residents. She and Carey talk about leadership and struggling to use data about Adverse...

Community leaders and members of the Arizona ACE Consortium, along with City of Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton and First Lady Nicole Stanton, came together on October 3rd to hear leading voices in the ACEs movement - Vincent Felitti, MD and Nadine Burke Harris, MD - discuss the impact of ACEs and toxic stress, and explore what's needed to promote resilience in individuals and communities. Local experts addressing the opioid epidemic also highlighted the connection between ACEs and addiction.

What we’re seeing is an avalanche of truth telling from eyewitnesses to the crimes of sexual harassment, sexual abuse and sexual assault. There’s an iceberg moving through our world – it’s eyes glaring out at all of us – wondering if it will be NOW that we, as a people, as a planet full of people – will begin to notice her. Not just notice her but finally do something about her. Some say this is a tipping point. I say, it’s happened before; O’Reilly, Ailes, Cosby, Clinton, Trump, Sandusky...

He was incarcerated, caged, stripped of his family, friends, and dignity. Now, just four days before his 28th birthday, he’s dead. When Selmin Feratovic was pronounced dead early Thursday morning at the Otis Bantum Correctional Center on Rikers Island, he had been incarcerated for nearly seven months but had not been convicted of a single crime. I was Selmin’s public defender. When I met him, the first thing I noticed was his shy smile. He seemed like a kid with his messy hair, soft voice,...

For families in the U.S., the costs of high-quality child care are exorbitant, especially for those with children under age five. A new policy proposal, "Public Investments in Child Care," by Dartmouth Associate Professor of Economics Elizabeth Cascio, finds that current federal child care tax policies are not benefiting the families most burdened by child care costs. Therefore, Cascio outlines a new policy that could replace the current federal child care tax policies. The research examines...