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Which cities have the greenest streets? MIT’s Senseable City Lab is pushing toward an answer to this question with a new project called Treepedia . A map website that catalogues the density of the tree canopy in 10 global cities, Treepedia uses information from Google Street View to create what it calls the Green View Index—a rating that quantifies how green a street view looks according to the number of trees it contains. Rating a huge number of street corners for the relative greenery of...

Income inequality has grown dramatically in America since the early 1980s. This is associated with a myriad of bad things, from worse health and higher rates of violence to locking in disadvantage and limiting the ability to move up the economic ladder. But until recently, a county with higher inequality did not necessarily have a high concentration of poverty. A new study from the Population Reference Bureau by Beth Jarosz and Mark Mather tracks the dramatic growth in inequality and poverty...

When it comes to our health, drawing in more social support — particularly from close family and friends — may be a more effective strategy than increasing interaction or visits with physicians or other healthcare workers, according to a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. “Most health care interventions are designed for the individual patient, but there’s a growing body of research that shows how health care organizations can use social engagement strategy to enhance...

The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies recently published a report with stunning statistics on housing and aging. By 2035, one in three U.S. households, versus today’s one in five, will be headed by someone 65 or older. This will also mean an American population with one in five people over 65—almost 80 million people—up from one in seven today. That’s an increase of more than 30 million people over the next 20 years. Many of these Baby Boomers, the report notes, intend to “age in...

Researchers have found promising results for treating depression with a video game interface that targets underlying cognitive issues associated with depression rather than just managing the symptoms. "We found that moderately depressed people do better with apps like this because they address or treat correlates of depression," said Patricia Areán, a UW Medicine researcher in psychiatry and behavioral sciences. The first study enrolled older adults diagnosed with late-life depression into a...

When reporting on poverty, the media fall into familiar traps and pundits make prescriptions that disregard the facts. So, in the fifth and final installment of our series, " Busted: America's Poverty Myths ," we present a Breaking News Consumer's Handbook: Poverty in America Edition. It'll equip you with the tools to spot shoddy reporting and the knowledge to identify coverage with insight. With help from Jack Frech , former Athens County welfare director; Kathryn Edin , co-author of $2.00...

The Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges’ fourth annual Veterinary Health and Wellness Summit focused on a challenging question: How can mental health and well-being be improved within the veterinary profession? Dr. Michele Gaspar, a feline veterinarian and licensed professional counselor from Chicago, noted during an opening talk that veterinary medicine is physically, emotionally, and intellectually demanding. Practitioners must ably handle the medical needs of sick and...

The connection between childhood trauma and poor adult health will get some needed and welcome attention in 2017. If you haven’t heard about ACEs, which stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences, you may soon. Two efforts to battle ACEs, also called toxic stress, are underway: Starting Feb. 1, pediatricians and other health care providers performing routine child health screenings will need to ask about abuse, mental illness, violence or substance abuse in the home. The policy affects roughly...

Excerpt from article written by Kit Mead who created this review site. We need alternatives to psych wards — community-based care that emphasizes autonomy and addresses crises without locking people up. These include warmlines , which are like hotlines people can call when they’re not actively in crisis. (One such project, Project Warmline, has received state funding in Oregon .) They also include 24-hour drop-in centers, peer respite centers , and in-home support. But in the meantime, we...

One of the most stressful questions a new parent confronts is, "Who's going to take care of my baby when I go back to work?" Figuring out the answer to that question is often not easy. When NPR, along with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, surveyed more than 1,000 parents nationwide about their child care experiences, a third reported difficulty finding care. Searching far and wide, finding little Megan Carpenter, a new mother who lives in...

With a president-elect who has publicly supported the debunked claim that vaccines cause autism, suggested that climate change is a hoax dreamed up by the Chinese, and appointed to his Cabinet a retired neurosurgeon who doesn't buy the theory of evolution, things might look grim for science. Yet watching Patti Smith sing "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall" live streamed from the Nobel Prize ceremony in early December to a room full of physicists, chemists and physicians — watching her twice choke...

For more than a decade, juvenile justice reformers have used developments in adolescent brain science and psychology to make their case for a system that emphasizes rehabilitation and second chances for young offenders. Those same developments now are helping fuel an interest in how the criminal justice system treats young adults. This population has plenty in common with their younger counterparts because they, too, are still maturing, researchers and policymakers say. And, because young...