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Photo Credit: Walt Stoneburner, Flickr Creative Commons By Michelle Crouch, The Charlotte Ledger, July 5, 2023 -- With foster homes in short supply, more than 55 children over the past year have spent at least one night sleeping on an air mattress in a Mecklenburg government conference room; “It’s as bad as it’s ever been.” Dozens of children have been forced to sleep on the floor of Mecklenburg County offices over the past year because of a severe shortage of foster homes and crisis beds,...

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz holds up a just-signed gun reform bill on May 19, 2023, at the state Capitol in St. Paul. Aaron Lavinsky/Star Tribune via AP By Chip Brownlee, The Trace, July 5, 2023 About a year ago, as Minnesota was getting ready to receive an influx of federal dollars from the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, I called up state Representative Kelly Moller to get a sense of how the funding might change the conversation around gun laws in St. Paul. At the time, in September...

Sonoma State police chief Nader Oweis. Credit: Rosie Padilla/EdSource By Rosie Padilla, EdSource, July 6, 2023 Sonoma State University’s police department is looking to improve accountability by leveraging technology to solicit feedback from those who interact with police officers. A new application called Guardian Score aims to offer the campus community a convenient way to leave feedback about their interactions with law enforcement. The two came together this past year, and now the...

By Adewale A. Maye, Image: from article, Economic Policy Institute, June 29, 2023 After extensive deliberation, the Supreme Court has delivered a landmark ruling that effectively prohibits the use of race-based affirmative action in college admissions. Race-blind admissions processes will further exacerbate existing inequalities and undermine the recognition of the unique challenges that Black, Hispanic, and Native American students encounter throughout the admissions process. By...

Assemblyman Miguel Santiago, left, presents Assemblyman David Chi a sign after Chiu’s measure to let California cities create their own public banks was approved by the Assembly in 2019. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press) By Charlotte Kramon, Los Angeles Times, July 6, 2023 Los Angeles is taking another step toward opening a city-owned public bank that would support projects driven by public interest. The City Council voted last week to fund a feasibility study for the bank after...

By Greg Toppo, Image: Meghan Gallagher/The74, The74, July 6, 2023 On a tiny triangular lot in the city’s Belmont neighborhood, kids waiting with their parents for the No. 40 bus can also work on their executive functioning skills, playing a hopscotch variation designed to train their brains. In Chicago, a wooden game mounted on the wall of a laundromat teaches children, in two languages, how to find color patterns in a lineup of detergent bottle tops. And in Santa Ana, Calif., a basketball...

Many may ask what is Integrated Medical Weight Loss (IMWL)? The word integrated encompasses the entire self. IMWL combines integrated health teams to promote a holistic approach to weight loss (Integrated Medical Weight Loss, 2023). This approach creates a thorough assessment of the entire person through use of various surveys and assessment tools to determine the root of problematic weight loss concerns. This approach combines a behavioral and physical wellness study to determine the...

By Laura Gallant, 7/6/23, https://positiveexperience.org/blog/ The 2023 Annual HOPE Summit – Practicing HOPE took place on March 29-30. We are now opening the recordings of all the plenary sessions and workshop to the public, access all recordings through this link . Throughout the conference, there were 17 workshops, a Keynote address, and an interactive panel. This year’s summit focused on the many ways to practice the HOPE framework and to implement HOPE-informed changes. Access to these...

The Montana Summer Institute from A Peace of My MInd on Vimeo . The evidence of a dose-response relationship between Positive Childhood Experiences and a reduced risk of a growing number of identified negative health outcomes in adulthood, effectively serving as a buffer to ACEs, is one of the most exciting areas of research that I have witnessed in my career, and it is what led me to the Montana Summer Institute. From June 20 th to the 23 rd , among the soaring mountains and budding...

Jade Dass in her garden in Apache Junction, Ariz., in July 2022. Credit... Ash Ponders By Shoshana Walter, The New York Times, June 29, 2023 One morning in the summer of 2020, Jade Dass woke up and vomited. She assumed she was hung over; she’d been depressed lately and sometimes self-medicated with too much wine. But then a woman in her online counseling group suggested that she might be pregnant. Dass looked in the mirror and realized she was probably right. At 26, Dass had spent the...

From a psychological standpoint, loneliness is intrinsically linked with mental health. Credit: Neuroscience News By Neuroscience News Communications, Neuroscience News, July 2, 2023 Summary: The neuroscience and psychology of loneliness have provided fascinating insights into this pervasive issue, revealing its profound effects on our brain and mental health. Research has shown that loneliness is related to unique brain processing patterns and can contribute to various mental health issues,...

By Amy Glover, Photo: Artmarie/Getty Images, Huffington Post, May 7, 2023 Ever experience hearing someone talk about their sixth birthday or the Christmas they had when they were eight and think, wait – how can you remember that? Some of us have a better recollection of our formative years than others. This can be because some of us “lose” those early recollections to sort of free up space – “Having few childhood memories is common. As time passes, your brain has to free up space for new...