By Julie Bosman, Photo: Nina Robinson/The New York Times, The New York Times, June 29, 2022 Countless women wept. Some spent the weekend burning white-hot with rage, commiserating with friends and mothers and sisters. Many were fearful, recognizing the feeling of a freedom being taken away and thinking to themselves: This could only get worse. Millions of American women spent the past five days absorbing the news that the Supreme Court had overturned Roe v. Wade , erasing the constitutional...

By Darius Tahir, Illustration: exdez/Getty Images, California Healthline, June 23, 2022 In 2011, Sean Duffy and Adrian James were sitting in San Francisco’s Dolores Park debating what to call some workers at the company they founded, Omada Health. Omada , which launched that year, provides virtual treatment for chronic conditions. The company addresses the conditions through a team of employees — some traditional clinicians and others meant to give encouragement to patients as they manage...

By Ingrid M. Duva, Jordan R. Murphy, and Linda Grabbe, Photo: Unsplash, American Journal of Public Health, June 9, 2022 Abstract The wrath of COVID-19 includes a co-occurring global mental health pandemic, raising the urgency for our health care sector to implement strategies supporting public mental health. In Georgia, a successful nurse-led response to this crisis capitalized on statewide organizations’ existing efforts to bolster well-being and reduce trauma. Partnerships were formed and...

By Usha Lee McFarling, Photo: Michael Starghill/STAT, STAT, June 20, 2022 R osandra Daywalker had always excelled. The daughter of Haitian and Jamaican parents in Miami — one an auto parts clerk, the other a nurse — she’d received a nearly perfect score on the SAT, earned a full academic scholarship to the University of Miami, graduated summa cum laude from Morehouse Medical School, and was inducted into the prestigious Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society. Then came the icing on the...

By Rae Ellen Bichell and Cara Anthony, Photo: Joe Martinez/KHN, Kaiser Health News, June 13, 2022 Several months ago, a lab technologist at Barnes-Jewish Hospital mixed the blood components of two people: Alphonso Harried, who needed a kidney, and Pat Holterman-Hommes, who hoped to give him one. The goal was to see whether Harried’s body would instantly see Holterman-Hommes’ organ as a major threat and attack it before surgeons could finish a transplant. To do that, the technologist mixed in...

By Raquel Torres, Photo: Nick Wagner/San Antonio Report, San Antonio Report, June 12, 2022 Celeste Ibarra, mother of 9-year-old Aubriella Melchor, has witnessed her daughter deteriorating since the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School. Aubriella hid in a bathroom stall as the gunman walked past and began shooting. Now, Ibarra said her daughter hardly eats or sleeps, and when she does sleep, she has nightmares of the gunman coming after her. She said she still hears the echoes of the...

By New Jersey Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics, EIN Presswire, June 7, 2022 Safe & Sound’s Center for Youth Wellness (CYW), the New Jersey Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics (NJAAP), today announced that it is seeking the next cohort of pediatric practices for participation in its Trauma-Informed ACEs Screening & Intervention Evaluation Project ECHO (TASIE Project). Safe & Sound was awarded a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and is...

By Frances Stead Sellers, Illustration: Oaklee Thiele/The Washington Post, The Washington Post, June 6, 2022 Mallory Stanislawczyk was hesitant to make the call. She hadn’t spoken to her friend in years. But the friend, who gets around in a wheelchair, was the only person the 34-year-old nurse practitioner could think of who would understand her questions. About being ready to accept help. About using a wheelchair. And about the new identity her battle with long covid had thrust on her. “I...

By Gabriel Winant and Theresa Brown, Illustration: Jimmy Simpson, The New York Times, May 9, 2022 America was in a health care crisis before Covid, and the stresses of the pandemic have made it worse. Since the pandemic began, the health care work force — the country’s largest industry by employment — has shrunk by nearly 2 percent . That may seem like a small amount, but historically, the health care work force doesn’t shrink; it only grows . Now, with astronomical turnover and rising...

By Andrew Joseph, Photo: Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images, STAT, April 12, 2022 A fter staying flat for a decade, the overdose death rate among U.S. adolescents nearly doubled from 2019 to 2020 — an alarming climb that continued into 2021, a study released Tuesday showed. The reasons do not include a surge of children in this group — ages 14 to 18 — using drugs, researchers said. If anything, survey data indicate that fewer teens experimented with drugs during the pandemic. Rather, a main factor...

By Usha Lee McFarling, Photo: Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, STAT, April 11, 2022 A year after the prestigious medical journal JAMA was embroiled in controversy over a podcast seen as racist by critics, the American Medical Association has appointed a prominent health-equity researcher as the publication’s new editor-in-chief — the first person of color to hold the position. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, a Black internist, epidemiologist, and health-equity researcher from the University of California,...

By Emma Goldberg, Photo: Gili Benita/The New York Times, The New York Times, April 16, 2022 Sandra Rosales’s voice takes on an affectionate lilt when she recalls the notes she received from the two girls she used to care for in Brooklyn. “If I had to describe you in one word it would be loving,” one of her nanny charges, now 9, wrote to Ms. Rosales last year. “Thanks for encouraging me to be brave.” Ms. Rosales spent six years with them, working 10 hours a day and five days a week. They were...

By Edwin Rios, Photo: Bryan Dozier/Rex/Shutterstock, The Guardian, April 19, 2022 W hen Alma Adams’s daughter complained of abdominal pain during a difficult pregnancy, her doctor overlooked her cries for help. The North Carolina congresswoman’s daughter had to undergo a last-minute caesarean section. She and her baby daughter, now 16, survived. “It could have gone another way. I could have been a mother who was grieving her daughter and granddaughter,” Adams told the Guardian, following a...

By Noah Weiland, Photo: Elaine Cromie/The New York Times, The New York Times, April 9, 2022 In an underserved neighborhood of Michigan’s capital city, a health clinic is being built with nearly $900,000 in federal pandemic relief funds, a project that could transform the community’s access to care. Wedged among new affordable apartments and a community center, the clinic is a symbol of the rapid effect the funds have had on many local public health programs. In Michigan and some other...

By Talya Meyers, Photo: Friends of Refugees, Direct Relief, April 6, 2022 T he women began arriving from Afghanistan in October of 2021, spending time sequestered on a military base before being resettled in Clarkston, Georgia. “It was scary for those who were there…and then they evacuated, and they were in camps for months,” said Muzhda Oriakhil, a community liaison and new community engagement manager at Friends of Refugees, a Clarkston-based NGO that offers support to refugees resettling...

By Andrea Michelson, Photo: Crystal Cox/Business Insider, April 7, 2022 Even as certain indicators of the pandemic, like hospital admissions and mask requirements, have declined or disappeared, the mental toll of the pandemic continues to pose a public health crisis. People from nearly every age group and profession — children , parents , college students , and frontline workers — have struggled with their mental health over the past two-plus years. Those with preexisting physical and/or...

By Qaasim Mian, Photo: Shutterstock, The Conversation, March 27, 2022 It has been over 30 years since hip-hop superstar Tupac Shakur first told the story of 12-year-old Brenda, a sexually abused and exploited preteen mother. I hear Brenda’s got a baby But, Brenda’s barely got a brain A damn shame, the girl can hardly spell her name (That’s not our problem, that’s up to Brenda’s family) Well let me show you how it affects our whole community Tupac Shakur, Brenda’s Got a Baby Based on real...

By Christian Allaire, Photo: Ash Adams, Vogue, March 8, 2022 When she was 14 years old, Quannah Chasinghorse decided she wanted a traditional Indigenous face tattoo. The Hän Gwich’in and Oglala Lakota model—who has since, at age 19, made an impression on the fashion world after starring in Gucci campaigns and landing a Vogue Mexico cover —had grown up in Fairbanks, Alaska, seeing images of her ancestors wearing the three distinct chin lines called Yidįįłtoo. She asked her mother, Jody...

By Shenelle Wilson, Photo: Adobe, STAT, March 10, 2022 S ome say the lack of Black physicians is a pipeline problem, with too few Black people going to medical school. I say it’s a gaslighting problem. The health of Black Americans lags behind that of white Americans, driven in part by the underrepresentation of Black physicians in the medical field. Numerous studies have found that patients of color experience better health care outcomes and higher satisfaction when cared for by racially...

By Libby Watson, Photo: Rick Bowmer/AP Photo, The Daily Poster, March 10, 2022 Since the start of the pandemic, Medicaid, the federal and state program to provide health insurance to low income Americans, has been far more generous than in the past. Enrollment is higher than ever, at 77.8 million . This isn’t because of some nationwide change of heart in state governments; it’s because states were paid to stop cutting people from their Medicaid rolls. Under the Families First Coronavirus...

By Adam Laskaris, Windspeaker.com, March 9, 2022 Over the past several years, calls have come from across Canada for the inclusion of Indigenous worldviews and knowledge in all levels of education in the country. Enter the teachers’ guide Resurgence : Engaging With Indigenous Narratives and Cultural Expressions In and Beyond the Classroom. Featuring works from such authors as David A. Robertson, Sara Florence Davidson, Lisa Boivin, Louise B. Halfe and Nicola I. Campbell, Resurgence will be...

By Helen Branswell, Image: NIAID, STAT, March 7, 2022 A new report released Monday charts a path for the transition out of the Covid-19 pandemic, one that outlines both how the country can deal with the challenge of endemic Covid disease and how to prepare for future biosecurity threats. The report plots a course to what its authors call the “next normal” — living with the SARS-CoV-2 virus as a continuing threat that needs to be managed. Doing so will require improvements on a number of...

From Department of Labor, Department of Health and Human Services, and Department of the Treasury, February 2022 PREFACE The Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (MHPAEA) requires the Secretary of Labor to submit a report to the appropriate committees of Congress on compliance by group health plans (and health insurance coverage offered in connection with such plans) with MHPAEA’s requirements. The first such report was due by January 2012,...

By Adrianna Evans and Beth Giambrone, Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), February 24, 2022 Public and private institutions, school districts, and business leaders are advancing racial equity and supporting policies to address racism. Public health organizations including CDC , ASTHO ,  NACCHO , and  APHA  have taken steps to eliminate the effects of racism. Likewise, many cities and counties have declared racism an urgent public health crisis comparable to other...

By Pauly Denetclaw, Photo: Charitie Ropati, Native News Online, February 21, 2022 Indigenous students of Columbia University finally have their own brownstone–nearly a decade in the making. Columbia provides brownstones as options to some students and student groups. They are highly sought after–if and when they become available. Once available, student groups can apply to be selected as the group who move in. Beginning in 2013, Julian Brave NoiseCat , Canim Lake Band Tsq'escen, led...

By Gillian Flaccus, Photo: Nathan Howard/Associated Press, The Press Democrat, February 21, 2022 The young mother had behaved erratically for months, hitchhiking and wandering naked through two Native American reservations and a small town clustered along Northern California’s rugged Lost Coast. But things escalated when Emmilee Risling was charged with arson for igniting a fire in a cemetery. Her family hoped the case would force her into mental health and addiction services. Instead, she...

By Atiya Jordan, Photo: Brandon Harris, Black Enterprise, February 16, 2022 A North Carolina college student turned an independent advocacy study into a life-changing battle for his childhood friend to be released from prison 12 years early. Maryland natives Brandon Harris and Sura Sohna grew up together in Annapolis, attending the same elementary and middle schools. By 12, Sohna’s troubles with the law began after he was arrested for stealing a bike. By 2018, he was facing 15 years in...

By Judith Van Dongen, Photo: shironosov/iStock, Washington State University, February 14, 2022 Improving social support and connectedness could not only lower depression symptoms but also help reduce cardiovascular disease and death in older American Indians, according to a new analysis. Led by scientists at Washington State University, the study used longitudinal data to explore the link between various psychological factors—such as stress, anger, cynicism, depression symptoms, quality of...

The Hanna Institute Summit is an immersive, multi-day, fully virtual conference focused on learning and sharing new and proven approaches to trauma-informed care. In 2022, the Summit will focus on community violence and will offer a profound opportunity for deep learning, evolution and healing within our collective communities. We invite you to hear from leaders and activists in the field, and lean in to meaningful - at times, uncomfortable - learning to unearth legacies and practices that...

By Dan Fastenberg, Photo: Dan Fastenberg/Reuters, February 10, 2022 As far as Eddie Gibbs knows, he is the first person elected to the New York State Legislature who previously served time in prison, but shortly before his inauguration on Thursday he recalled wondering if he could ever shake the stigma of his manslaughter conviction more than 30 years ago. Gibbs, 53, won handily as the Democratic candidate in the Jan. 18 special election in the state Assembly's 68th District to represent...

By Jesse C. Baumgartner and Laurie Zephyrin, Photo: John Moore/Getty Images, The Commonwealth Fund, February 2, 2022 The Affordable Care Act (ACA) led to historic insurance coverage gains and reduced racial and ethnic disparities, but our recent scorecard report on racial health equity shows that large gaps remain in nearly every state. Black and Latino/Hispanic people, along with American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) people, are much less likely than white people to have health insurance.

By Sharon Pruitt-Young, Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images, National Public Radio, February 9, 2022 A walk in the park may be just what the doctor ordered. A new program launched last month in Canada gives some doctors the option of providing patients with a free annual pass to the country's national parks as part of an effort to increase access to nature and the health benefits to be found outside. PaRx , a health initiative launched by the BC Parks Foundation in 2019, partnered with...

By Molly Scott, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, Brookings, January 25, 2002 he Build Back Better bill has stalled. On one point, we agree with Senator Joe Manchin that it is time for Congress to start with a “clean sheet of paper” by evaluating how each policy in the legislation betters American society. In this context, the portions in the bill targeting children and families are an imperative. They offer a particularly strong return on investment and just released data...

From Equal Justice Initiative, February 4, 2022 The New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled that imposing a mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years on a child is unconstitutional. People sentenced when they were children are now entitled to have their sentences reviewed after 20 years. The court’s decision, issued in January, combined two cases in which children were sentenced under a New Jersey statute that required them to serve a minimum of 30 years without any chance for parole. James Comer...

By Shayne Rodriguez Thompson, Photo: wikimedia/WhiteHouse.gov, HipLATINA, January 28, 2022 The ever-inspiring Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor , just released her fourth children’s book earlier this week, J ust Help! How to Build a Better World , inspired by her beloved mom. Sonia credits her with instilling an attitude of positivity and optimism in her. Celina Báez Sotomayor died in July 2021 of cancer at 93 years old and following the loss Sonia was inspired to write this book to...

By Sylvia Cheuy, Mark Cabaj, and Liz Weaver, Illustration: Hugo Herrera, Stanford Social Innovation Review, January 4, 2022 The collective impact framework has gained interest worldwide for mobilizing high-impact and lasting change on a broad array of complex social issues. As highlighted in this series , for the past decade, countless examples have validated the collective impact framework and deepened understandings of it as a field of practice. Looking ahead to the next decade, what’s...

By Laura Bliss, Photo: Amanda Lucier/Bloomberg, Bloomberg CityLab, January 22, 2022 Every other Wednesday, 15-year-old Adah Crandall catches the bus from her high school in Northeast Portland to spend the early evening with a group of friends outside the Oregon Department of Transportation’s downtown headquarters. It’s an after-school activity that Crandall, whose wavy blonde hair runs close to her elbows, wishes the world didn’t require. Since April 2021, she and her crew have been...

By Pedro Toledo, Photo: US Atlas, The Press Democrat, January 9, 2022 Every 10 years, the California Citizens Redistricting Commission creates new district maps for the state Senate, Assembly, Board of Equalization and U.S. House of Representatives to ensure that each district has roughly the same number of people. Given the population shifts over the past 10 years, most districts had to significantly change to ensure equal representation and fair maps across the state. When I applied to...

By Iridian Casarez, Photo: Redwood Pediatrics, North Coast Journal, December 16, 2021 W ithin the past year Mike Mangahas, a pediatrician at Open Door Community Health Clinic in Eureka, has seldom prescribed medications to patients with serious behavioral issues. Instead, he's using information from a survey about patients' childhood traumas — known as adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs — to inform a more holistic model of care. "I have been prescribing a lot less psychotropic...

By David Chin, Neuroclastic, December 12, 2021 I’ve been a teacher throughout most of my adult life. I’m dual certified with 17 years of experience as an elementary teacher and 15 years (and counting) as a high school Culinary Arts chef instructor. I have an Associate’s degree in Culinary Arts, a Bachelor’s in Elementary Education, and a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction. I turned 61 last October. Although my parents knew that I was different as a child, I grew up in a very conservative...

By Judith Graham, Photo: Jeanette Leardi, NextAvenue, December 8, 2021 The doctor is talking to the daughter who has accompanied you to a medical appointment, not you. A nurse speaks slowly in an unnaturally high-pitched voice, as if you were a child needing instruction. What can you do about manifestations of ageism like these – the devaluing, diminishment or dismissal of older adults based on prejudice against old age? Mostly, pe ople don't know how to respond. Some stiffen but say...

By Iridian Casarez, Photo: Kaite Rodriguez/Cooperation Humboldt, North Coast Journal, December 2, 2021 M ost of the seven stress-busting strategies the California Surgeon General's Office have identified to help reduce toxic stress feel so simple, like being out in nature, eating a balanced, nutritious diet or getting sufficient, high-quality sleep, but they work. So when Mary Ann Hansen was looking through applications for the 2021-2022 First Five Humboldt and Humboldt County Department of...

By Joy Borkholder, Photo: Dan DeLong/Investigate West, November 17, 2021 It’s hard to get an economy moving again when almost half of your potential workers can’t leave the house. That’s basically what it means when unemployed and underemployed people can’t take jobs because they care for their kids at home — either because there is no child care available or because the child care costs nearly as much as or more than what the job would bring in. In Washington state, about half of unemployed...

By Travis Lupick, Illustration: Frances Murphy, Yes! Magazine, November 15, 2021 “I’ve always been a rebel,” Gabor Maté says in The Wisdom of Trauma , a new documentary about the acclaimed physician’s groundbreaking work in mental health. “In communist Hungary, in grade six, my teacher wrote in my report card that, ‘You should watch it, because he incites the other students.’” Nearly 70 years later, although far from the playground, Maté is still doing exactly what his teacher warned of. He...

By Naomi Ishisaka, Photo: Alan Berner, The Seattle Times, November 15, 2021 Over the past few months, conventional wisdom has emerged asserting that the U.S. is experiencing a labor shortage. A headline in Fortune on Friday read , “Where are all the workers, and when are they coming back?” Countless articles have lamented the “great resignation” facing the U.S. workforce and theorized over the causes. Some attribute it to expanded pandemic unemployment benefits, but research does not bear...

By Donna M. Owens, Essence, November 2, 2021 Countless Southern Black women have helped build America and lead, working to uplift in civil rights, politics, education, social justice and other arenas. Now some Southern Black women leaders are using philanthropy as part of the fight for transformational change to benefit the South and the nation, overall. The Women’s Foundation of the South is one of the newcomers. The nonprofit based in New Orleans, envisions a flourishing South where women...

By Elizabeth Estrada, Photo: Ryan Collerd/WHYY, October 15, 2021 Iresha Picot is many things: A licensed behavioral therapist. An organizer. A writer. A Black woman originally from Virginia. But in Philadelphia, where she’s lived the last decade and a half, she’s known best for being an Instagram inspiration. “On social media I call myself, Iresha da hood therapist, and I talk a lot about mental health and my own mental health and wellness,” Picot said as she sat in her West Philadelphia...

By Jackie Mader, The Hechinger Report, November 3, 2021 A t Aliya Johnson Roberts’ two child care centers in Philadelphia, many employees aren’t done working when they clock out at the end of a long day nurturing and teaching young kids. Instead of heading home, they leave for second jobs, often as home health aides. The grueling schedule is necessary: Without the extra work, they can’t make enough money to cover their basic needs, Johnson Roberts said. She wants to pay her teachers more,...