January 2018

I became disabled overnight in a car accident. The car accident was a dream, but the disability was real. I dreamed I was driving through the ravaged streets of Oakland, Calif., at the end of the world. I turned the corner and careened inescapably into a white chemical blaze. I woke with a start, the white flash still burning behind my eyes, the worst headache of my life piercing my left temporal lobe. I remembered my mother having a brain aneurysm years before and knew the “worst headache...

International Day of World Peace was celebrated recently so now might be a good time to reflect on how our own gratitude can make a difference. Gratitude brings light to the soul because it shines a light on our sense of interconnectedness with one another. It immediately awakens us to what we receive from each other. This extends beyond our immediate connections with people we know personally to include a wide array of people who contribute to our world. Such a sense of interconnectedness...

Vox.com drug policy reporter German Lopez details the scope of the opioid epidemic, and Bobby Allyn, a reporter at WHYY in Philadelphia, discusses the idea of safe injection sites. [To listen to this story, go to https://www.wnyc.org/story/could-prescription-heroin-and-safe-injection-sites-slow-the-opioid-crisis ] To listen to another story on this topic, see Addiction Nation: Understanding America's Opioid Crisis from WNYC's The Takeaway. Photo: Courtesy of Harm Reduction Services in...

A new study out this week finds that a child born in the United States has a 70 percent greater chance of dying before adulthood as compared to 19 other wealthy, democratic countries. Ashish Thakrar is the lead author on that study. He’s an internal medicine resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital, and he discusses who the most vulnerable groups are and why, and what needs to happen to fix the trend. [To listen to this story, go to https://www.wnyc.org/story/the-takeaway-2018-01-10 ]

It’s possible to reduce child maltreatment in the UK by at least 70% by 2030. We have developed a strategy to make this a reality, we call it 70/30. "I do not view 70/30 as either wishful thinking or an unachievable goal. On the contrary, reducing child maltreatment by 70% in the next fifteen years is the minimum acceptable outcome in responding to this unacceptable (and profoundly costly) harm to our youngest children. Our actions as a society must prove that we really do find all child...

I’ve just caught up with an excellent 2014 story from ProPublica on how child welfare systems deal with parents who have mental illnesses. The story looked at two cases in which parents really did have some sort of mental illness (putting them in the same company as an estimated 43.8 million Americans in any given year). That sets the point of the story apart from another major problem in child welfare — quick-and-dirty “psych evals” that mislabel parents mentally ill largely because they...

Arkansas Nonprofit News Network (This is one of four parts.) In 2008, Wendy Jones’ teenage son, Corby, began getting into trouble with the law: skipping school, doing drugs, stealing. His behavior soon landed him in Benton County, Arkansas, juvenile court, followed by a stay in the local juvenile detention center, or JDC, a 36-bed, jail-like facility in Bentonville, not far from the home offices of Walmart. Corby was just the sort of youth who might be expected to stop dabbling in illegal...

Doctors at some of the country's largest hospital chains admit they went overboard with opioids to make people as pain-free as possible. Now the doctors shoulder part of the blame for the country's opioid crisis. In an effort to be part of the cure, they've begun to issue an uncomfortable warning to patients: You're going to feel some pain. Even for those who've never struggled with drug use, studies are finding that patients are at risk of addiction anytime they go under the knife . [For...

Sarah Ann Masse is one half of the incredibly talented “We Are Thomasse" duo. She is also one of the women who came forward about Harvey Weinstein. Sarah and her husband, Nick Afka Thomas, created a holiday video about consent that has been causing an Internet stir. "I've been using my comedy as a way to address issues that I am passionate about for the past few years, but trying to tackle sexual assault, rape culture, and victim-blaming head on felt more difficult and much more personal."...

“In October of 2017, Commissioner Arkoosh stated that the county had five fewer overdose deaths in the first half of 2017, compared to the same period of 2016, bucking the trend seen in across southeastern Pennsylvania.” Jim Melwert, KYW Newsradio 1060, 10/17/17

WASHINGTON — In its second hearing on the country’s raging drug crisis since President Trump directed the Department of Health and Human Services to declare the matter a public health emergency in October, the Senate health committee called a hearing with a single witness: a journalist. Such hearings conventionally spotlight high-profile government officials and career advocates with deep expertise in a subject. Every hearing this committee and a similarly health-focused House panel held to...

Now there is good news for those who fear it might be too late in life to improve their fitness. People into late middle age can reverse or reduce the risk of heart failure caused by decades of sedentary living by exercising, a study has found. But there is a catch - it takes two years of aerobic exercise, four to five days a week, researchers said. [For more on this story by Alex Therrien, go to http://www.bbc.com/news/health-42565137 ]