March 2017

Climate change is taking an obvious physical toll on earth: from depleted farmland to the rise of toxic pollution to the degradation of long-stable ecosystems to the disappearance of biodiversity and endangered species. But looking beyond the physical, experts are also trying to sound the alarm about the quieter, more insidious effects of climate change : namely, that global warming is threatening the emotional health of humans worldwide. “We see a sense of despair that sets in as inevitably...

On January 2, 1979, Dr. Rafael Osheroff was admitted to Chestnut Lodge, an inpatient psychiatric hospital in Maryland. Osheroff had a bustling nephrology practice. He was married with three children, two from a previous marriage. Everything had been going well except his mood. For the previous two years, Osheroff had suffered from bouts of anxiety and depression. Dr. Nathan Kline, a prominent psychopharmacologist in New York City, had begun Osheroff on a tricyclic antidepressant and,...

Chicago is in dire need of solutions for its violent crime. A cognitive behavioral therapy program has been able to help keep teenage boys from acting out on their impulses. AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: Seven hundred sixty-six. That's how many people were murdered in Chicago last year. The city's on pace to match that number this year. Plenty of community organizations are looking for ways to stop the violence. NPR's social science correspondent, Shankar Vedantam, has the story of one program that's...

Many thanks to Sonoma County for sharing the following announcement! The National Center for Fatality Review and Prevention announces an upcoming Webinar on: Applying the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Framework to Fatality Review and Prevention WHEN: March 8, 2017, 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. ET Webinar will be recorded and posted with the slides on the NCFRP website: www.ncfrp.org Opening Remarks : Bethany Miller,* M.Ed., MSW, Health Resources and Services Administration Director of Injury...

Rise magazine is written by parents who have faced the child welfare system in their own lives. Many people don’t know that the majority of children who enter foster care return home to their parents–and that most children in care wish for a lifelong relationship with their parents, whether they live with them or not. Helping parents is fundamental to helping children in foster care. Three parents have joined together to write this excellent article on why bringing the science of toxic...

I recently read Markowitz and Rosner’s Children, Race, and Power . This book is a recount of Dr.’s Kenneth and Mamie Clark Northside Center in Harlem in the late 1940’s. Their journey while valiant was met with much heartbreak. Fast forward 70 years and it doesn’t appear that much has changed. Dollars continue to be wasted, and the contentment with the status quo and lack of outcomes seems a close resemblance to today. We can say we have the best intentions and well-meaning hearts, but...

This post originally appeared at The Nation . At dusk, Thomas Goodwin, a worn but upbeat man in his mid-50s, drives his car into a parking lot in central Santa Barbara. There, he settles his young daughter to sleep in the back of a second vehicle — a van lined with her clothes — while he dozes in its front seat. The family has been sleeping and living out of the van for almost a year. The Goodwins are not alone. In Santa Barbara, over 500 people sleep every night in their vehicles, unable to...

Amidst the noise of the national political landscape, it is important to remind ourselves that February is Black History Month. While this month serves to celebrate the accomplishments of black people in America, it is also a reminder of how inequality has, and continues to, plague many black communities. Health inequity constitutes one of the many systemic forces that perpetuate the marginalization of the same community we celebrate for its undeniable contributions to American society. In...

Earlier today, the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has been tracking the popularity of the Affordable Care Act since 2010, announced that 48 percent of those surveyed now view the law favorably, compared with 42 percent who view it unfavorably. That 48 percent is, as a KFF press release points out, “the highest level of favorability measured in more than 60 Kaiser Health Tracking Polls conducted since 2010.” KFF attributes the shift to an increase in the number of independent voters who...

Citation: Murray, D. W., & Rosanbalm, K. (2017). Promoting self-regulation in adolescents and young adults: A practice brief (OPRE Report 2015-82). Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This brief reviews the importance of self-regulation for adolescents and young adults and provides guidelines for supporting self-regulation development for 14 to 25-year-olds. It is written by...

Health outcomes in the United States are not created equal, statistics have long shown. African-Americans, in particular, face disparate health risks. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which tracks disease and mortality rates through its National Vital Statistics System, the age-adjusted death rate in 2014 for the black population was 849.3 deaths per 100,000 population, which was 1.2 times that of whites, with 725.4 per 100,000. Hypertension, renal disease,...

I witnessed, by chance, the swearing in of the first set of senior staff for the Trump administration. I sat in awe as I witnessed something I hadn’t seen in a long time, having spent the last several years working for the Obama administration: a sea of white faces being sworn in — white, male faces, to be exact. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but there I was — surprised. Surprised that America was not reflected in the first round of political appointees to assume the White House under...