May 2016

A group of scholars at Harvard University is spearheading a campaign to make sure the early-childhood programs policymakers put in place to disrupt intergenerational poverty are backed by the latest science. The idea sounds entirely reasonable, but it’s all too rare in practice, says Jack P. Shonkoff, the director of the university’s Center on the Developing Child and the chair of the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child . That’s because program grants and policies are...

It was the ideal proof-of-concept and a PR coup: a New York Timesarticle that described how the Seattle Police Department used Nextdoor , a community-based social-networking site—a mini-Facebook just for your neighborhood—to find the owner of a stolen camera that officers had recovered. One officer posted a photo of the camera on Nextdoor, and a local user realized it was the same one in a Craigslist lost-and-found post he’d recently clicked on. Soon, the camera and its owner, a photographer...

Around the country people are asking: Is there a better way? These stories explore powerful solutions, and show what prison could be — a place of transformation from the inside out. [Explore the interactive website at http://www.beyondprison.us/introduction/]

In part two of Bill's interview with the Princeton professor, he explains why he believes the Democratic Party should be "challenged to its core" by black voters this November. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ My guest is Eddie Glaude Jr., author of Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul . In the first part of our conversation , Professor Glaude and I discussed the crisis that continues to engulf black America. Eddie...

In It Didn't Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle, Mark Wolynn, director of the Family Constellation Institute and creator of the Core Language Approach, shows how the traumas of our parents, grandparents, and great grandparents can live in our anxious words, fears, behaviors and unexplained physical symptoms—what scientists are now calling inherited family trauma, or “secondary PTSD.” Even if the person who suffered the original trauma has...

I learned about the CDC-Kaiser Permanente ACE Study and 10- questionnaire survey only two years ago, and it’s fair to say I’ve been obsessed with it ever since. I’m a mother, a trauma survivor, an activist and a writer. For years, I’ve written personal essays , profile pieces and a few research-style papers about post-traumatic stress disorder, developmental trauma and interpersonal violence. Yet, something was missing. In my own recovery, I’d often say, in therapy and to friends and lovers,...

In the past 12 years, the U.S. has spent more than $1.4 billion funding abstinence programs in Africa. They're part of a larger program — called the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — aimed at stopping the spread of HIV around the world. Many health officials consider PEPFAR a succes. It is credited with giving lifesaving HIV drugs to more than 5 million people and preventing nearly 1 million babies from getting HIV from their mothers. But a study, published Monday in Health...

Let's say a pregnant woman develops high blood pressure. In ordinary circumstances, her medical team will monitor her condition. If there's a threat to the fetus, the doctor might want to bring on labor early. In the end, mother and baby are usually fine. But what if she's living in a war zone? First of all, she might not know she has the condition. Sometimes a pregnant woman with high blood pressure shows no symptoms. And amidst the chaos of combat, regular checkups may be hard to arrange.

Before she became a neuroscientist, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang was a seventh-grade science teacher at a school outside Boston. One year, during a period of significant racial and ethnic tension at the school, she struggled to engage her students in a unit on human evolution. After days of apathy and outright resistance to Ms. Immordino-Yang’s teaching, a student finally asked the question that altered her teaching — and her career path — forever: “Why are early hominids always shown with dark...

[Photo by Matthias Müller ] Children who lived with incarcerated parents were more likely to be bullies, according to data presented at the Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting. “Bullying has become a growing national concern. Adverse childhood experiences can weaken a child’s emotional health and overall well-being, so could be associated with bullying,” Monica L. Hajirawala , a student at the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine, Florida International University, and colleagues wrote. To...

Withelma “T” Ortiz Walker Pettigrew grew up in the foster care system in Los Angeles, where she lived in 14 different group homes, most of which featured various levels of abuse. Her experience showed her how children, in a system built to protect them, often face life-endangering risks that often go unnoticed by the public. Pettigrew and others have seen how cases of abuse in the foster care system can drive the children out of their group or foster homes in search of someone who can fill...

More than a year after a coach was convicted of sexually exploiting and assaulting high school girls on the school basketball team, the Islesboro community and school are slowly mending. There is talk of resilience and recovery, and how to avoid it ever happening again. And, there remains bitterness about the breach of trust on this small island, with its year-round population of 600. Some residents say what happened remains a taboo topic of conversation, and they seek more accountability...