June 2017

Proponents of safe injection facilities have long cited their success at preventing overdoses and reducing needle-sharing. New research provides another argument for those supporters to draw upon: they're good for everyone's bank accounts. Supervised injection facilities are centers where people can come to inject heroin, cocaine, and other drugs under the watchful eye of trained staff. The only such facilities that are in legal operation in North America are in Canada, but several United...

Two summers ago, my son Justice, then 12 years old, took the stage at American University in Washington, D.C. to accept his diploma. No, he’s not a teen prodigy a la Mitch Taylor in Real Genius. He was at the university for a week-long summer program where kids could learn coding, robotics, and other tech skills. I enrolled him in a 3D game-design camp for Minecraft , a kind of digital Legos game that allows players to create buildings and cities. It’s one of his favorite games, and I...

When he launched his War on Poverty in 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson visited Tom Fletcher, an unemployed white Appalachian coal miner who lived in Kentucky. The White House had chosen Fletcher , who had eight children, to become the face of American poverty, and an iconic Timemagazine photo captured the president squatting next to Fletcher and three of his boys on the porch. [For more of this story, written by Alana Semuels, go to ...

People who have any kind of medical condition are at the heart of the debate over repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. About a quarter of adults under 65 have these so-called preexisting conditions, and they are most vulnerable to any change in the current law, which prohibits charging sick people more for insurance. The replacement bill that passed the House of Representatives, the American Health Care Act, would allow states to do just that for people with a gap of 63 days in...

Investigators at the University of Southern California (USC) believe a new care model can enhance the physical health and extend the lives of people with mental illness, who typically die 25 years earlier than the general population. [For more of this story, written by Rick Nauert, go to https://psychcentral.com/news/2017/06/05/mental-health-peer-navigators-help-others-in-need/121523.html]

In the 1990s, when John Malcolm was a federal prosecutor in Atlanta, the nation’s prisons were being filled up with small-time drug dealers. The war on drugs was at its height, and the number of Americans in prison was rising dramatically. Now a legal scholar at the Heritage Foundation, the influential conservative think tank, Malcolm has watched with approval, in recent years, as lawmakers and law enforcement officials have begun to support criminal justice policies aimed less at punishing...

In the introduction to his beautiful book The Body Keeps The Score , psychiatrist Bessel Van der Kolk writes: “One does not need to be a combat soldier, or visit a refugee camp in Syria or the Congo to encounter trauma. Trauma happens to us, our friends, our families and our neighbours.” Trauma is the result of overwhelming situations that exceed our ability to cope or process the emotions they generate. Memories are typically stored in what is known as declarative memory , which you might...

Gloria Sandoval, former Executive Director of STAND! For Families Free of Violence discusses hope for those experiencing abuse and the power of community partnerships.

The Third Annual Capital District Symposium on Adverse Childhood Experiences, Trauma, and Response (2016). Photo credit: LaSalle School _______________________________ More and more people in the Albany region now know that HEARTS means something more than the muscle pulsing inside their chests. At a meeting last year of regional health care providers, “I was told that the HEARTS Initiative came up, and people had heard of it,” says Heather Larkin, Associate Professor at the University of...

CII is pleased to announce that as a follow-up to our 2016 Fatherhood Summit, our 10th Annual Fatherhood Solution Conference will be themed: Fatherhood Roadblocks: Race, Culture, Masculinity and Systems

I am adopted. I am grateful everyday my parents adopted me without knowing anything about me. Today I received a "booklet" which features stories and photographs of children waiting to be adopted. Some of the things written are " Imagine your Thanksgiving meal- the love of a family, the joyful sharing of stories, the clinking of dishes as a mountain of mashed potatoes and turkey are piled high on plates. Did it make you smile? Then (insert child's name) is a perfect fit for y our home. She...

When a long-awaited study on whether the San Diego Police Department engages in racial profiling finally dropped in late November, the results were unsurprising: It found that black and Hispanic drivers were more likely to be searched, though they were less likely to actually have contraband items, and that minority drivers were more likely to be subjected to field interviews. [For more of this story, written by Kelly Davis, go to ...