July 2018

Osmar Terra is a tall man with a deep voice and an easy laugh—one that disguises the scale of his ambition to transform Brazilian society. A federal representative for nearly two decades, he is the driving force behind the world’s biggest experiment to prove that teaching poor parents how to love and nurture their infants will dramatically influence what kind of adults they become, and give Brazil its best shot at changing its current trajectory of violence , inequality, and poverty. Terra,...

Issac J. Bailey was pulling together his memoir at a time when America was in the midst of racial upheaval. Over the past few years, alarming deaths of black people at the hands of the police spawned a boisterous national movement — Black Lives Matter — demanding systemic change. And one of the central tenets of this new era of activism requires that we respect all black lives, those of poor felons no less than those of rich entrepreneurs. It seems a fitting moment, then, for Bailey’s book,...

A resolution to encourage breast-feeding was expected to be approved quickly and easily by the hundreds of government delegates who gathered this spring in Geneva for the United Nations-affiliated World Health Assembly. Based on decades of research, the resolution says that mother’s milk is healthiest for children and countries should strive to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes. Then the United States delegation, embracing the interests of infant formula...

Cissy's note; Every time I get annoyed that more men are not leading conversations about sexual violence, sexism or are saying defensive or disparaging things about the #MeToo movement, I check myself. I ask myself how much I've been talking, sharing, learning, and challenging myself about racial bias and my own white advantage. It's never enough. Can I really expect people to be better than I am doing? Can I hope people will challenge their own assumptions, culture, experiences and...

A recording of the June 12th webinar "Measuring Trauma-Informed Care Using the ARTIC Scale" is now available at the Traumatic Stress Institute website. Registration for the June 12th webinar and the upcoming one in July both filled to capacity. We will likely offer it again in the Fall. But, it you want the information immediately, please view the recording. The Attitudes Related to Trauma-Informed Care (ARTIC) Scale is a widely-used psychometrically valid measure of professional attitudes...

People addicted to prescription opioids or heroin are far more likely to have run-ins with the law than those who don't use opioids, according to a study published Friday in JAMA Network Open. The study provides the first nationwide estimate for the number of people using opioids who end up in the American criminal justice system. The results suggest a need to engage law enforcement officials and corrections systems to tackle the opioid epidemic. The connection between the criminal justice...

AUSTIN, Texas — Kerstin Taylor fought alcohol and substance abuse problems for two decades. She periodically sought help through addiction and psychiatric treatments to stay sober, but she continued to relapse. That unrelenting roller coaster, and the emotional and mental fallout, left her with little energy or resources to take charge of her overall health. Taylor, 53, has asthma and doctors told her she was at risk of developing diabetes. “I wasn’t doing anything to help myself,” she said...

In Philadelphia, not having a safe, stable place to live prevents parents whose children have been placed in foster care from regaining custody 40 percent of the time — 10 percent higher than the national average — according to a recent study by the city. That’s why Philadelphia’s Department of Human Services and Office of Homeless Services have partnered on a new program that gives priority for affordable housing to people whose kids are in the custody of child welfare. The program is aimed...

Living close to nature and spending time outside has significant and wide-ranging health benefits -- according to new research from the University of East Anglia. A new report published today reveals that exposure to greenspace reduces the risk of type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, premature death, preterm birth, stress, and high blood pressure. Populations with higher levels of greenspace exposure are also more likely to report good overall health -- according to global data...

The 16 Kentuckians who recently won a lawsuit challenging the legality of Medicaid work requirements include a law student with a rare heart condition, a mortician with diabetes, a mother of four with congenital hip dysplasia and a housekeeper with rheumatoid arthritis. It’s a mixed bunch, united by two grim facts: They live at or below the federal poverty level, and they’re caught in the cross hairs of a debate over what society owes its neediest members. Their lawsuit argued that insisting...

A majority of child care workers in California are paid so little they qualify for public assistance programs, according to a new report on the early education workforce. Fifty-eight percent of child care workers in California are on one or more public assistance programs, such as the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families , a federally funded program that helps pay for food, housing and other expenses, the report by UC Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment found. This is...

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST: Black babies are two times as likely to die before they reach their first birthday than white babies. That's just one of the startling facts in Priska Neely's reporting on a gap in birth outcomes that has persisted for years. Poverty, education, health care access are all factors. But now research is focused on the role of racism in these statistics. It's simply a chronically stressful condition to be a black woman in the United States. Priska Neely is the senior...