September 2016

A newly formed coalition comprised of local government, education, law enforcement and judicial organizations, among others, have come together to hopefully combat the growing youth violence epidemic that is plaguing children and families across Miami-Dade County. Together for Children — including members of Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Public Defenders and State Attorney’s Offices, Florida Departments of Children and Families and Juvenile Justice and other community-based organizations...

You can help. Isn’t that the best title? Today is the day Rebecca Street’s book got launched out into the world. It’s a guide book for friends and family of survivors of sexual assault and abuse. Whaoo… Congrats to her for being so bold, hopeful and ambitious. Rebecca is a survivor who is passionate about helping people. Not only does she care about other survivors but she cares for the people who love us as well. She felt there was a gap in the literature. What if people want to help...

Marilyn Gisser, the coordinator for Washington State Essentials for Childhood Initiative sent this: Are you or is someone you know an innovative, inspirational and adaptive leader who is driven to improve health and educational outcomes for children in Washington State? Essentials for Childhood needs your help! The Washington State Essentials for Childhood initiative – a cross sector, statewide effort to promote safe, stable, nurturing relationships and environments for children and their...

Thanks for sending this, Allen Nishikawa!

On a hot summer day last month, Sydney, 15, and Laney, 8, were enjoying their last two weeks of freedom before school started. The sisters tried to do flips over a high bar at a local playground. “You’ve got to pull your hips into the bar, like you’ve got to kick up like that,” explained their mother, Selena. “I tried to kick! I did this — you told me not to stick out,” said Laney indignantly. Both girls have been diagnosed with mental illnesses — Sydney with bipolar disorder and Laney with...

I want to discuss the challenges youth face when exiting a detention facility and propose a more developed way of thinking about this population. I hope that through reference to my personal story I can help community stakeholders identify different ways of providing effective service and provide a voice for the thousands of youth across America who are faced with similar obstacles. I first made contact with the system when I was about 11 years old. I was picked up for vandalism when out of...

On Monday, California Governor Jerry Brown signed historic legislation that effectively grants farmworkers the same overtime pay as the rest of the state’s hourly workforce. The law sets a monumental new pay precedent for both the state — the largest agricultural producer in the United States—and the rest of the country at large: California’s farmworkers will be the first in the nation to earn equal overtime wages for their work. Assembly Bill 1066 requires time-and-a-half pay to all...

After nearly 14 years at the helm, Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, MD, MBA , the first woman and the first African American to lead the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), announced today that she will step down once a successor is in place. Lavizzo-Mourey has served as president and CEO of the $10 billion private foundation, the nation’s largest philanthropy devoted to health, since January 2003. Under her leadership, RWJF has worked to advance the vision of building a Culture of Health, one that...

Hearing From Everyone on Health With Mount Adams in Washington to the north and Mount Hood in Oregon to the south, the windy Columbia River Gorge boasts ideal conditions for kite surfers and sailors. High-tech companies have moved into new waterfront buildings up and down the river, joining tourism and agriculture as the area’s main economic engines. But the Columbia Gorge—a vast rural area larger than the state of Connecticut with only 75,000 people—is characterized by extremes. Not far...

A pediatrician and the founder and CEO of the Center for Youth Wellness, Nadine Burke Harris, M.D., receives the Heinz Award for the Human Condition for addressing toxic stress in children, a significant, yet often unrecognized risk factor for chronic disease later in life. Having dedicated her career to working with children from underserved communities, Dr. Burke Harris is transforming pediatric care by pioneering protocols to identify and treat the spiraling effects of toxic stress in...

A lot of people in the United States live with suicidal thoughts. One study suggested that about 15% of Americans will have suicidal thoughts in their lifetime. About 40,000 Americans die by suicide each year. I could tell you more statistics too, like how more than half of those are by firearm or how men are three and a half times more likely to die by suicide than women. I can tell you a lot of statistics. And those statistics are important. But for most of us, they're just numbers. This...

Food-insecure teens who don’t get enough to eat sometimes resort to extreme measures to cope with hunger—from saving school lunches for the weekend or going hungry so younger siblings can eat to stealing or trading sex for money to buy food. The most risky behaviors are by no means typical of all teens, even in the most distressed communities, but they illustrate the lengths to which some of the most desperate and food-insecure teens are willing to go to survive. An estimated 6.8 million...