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Essential health benefits (EHBs) targeted for cuts in reform debate represent a small share of total monthly premiums. The Issue Analysis shows the EHBs covered under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and targeted for cuts in repeal and replace legislation, represent less than 10 percent of total monthly premiums. Conclusion The per-person costs of insuring EHBs are reasonably low, and account for small percentages of the overall premium when the costs are spread broadly across a large...

While treating children in an underserved neighborhood in San Francisco, pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris noticed a disturbing trend: many of the kids who came to see her had experienced childhood trauma and it was impacting their health. In response, she founded the Center for Youth Wellness , which she now heads as the CEO. Today, Dr. Nadine’s health-care practice focuses on trauma, and how this little-understood, yet too-common factor in childhood can profoundly impact adult-onset...

Lancaster County is doing particularly well on an effort to keep people with complicated medical conditions from racking up big hospital bills, according to a new report from the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council. It shows that the county has Pennsylvania’s second-lowest rate of “super-utilizers,” with only 11 out of every 10,000 residents landing in the hospital at least five times a year. That rate’s down from 11.7 in 2014, and it trails only Pike County, which stands at 6.

When Dannel Malloy, the Democratic governor of Connecticut, entered Germany’s Heidering Prison two years ago this summer, he saw something more akin to an American college dormitory than a detention center. Heidering rejects the idea that prisons should aim to punish, and permits even convicted murderers to cook their own food, lock their own cells, and leave to see their families on weekends. Germany “can actually call their [prisons] a corrections system as opposed to our penal system,”...

Epidemics are hard to cover. Navigating the gaps between the private, personal, and societal and managing to be relatable while also true to science is a tough part of health reporting, generally. Doing those things in the middle of public panic—and its attendant misinformation—requires deftness. And performing them while also minding the social issues that accompany every epidemic means reporters have to dig deep, both into multiple disciplines and into ethics. With multiple competing...

Harsh life experiences appear to leave African-Americans vulnerable to Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia, researchers reported Sunday at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference in London. Several teams presented evidence that poverty, disadvantage and stressful life events are strongly associated with cognitive problems in middle age and dementia later in life among African-Americans. The findings could help explain why African-Americans are twice as likely as white...

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/07/16/536935957/stress-and-poverty-may-explain-high-rates-of-dementia-in-african-americans

"You are absolutely not doomed from having ACEs."

A bipartisan resolution “Recognizing the importance and effectiveness of trauma-informed care” ( H. Res. 443 ) was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on July 13 by Mike Gallagher (R-WI) and co-sponsor Danny K. Davis (D-IL). The impetus for the resolution resides with the First Lady of Wisconsin, Tonette Tonette Walker Walker, who has taken a strong leadership role in advancing trauma-informed policy and practice statewide through Fostering Futures and of late with the new...

“What happened to you?” isn’t just a question for therapists to ask their troubled clients. It’s a question that should inform the work of physicians, nurses, lawyers, educators, social workers and public health advocates from the time they are learning their professions to each real-world encounter. That’s the hope of the Philadelphia ACE Task Force (PATF) , whose workforce development group released a toolkit to help faculty across a range of disciplines weave content on adverse childhood...

So, the St. Pauls School in NH is under investigation again. Apparently, there is a new tradition involving sexual misconduct and notches on a crown from a fast food restaurant. An investigation is ongoing but often, when there is smoke, there is fire. I find the whole situation unbelievable as an educator. How does a place that graduated Owen Labrie (convicted of participating in Senior Salute) and then issued a report in May 2017 (not a typo) about decades of abuse find themselves with a...

In the late 1960s, a team of researchers began doling out a nutritional supplement to families with young children in rural Guatemala. They were testing the assumption that providing enough protein in the first few years of life would reduce the incidence of stunted growth. It did. Children who got supplements grew 1 to 2 centimetres taller than those in a control group. But the benefits didn't stop there. The children who received added nutrition went on to score higher on reading and...