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Exerting effort can get you far in many areas of life. Want to run a marathon? Train hard. Earn better grades? Study hard. Land a new promotion? Work hard. To achieve goals, hard work and determination are often required. But what if the goal is to be happier? How much effort is required to live a more joyful life and to feel happier? An initial Google search of “how to be happy” may give the impression that the answer to this question requires a great amount of effort. Countless websites...

On Monday, city officials in Philadelphia announced a “text-to-give” campaign to encourage residents to stop giving money to panhandlers. Instead of dropping change or a dollar bill into a homeless person’s cup at a stoplight or sidewalk, residents were encouraged to text a number to donate $5 to the Mayor’s Fund to End Homelessness, where their money would go toward social services, jobs, and housing programs. [For more of this story, written by David Dudley, go to ...

Welltopia ( www.MyWelltopia.com ), a partnership between the California Department of Health Care Services and the UC Davis Institute for Population Health Improvement has exciting news for Yolo County! A brand new localized site, Yolo Welltopia ( www.MyWelltopia.com/Yolo ) is here, thanks to a partnership with ACEs Connection Network, Yolo Resilience Network, Yolo County Health and Human Services Agency, and Yolo County 2-1-1. The purpose of the collaboration is to leverage state and local...

A growing body of research is finding that, on the whole, job-protected paid family leaves of adequate duration and wage replacement lead to more income and gender equality, significant reductions in infant, maternal and even paternal mortality, improved physical and mental health for children and parents, greater family stability and economic security, business productivity, and economic growth.

There has been so much violence lately that it is hard to capture in a sentence or two (or three). From the shootings at the practice field for the Congressional baseball games to the rampages in London, most recently outside a Mosque, to the killings in our streets, both adults and children are exposed to violence. And, the media captures this violence -- and repeats it at all hours of the day and night. The images of violence -- and the reality of violence -- affects us. Surely, all this...

There’s a certain type of financial confessional that has had a way of going viral in the post-recession era. The University of Chicago law professor complaining his family was barely keeping their heads above water on $250,000 a year . This hypothetical family of three in San Francisco making $200,000, enjoying vacations to Maui, and living hand-to-mouth. This real New York couple making six figures and merely “ scraping by .” In all of these viral posts, denizens of the upper-middle class...

Ten years out from the start of the Great Recession, the housing market in the U.S. has finally returned to normal. Home prices in 2016 eclipsed the pre-crisis highs from about a decade ago. The number of homeowners who are underwater on their mortgages continues to plummet. Homeowners are making back some (but not all) of the wealth they lost to the mortgage foreclosure crisis. The nation may be free of one housing crisis, but it’s still deeply mired in another one. That’s one jarring...

A chance trip to Long Island’s Adventureland amusement park just might have saved Cassidy McCarthy’s life. After Cassidy—whose family calls her Cassie—then 4, complained about pain and nausea following a ride on the Ladybug rollercoaster, her dad, Daniel, a registered nurse, felt her stomach and discovered a small bump. A CT scan ordered up at a local hospital’s emergency room revealed a kidney tumor. It was another seemingly chance decision by Daniel McCarthy to sign on as a volunteer...

If power were a prescription drug, it would come with a long list of known side effects. It can intoxicate. It can corrupt. It can even make Henry Kissinger believe that he’s sexually magnetic. But can it cause brain damage? When various lawmakers lit into John Stumpf at a congressional hearing last fall, each seemed to find a fresh way to flay the now-former CEO of Wells Fargo for failing to stop some 5,000 employees from setting up phony accounts for customers. But it was Stumpf’s...

The first 1,000 days of a child’s life are a critical window for cognitive, physical, and social development. Exposure to adverse experiences during this period and beyond in early childhood dramatically increases the potential for lifelong poor health and social outcomes. This in turn can result in substantially increased health care costs across an individual’s life span. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) — including neglect, abuse, exposure to violence, family dysfunction, etc. — also...

Mind-body interventions (MBIs), such as meditation, yoga and tai chi, don’t just relax us. According to a new study, they can reverse the molecular reactions in our DNA that cause ill health and depression . The research, published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology , reviews over a decade of studies analyzing how the behavior of our genes is affected by different MBIs, including mindfulness and yoga. Researchers at Coventry University in the U.K. and Radboud University in the...

Powerful and surprisingly prevalent horrors are blocking access to education and ravaging children’s lives. Sadly, they remain the elephant in the classroom: adverse childhood experiences . Adverse childhood experiences include physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, including bullying; physical and emotional neglect; a missing parent, due to separation, divorce, incarceration, or death; witnessing household substance abuse, violence, or mental illness; and witnessing environmental violence.