Blog

Leah Esguerra, a social worker in San Francisco, begins her workday roaming in between the bookshelves at the city's Main Library. She's looking for homeless people who need her assistance. Esguerra is the nation's first library social worker. Since 2009, she's been providing social services and outreach programs to many of the city’s homeless patrons. On this particular rainy morning, she’s hoping to find her client, John, who suffers from depression and is in need of mental health care and...

When I was applying to college, I wanted to go to one of the best schools. At the time, I thought of “the best,” as the colleges that were the most selective. I applied to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton—schools whose reputations are burnished as much by the huge numbers of applicants who are denied admission, as the privileged few who are let in. But over the years I’ve learned that there are many other ways to measure what makes a school great. Institutions like Harvard (where I ended up...

On April 1, at least half a million Americans will wake up no longer eligible for the food assistance benefits that have, for decades, been a crucial lifeline for the poor in a harsh economic landscape. A clause in the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act limited Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to three months in any given 36-month period for unemployed adults between the ages of 18 and 49 who are not working or enrolled in a job-training or...

A dozen old, white, property-owning men sit around a pub and decide how best to govern America. Is this the scene of a town hall during the American Revolution or a local city council meeting today? It could be either. And that's a problem. The reality is that most public meetings still skew older, whiter, and wealthier. When city planning meetings or budget committee hearings attract such a narrow minority of the population, policy decisions that tend to favor the few at the expense of the...

The vast majority of the roughly 2.3 million incarcerated Americans are male. For the inmates' girlfriends and wives, this creates complications—romantic and otherwise. Women bear nearly 90 percent of the costs of calls and visits with inmates, according to the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights; worse, two in three families of inmates report difficulty affording housing and food as a result of their loved one's incarceration. Many women find support through online groups like Strong Prison...

Breakups aren’t easy for anyone, but have you ever noticed that some people seem to cope with them better than others? While some who’ve loved and lost are barely able to get out of bed, others appear to bounce back immediately. Of course, every relationship is unique, and when one ends, we can expect our emotions to reflect the specific circumstances. However, certain people have the inherent tendency to suffer from romantic loss more than others, and research suggests that this might have...

University of Missouri-Columbia, College of Veterinary Medicine recently reported on findings from their research related to military veterans with symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The study investigated if participation in a structured, six-week therapeutic horseback riding (THR) program decreased PTSD symptoms, as well as improved self-efficacy, emotion regulation, and social engagement among veterans. The project was funded through a grant from the Horses and Humans...

When I worked in juvenile justice I would often hear the rational for sending a youth to detention was to "teach a lesson" or "give the youth pause". Yes, detention is a service that is sometimes needed to protect a youth and protect the greater community from harm, however; it should not be leveraged to "teach a lesson" or "give pause". Consider how well using detention to teach a lesson works for a youth who has experienced ACEs and/or is in foster care. Detention teaches a lesson through-...

Pat Sidmore, our expert for all things data and ACEs and a planner for the Alaska Mental Health Board, Advisory Board on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse, has collected new data that outlines when Alaska's children (0-17) acquire their ACEs. The slide below paints a pretty grim picture showing that our children are accumulating 50 percent of their ACEs before the age of 3, and more than 26% of them before the age of 1. Please feel free to share this slide as you see fit.

There's a health threat to kids that contributes to seven of the 10 leading causes of death and in high doses, dramatically increases the risk of heart disease, cancers, substance abuse, suicide and obesity. It's one that many doctors still pay little attention to, despite being treatable and often largely preventable. The threat: exposure to trauma as a child. If, for example, you witnessed violence, didn't have enough to eat, your parent abused drugs or alcohol, or you felt unsafe, this...

President Obama addressed the country’s growing opioid addiction epidemic at a panel discussion in Atlanta Tuesday, stressing to the 2,000-plus listeners that addiction is an illness and not a moral shortcoming. He also emphasized that more people are dying each year from opioid overdose than from car crashes. The panel, moderated by CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, featured a young man who shared his story of becoming addicted to opioids as a youth, according to attendees. [For...

Once each month a conference room in an employment center tucked in the corner of an office park becomes a one-stop shop for second chances. Scores of people who were formerly incarcerated or have had run-ins with the law come in search of help getting past their record. During the lunch hour, the visitors circle the room and meet government officials and nonprofit volunteers from the Capital Area Reentry Council , explaining their stories at great length or grabbing pamphlets as fast as...