Blog

By Joaquin Palomino and Tatiana Sanchez, San Francisco Chronicle, May 8, 2020 As people came into San Francisco General Hospital with chest pain, dry coughs and fevers — telltale signs of the new coronavirus — Dr. Vivek Jain noticed an unsettling pattern: The vast majority of people so sick that they needed to be hospitalized were Latino. Jain, an infectious disease specialist who is part of the team directing the hospital’s COVID-19 response, was prepared to see an influx of low-income...

By Rams in Recovery, April, 28, 2020, for Medium People in recovery can teach us a lot about making it through tough times with strength and dignity. Rams in Recovery and The Well are collaborating to share some recovery wisdom we can borrow as we navigate our new reality. 1. The fight is fixed. Wait, what? Is it really a central tenet of recovery to just give up and accept that things can’t be changed? Well… yes. Many people recovering from addiction must accept that they cannot control...

By Jenna Grace, PsychCentral, May 8, 2020 My PTSD symptoms have been off the hook during lockdown. Which is ironic because the door is closed. Locked down. There’s no freedom to come and go as we please. Which is making me feel trapped. Causing my body to act like a frightened animal. Alert. On edge. Ready to fight or to flee. PTSD is among the most persistent of all six of my neurological disorders. It comes up most days quite strongly. Screaming for attention. Taking me hostage if I refuse...

By Antoinette Frearson, Tes, May 8, 2020 Teaching assistants offer vital support in school, but school closures don’t have to mean a pause to the daily support and encouragement they usually provide. Here are eight ways that teaching assistants can continue to provide their effective and crucial support to students, parents, colleagues and each other while working remotely: Coronavirus: 8 ways teaching assistants can provide support... [ Please click here to read more .]

By Kim Goll, The Daily Californian, May 8, 2020 Today in California, there are an estimated 210,000 children younger than 6 hiding in plain sight — they weren’t counted in the last U.S. census. As a result, communities in our state missed out on a decade’s worth of crucial funding for programs to support them, including those that provide basic necessities such as food, shelter and health care. The census is mandated by the U.S. Constitution and determines how billions of dollars of federal...

From Maryland Governor's Office of Crime Prevention, Youth, and Victim Services; Maryland Department of Human Services, and Maryland Children's Alliance, May 8, 2020 Today, the Governor’s Office of Crime Prevention, Youth, and Victim Services , Maryland Department of Human Services , and Maryland Children’s Alliance , announced the release of a public service announcement to bring attention to what Marylanders can do to reduce the risk of, and intervene in suspected incidents of child abuse...

From Philadelphia ACE Task Force, May 8, 2020 Has your workplace incorporated the science of Stress Reduction & Mindfulness into its Wellness Program? "Incorporating Mindfulness Into Your Work and Life: During COVID-19 and Beyond" Tuesday, May 12, 3:30 - 4:30 pm Eastern Time This interactive presentation will begin with a brief introduction around the science of mindfulness & will provide an overview of various mindfulness practices with ways to implement strategies in your personal...

By The Marshall Project, May 8, 2020 Since March, The Marshall Project has been tracking how many people are being sickened and killed by COVID-19 in prisons and how widely it has spread across the country and within each state. Here, we will regularly update these figures counting the number of people infected and killed nationwide and in each prison system until the crisis abates. Cases By May 6, at least 20,119 people in prison had tested positive for the illness, a 39 percent increase...

By Anna Maria Barry-Jester, Angela Hart, and Rachel Bluth, California Healthline, May 4, 2020 Months into the spread of the coronavirus in the United States, widespread diagnostic testing still isn’t available, and California offers a sobering view of the dysfunction blocking the way. It’s hard to overstate how uneven the access to critical test kits remains in the nation’s largest state. Even as some Southern California counties are opening drive-thru sites to make testing available to any...

From Weill Institute for Neurosciences, UCSF, May 2020 These are unprecedented times. We need to work extra hard to manage our emotions well. Expect to have a lot of mixed feelings. Naturally we feel anxiety, and maybe waves of panic, particularly when seeing new headlines. A recent article by stress scientist and Vice Chair of Adult Psychology Elissa Epel, PhD, outlines the psychology behind the COVID-19 panic response and how we can try to make the best of this situation. Our anxiety is...

By Jelani Cobb, The New Yorker Magazine, May 9, 2020 The most basic conception of racial profiling holds that it is a form of institutionalized bias practiced by police departments in which the color of a person’s skin is considered a barometer of criminality. This idea is problematic enough on its face, but our experience in the eight years since Trayvon Martin ’s death has complicated this issue greatly. Martin was killed by a civilian—a self-appointed neighborhood watchman—who had no...

By Isaac Chotiner, The New Yorker, May 7, 2020 Evelynn Hammonds, who chairs Harvard’s department of the history of science, has spent her career studying the intersection of race and disease. She wrote a history of New York City’s attempt, a century ago, to control diphtheria, and is currently at work on a book of essays on the history of race, from Jefferson to genomics. Hammonds’s area of expertise is especially relevant today: while the data is incomplete, at this point in time,...