Blog

Chicago students Sabeer Al-Shareef and Shameir Faulkner are looking forward to a crazy few months as they approach high school graduation. In June, they’ll walk across a creaky stage at their historic South Side neighborhood high school and then move on to college in the fall. These are Chicago success stories, exactly the kind Chicago Public Schools CEO Janice Jackson loves to highlight — young black men getting their diplomas and taking the next step. “One thing that does not get enough...

For the first 42 years of her life, Sharon daVanport assumed that everyone finds the lights at the grocery store overwhelming. As a child, she knew it was unusual that she rocked back and forth and banged her head on her bedroom wall after school, but she didn’t worry about it. Even after her youngest son, J.D., was diagnosed with autism at age 5, she did not draw any parallels between his behavior, which also included rocking, and her own—although her mother did notice some similarities...

Weight training by older people may build not only strength and muscle mass but also motivation and confidence, potentially spurring them to continue exercising, according to an interesting new study of the emotional impacts of lifting weights. The findings intimate that people worried that they might be too old or inept to start resistance training should perhaps try it, to see how their bodies and minds respond. We already have plenty of evidence, of course, that weight training can help...

For two years in a row, more than 100 newsroom leaders from across the country have gathered to discuss what they’ve learned in the wake of #MeToo revelations that rocked the media industry — and just about every other industry. On Tuesday, the Freedom Forum Institute , a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to defending the First Amendment, released a report highlighting some of the key lessons from this year’s meeting, held in mid-January. They include: “Focus on sexual misconduct alone is...

Washington Governor Jay Inslee signed the Native American Voting Rights Act Thursday, enacting a state law designed to empower Native American people to overcome the long-standing obstacles they face when they try to vote. Native voting rights advocates across the nation hope the bill will serve as a model for other states ahead of the 2020 presidential election. The law allows Native American voters to use non-traditional addresses—or, alternatively, the address of a designated building on...

New York University sociologist Patrick Sharkey opened his revelatory 2018 book Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence by calling the dramatic fall in violence in American cities since the early 1990s a “fundamental change in the nature of U.S. urban life,” one that “no one predicted and that many people still do not believe.” The book amassed a pile of crime statistics to counter that disbelief—and to show how the efforts of community...

Most of us have real anger and suffering living inside us. Perhaps in the past we were oppressed or mistreated, and all that pain is still right there, buried in our store consciousness. We haven’t processed and transformed our relationship with what happened to us and we sit there alone with all that anger, hatred, despair and suffering. If we were abused when were young, every time our thinking mind goes back over that event, it’s like we’re experiencing the abuse all over again. – Thich...

A new study published in Infant and Child Development indicates that complications during birth may increase the risk that children will develop social anxiety by their pre-teen years. For the study, 149 children aged nine to 12 years were screened for behavioral inhibition -- a tendency to exhibit a fearful disposition and withdrawal in unfamiliar contexts and situations -- and assessed for social anxiety symptoms using parent- and child-reports. Investigators found that perinatal...

Mindfulness might offer more than relief from daily stress. Research now suggests it can boost recovery from addiction and trauma. Investigators at USC believe the contemplative practice could represent the next major breakthrough in the treatment of substance use and major mental health issues. "It's a very different way of doing therapy and being in therapy," said Jordan Davis, an assistant professor at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. "But it's like the Wild West right...

Applying and getting the Center for Health Journalism’s 2018 National Fellowship was the easy part. The hard part for myself and partner Jayne O’Donnell was following through with our ambitious project about children and domestic abuse for USA TODAY. We first wanted to do a series on how family court forces children to spend unsupervised time with allegedly abusive parents. But through a series of conversations with our editors, we decided to instead focus first on how new research shows...

WASHINGTON — Some laws can make life exceptionally difficult for homeless and runaway youth. Whether it’s requiring parental consent to receive health care or demanding proof of residency to obtain a photo ID, unfriendly policies have left many service providers feeling frustrated and powerless to help. A small national nonprofit based in Washington is working to change that. SchoolHouse Connection is helping local youth advocates, school liaisons, homeless service providers and other...

On Wednesday , prominent Los Angeles County officials will revisit a trying time in the county’s child protection history. In May of 2013, the violent death of an 8-year-old Antelope Valley boy rocked the county. The first story that appeared in The Los Angeles Times opened with gruesome details that are still as shocking today as when they were first written. “When paramedics arrived at his Palmdale home last week, 8-year-old Gabriel Fernandez’s skull was cracked, three ribs were broken and...