The Hill magazine today published my Commentary calling on the Biden Administration and Congress to recognize the urgent need to link their efforts to address both the pandemic and climate crisis with community-based population-level initiatives to prevent and heal mental health and psychosocial problems. It can be found here: https://thehill.com/changing-america/opinion/540152-pandemic-and-climate-solutions-will-fail-without-a-major-focus-on Building community-based, culturally-grounded,...

In The Lancet Public Health, Ruth Watkinson and colleagues report on ethnic inequalities in health among older adults (ie, those aged >55 years) by use of the large, nationally representative,

Report shows a decline in suicide rates from 2018 to 2019—the first decline in over a decade.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, more people are being forced to make choices between food and transportation, utilities, and medical care—leaving even more at risk of ongoing food insecurity . Join the webinar on February 16 to learn strategies to address food insecurity from two fantastic guest speakers:

ACEs Aware [a California ACEs Initiative] has recently released a brand new video featuring Dr. Burke Harris explaining the symptoms of toxic stress and encouraging providers to sign up for ACEs Aware's free, two-hour online training. The ACEs Aware video is available in full, half, and no animation versions. Links are included in the attachment with recommendations for each channel, but you are encouraged to post the animation version that best suits your audience. Links to all three...

Now more than ever before, there is a red-hot exclamation point on the urgent need for a coordinated and cross-sector effort to build national resilience against fake facts. We must give our education system the tools it needs to build new skills and habits of mind to help defend our youth and our nation.

A potential resolution is on the horizon, but for COVID-19 vaccination to work, people need to be willing to take the vaccines. Like many social scientists working in the fields of vaccine uptake and disaster response and recovery, we anticipated that widespread acceptance of COVID-19 vaccines would be a critical issue—an issue upon which the success of the vaccination campaign, and the solution to the pandemic, would hinge. That is what we are now seeing today.

I am self isolating. However I can build an increased sense of positive and healing community by working on this site and interacting with all of you. Be Well. Dennis

CDC: Fatal opioid overdoses and opioid use disorder cost the US $1.02 trillion in 2017. The most complete accounting to date of America’s opioid crisis was released by CDC in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence . This CDC study expands and updates two prior estimates of the cost of the opioid crisis: a 2016 CDC economic cost study and a 2017 report released by the White House Council of Economic Advisors. In 2017, there were more than 2.1 million people over age 12 with an opioid use...

The Covid-19 pandemic has reshaped the world of health and medicine. E-Book Available.

[Others are facilitating building communities here are stories we can use. Dennis Haffron] Communities + Coaches = Moving Data to Action, Together Since 2011, our Action Learning Coaches have provided guidance to individuals & teams across the country working to improve health outcomes and advance equity. Stay tuned as we share the stories of fives coaches through a new blog series on how they worked together with communities to move data to action.

[Many of our communities having an effect on youth violence. They should link up with educational institutions to go after funding] [Dennis Haffron] New Research Funding Opportunity Announcement: CDC National Centers of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention On January 6, 2021, The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released RFA-CE-21-005, The CDC National Centers of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention (YVPCs): Rigorous Evaluation of Prevention Strategies to Prevent and...