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Some federal employees working in science-related jobs say they've seen policy shifts in the past year that harm America's most vulnerable populations, from the reorganization of the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Environmental Justice to the reported focus on "all Americans" (rather than specific risk groups, a common practice in public-health research). These results come from a survey conducted by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group that has opposed several...

Adversity is part of life: Loved ones die. Soldiers deploy to war. Patients receive terminal diagnoses. Research on how adults deal with adversity has been dominated by studies claiming the most common response is uninterrupted and stable psychological functioning. In other words, this research suggests that most adults are essentially unfazed by major life events such as spousal loss or divorce. These provocative findings have also received widespread attention in the popular press and...

The punishment for a crime doesn’t necessarily end when the person has been released from prison. Formerly incarcerated people face multiple barriers to securing housing ( including public housin g) and employment , which can lead to homelessness. And just by virtue of being homeless—by having to sleep on a bench or take shelter under a bridge—these people may then be targeted by the police. Thus starts an unrelenting cycle, through which people are tossed back and forth between jail and the...

Sixty miles south of my home is a small municipality in New Jersey called Bordentown Township. The population is 11,367, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Two very important things happened there in 2016. One alarmed me; the other gave me hope. The first was the arrest of the town’s former police chief, Frank Nucera Jr., who had just stepped down after years on the force. Nucera was charged by the FBI with committing a federal hate crime and violating a person’s civil rights while he was...

Quality of Early Relationships determines Lifelong Health The first relationship—usually this is between the mother and her infant—has an enduring impact on all later stages of human development. This relationship which occurs has been described by Bowlby’s attachment theory, which at its core, is about how the mother helps the infant regulate emotion. The mother-infant attachment communications are essential because they directly affect the development of the brain. Dr. Allan Schore, the...

I showed this film to several very traumatized people that are trying to recover. All of those who are no justifying their attachments to things that traumatized them and are ready to let go of them, usually relate to the story. Those who are not ready to let go usually find it as another unsettling horror movie.

In June, a group of Crawford County residents who are active participants in local work to create a trauma-informed community had the opportunity to attend a six-day workshop in Pittsburgh led by Rev. Paul Abernathy. Rev. Abernathy is the director of FOCUS Pittsburgh and is part of a coalition that is leading the way in trauma-informed community development (TICD). We were joined by other groups from across the country, including folks from Petersburg, Virginia, Kansas City, Missouri,...

Racial and ethnic health disparities and inequities can only be eliminated if there is high-quality information by which to track immediate problems and underlying social determinants, as well as to guide the design and application of culturally specific medical and public health approaches. Often, health outcomes are disaggregated by broad racial categories such as "Black or African American," "Hispanic or Latino," "Asian and Pacific Islander," "White," or "Native American." However, the...

by MSW@USC Staff In 1955 , the Los Angeles Police Department adopted the motto “To Protect and Serve,” and over the last seven decades, many other American law enforcement departments followed suit. But in the Black Lives Matter era, those words may not resonate with some members of the communities police are tasked with protecting and serving. Community members may feel law enforcement officials exercise more authority than necessary. How can both sides work to create a more positive...

The New Orleans City Council on Thursday (Aug. 9) unanimously approved a resolution calling for a comprehensive, citywide approach to the prevention, intervention and treatment of childhood trauma. The resolution asks the New Orleans Children and Youth Planning Board to present to the council -- no later than Aug. 1, 2019 -- recommendations to increase mental healthcare services for children, as well as the identification of new streams of revenue to pay for those services, and changes to...

Long before he began studying for a career in health care, Marlon Munoz performed one of the most sensitive roles in the field: delivering diagnoses to patients. As an informal interpreter between English-speaking doctors and his Spanish-speaking family and friends, Munoz knew well the burden that comes with the job. He still becomes emotional when he remembers having to tell his wife, Aibi Perez, she had breast cancer. A few days after Perez underwent a routine breast biopsy 17 years ago,...

Drug overdoses killed about 72,000 Americans last year, a record number that reflects a rise of around 10 percent, according to new preliminary estimates from the Centers for Disease Control. The death toll is higher than the peak yearly death totals from H.I.V., car crashes or gun deaths . Analysts pointed to two major reasons for the increase: A growing number of Americans are using opioids, and drugs are becoming more deadly. It is the second factor that most likely explains the bulk of...