Blog

For the past six months the Institute for People, Place, and Possibility (IP3), the organization that stewards Community Commons, has furiously worked behind the scenes to help launch Well Being Legacy , in partnership with Well Being Trust , Community Initiatives and T he Rippel Foundation/Rethink Health . Well Being Legacy, a new national initiative, has big ambitions to shape wellbeing for future generations. It seeks to lift up a living agenda that brings together the most promising...

American politics, especially in the Donald Trump era, increasingly resembles a slow-motion civil war between the nation’s past and its future. One of the best places to track the state of battle is the federal budget. Federal spending is steadily tilting toward the preponderantly white senior population and away from the increasingly diverse youth population. Put another way, precisely as the racial diversity of America’s youngest cohorts is rising, the level of federal investment in...

With plans to turn conversation into meaningful action, over 100 officials from the Sacramento region convened last week in Del Paso Heights to begin talks about the impact of trauma in the community. Local experts discussed the effective, meaningful work that can be done to process trauma of various forms. The event, which was organized by the national health care insurance provider Health Net, took place Friday at the Greater Sacramento Urban League. It featured a panel of local experts...

For a long time in the popular imagination, prison rape was, quite literally, a joke. Most cop shows could be counted on for a biting aside or two about dropping soap in a jail shower. But in Washington, some prisoner advocates took the problem seriously, pushing for the passage of the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003. Almost a decade later, in 2012, the Justice Department issued its first set of national standards requiring that detention facilities not only give inmates multiple...

For lifelong heart health, start exercising early in life and keep exercising often — ideally, at least four times a week, according to a remarkable series of recent studies involving hundreds of people and their hearts. But even if you have neglected to exercise in recent years and are now middle-aged, it is not too late. The same research shows that you still can substantially remodel your heart and make it more youthful by starting to work out in midlife, provided you exercise often...

The Chronicle of Social Change is highlighting each of the policy recommendations made this summer by the participants of the Foster Youth Internship Program (FYI), a group of 10 former foster youths who have completed congressional internships. The program is overseen each summer by the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute. Each of the FYI participants crafted a policy recommendation during their time in Washington, D.C. Today we highlight the recommendation of Terrence Scraggins,...

As her doctor stated on Monday, “The damage is done.” This is no longer about her making a conscious choice to poison herself with booze. Her liver is screaming, NOPE. Her brain is shriveling up. And her coo-coo for cocoa puffs is showing. I mean, Dad, my sister and I used to see that side of her, but now it’s a little more evident to the rest of the world.

When I was six years old, some moms took a bunch of us kids to the Santa Cruz Beach and Boardwalk, which was (in my pre-Disneyland years) my actual, best place in the whole world. Somewhere in the half-mile of noisy carnival rides and smells there was, in those days, a Fun House that had a tall, indoor "wavy" slide with an undulating surface. You'd buy a ticket and the man would give you a burlap sack to take with you to the top of the slide. It made you go down so fast you'd fly a little...

The images were tragic. The audio was heart-rending. The practice of separating parents from children at the border not only looked and sounded horrific, it was horrific. My encounters with the children at an Office of Refugee Resettlement “tender age” shelter stay with me. The fear and sadness of being separated from their parents combined with the trauma from their journeys put them at great risk of toxic stress. I have always been proud to be an AAP Fellow, but I have never been prouder...

Exclusionary zoning, a term referring to local regulations that discourage housing production, has long been associated with heightened racial segregation by several scholars . In many localities, industry is also disproportionately located in communities of color. How much does racial bias influence these outcomes? This is something that has been difficult to measure, as most local officials would likely try to hide prejudicial motivations (if they exist) for their zoning decisions.

Big businesses want lower taxes. Cities—and many of the people who live in them—want lower rates of homelessness. Lately, the compatibility of these two desires is being tested, as local governments across the U.S. float a new strategy to help the growing number of unsheltered people on their streets: Asking businesses to pay a greater share in funding aid. Last week, a coalition of homelessness advocates, non-profits, and tenant groups in San Francisco secured an initiative for November’s...

Homelessness, neglect, malnutrition, or forced parent-child separation have long been known to cause toxic stress levels in childhood that harm developing brains and bodies. Two decades ago, the link between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and long-lasting health effects surfaced in a pivotal study. Now, clinicians and researchers are taking a deep dive into how the stress produced by these experiences influences lifelong changes in children's genetics and health, while developing tools...