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Nashville is booming, and so is its real estate, and so is its income inequality. In one of the city’s hottest neighborhoods, East Nashville, the James A. Cayce Homes, a sixty-three-acre tract of aging, run-down public housing, are about to be razed, redeveloped, renamed, and radically transformed—a six-hundred-million-dollar project for the supposed benefit of all. “ The Promise: Life, Death and Change in the Projects ,” a stellar six-part series from Nashville Public Radio reported and...

Sound Transit will now give almost all of its surplus property surrounding Link Light Rail stations to affordable housing developers. On April 26, the agency’s board of directors approved a new policy which requires Sound Transit to offer up 80 percent of any surplus property surrounding Link Light Rail stations for affordable housing projects. The measure also mandates that developers utilizing surplus property around light rail stations set aside 80 percent of their residential units for...

This year, Fostering Media Connections (FMC) launched its first-ever Youth Voice nonfiction writing contest and invited current and former foster youth between the ages of 18 and 24 to submit essays. This year’s theme: “What love is.” Dozens of youth entered the contest from all over the United States. The winning essays appear in the May/June issue of Fostering Families Today (FMC’s magazine for foster parents). Following is a piece by our Second Place winner, Sierra Howard. Check back...

Through a 16-month collaborative (starting in August 2018), seven selected primary care providers will begin piloting the trauma-informed model developed by the Practice Transformation Team at the National Council for Behavioral Health. Primary care organizations selected for this initiative will play a significant role in shaping the future of the health care system by recognizing and responding to the significant impact that traumatic life events have on the health of patients.

A journey through grief in tweets is helping my brave and thoughtful niece, Carly, express herself in a powerful and impactful way. I thank her for her raw honesty and marvel at her ability to capture the essence of what she is feeling in 280 characters or less. Carly is a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. As an Aunt, my heart aches for Carly and for my sister. As a school nurse, I am in search of answers, along with so many others.

At the age of 28, my patient was already a war-weary veteran of leukemia. When his cancer was diagnosed, we treated him with a multi-drug cocktail of chemotherapy over months, first with more intensive regimens that sidelined him from being able to work, and then with milder medicines. His leukemia came raging back, though, so we treated him again, this time with one of the new, expensive immunotherapies that has been approved recently by the Food and Drug Administration. These are not...

Mentoring saved 38-year-old Gary Clemons’ life. Separated from his mother at age 5, running with violent gangs at 15, father to a visually disabled child at 19, and homeless at 24 — Clemons couldn’t imagine that the mentors who helped him mount these challenges would guide him on to help lead possibly the most hyped and fastest-growing mentorship program in the nation: Friends of The Children . Founded in 1993, the Portland, Oregon, nonprofit pairs kids between the ages of 4 and 6 with paid,...

It was enough to make you want to cheer. On the Upper West Side last week , a middle school principal stood before a crowd of angry white parents — furious about a plan to help the poorest students gain access to some of the city’s most desirable schools — and told them they were wrong. “There are kids that are tremendously disadvantaged,” Henry Zymeck, principal of the Computer School, told the parents, his voice filled with the disappointment of an educator whose pupils had betrayed their...

Much research has linked mindfulness training with better physical and mental health. But few of us have the time or patience to commit to a lifelong daily practice. Good news: That may not be necessary. A new study of Scandinavian health-care professionals finds those who took a seven-week mindfulness course as a part of their schooling reported higher levels of well-being six years later. "These effects were found despite relatively low levels of adherence to formal mindfulness practice,"...

So what’s going to make you happy? Let’s get more specific: what’s going to make your brain happy? And let’s focus on things that are simple and easy to do instead of stuff like winning the lottery. Neuroscience has answers. I’ve discussed this subject before and it was so popular I decided to call an expert to get even more dead simple ways to start your brain feeling joy. Alex Korb is a postdoctoral researcher in neuroscience at UCLA and author of The Upward Spiral . So let’s get to it.

One teen arrived in the United States in 2015 seeking asylum after his father was murdered in Somalia. Another fled Afghanistan last year after the Taliban killed his father and the Islamic State group killed his brother. But instead of building new lives in the U.S., both ended up in adult detention centers based on the opinion of the same University of Texas dentist – who never met them or examined their teeth. It’s the latest example of the Department of Homeland Security failing to abide...

“Well, you look like you’re doing great,” my primary care physician cheerfully informed me. I stared at her from the examination table in disbelief. I had just told her that I wasn’t enjoying being with my children and was having trouble doing what needed to be done at work and at home. As a health journalist, I had interviewed dozens of physicians and psychologists. I knew that being unable to live one’s life was the big red flag signaling it was time to get help. I was asking for help. But...