Blog

In response to the increasing demand for BCR expertise and insight we plan to provide more opportunities to share lessons learned. In addition to our regional expansion, see BCR in action later this month. Join us for the next BCR Town Hall in DC on Thursday, April 19th at 3:00pm (EST) in person or via livestream. Read more for details.

There is a paradox with living as a human nowadays. A 2014 article from the United Nations states that about 54 percent of the human population lives in urban areas (more by now), a proportion that is projected to increase to 66 percent by 2050. By 2045, the report says, more than six billion people will crowd cities. People flock to cities for obvious reasons, all very understandable: more job opportunities; more choices; more culture and cultural diversity; larger communities. Yet, and...

The Martin Luther King Jr. who arrived in Memphis in 1968 was an activist whose mission had evolved from demanding the right to vote and to integrate public buses to demanding economic justice for poor people. In Memphis, King was advocating for more livable wages and better working conditions for city garbage and sanitation workers. It was the beginning of a larger agenda he was building out called the “Poor People’s Campaign.” King was killed in Memphis before he had a chance to realize...

On a recent Sunday, Bari Hillman, who works during the week as a clinical psychologist at a New York mental health clinic, was perched at a clear, plastic desk inside a 16-year-old’s Manhattan bedroom, her shoeless feet resting on a fluffy white rug. Dr. Hillman was helping a private school sophomore manage her outsize worry over a long-term writing project. The student had taped the project outline on the wall above the desk, at Dr. Hillman’s prodding. It was designed to serve both as a...

The dream was always the same, Arthur Chavez says. He was following a bumblebee through a forest, stumbling over puddles and branches. When he caught the bee, he’d find himself onstage, wearing a suit, in front of an applauding crowd. After the third time, Chavez decided the dream was a sign. He quit his job at a Fullerton gas station and enrolled in community college, on his way to a bachelor’s degree. His first semester as a transfer student at Sacramento State, he started participating in...

When a woman has a baby, she loses an organ. The placenta, grown by her body for nine months of gestation, snaps off from her uterus and drops toward the birth canal. The meaty purple bag ribboned with thick blood vessels is pushed through the cervix five to 30 minutes after the baby and, depending on the culture, is carried away to be buried, rendered, or discarded. And that’s just the part about the placenta. The physical trauma doesn’t stop there. Expulsion of the placenta leaves a large...

Today, at the 2018 National Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit, National Institutes of Health Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., announced the launch of the HEAL (Helping to End Addiction Long-term) Initiative , an aggressive, trans-agency effort to speed scientific solutions to stem the national opioid public health crisis. Toward this effort, NIH is nearly doubling funding for research on opioid misuse/addiction and pain from approximately $600 million in fiscal year 2016 to $1.1...

Black students, boys, and students with disabilities are disproportionately disciplined in K-12 schools across the country. That's according to a new report , out Wednesday, from the non-partisan federal watchdog, the Government Accountability Office. Those disparities were consistent, "regardless of the type of disciplinary action, regardless of the level of school poverty, and regardless of the type of public school attended," says Jacqueline Nowicki, who led the team of researchers at the...

California Protective Parents Association (CPPA) is celebrating our 20 th Anniversary at a Spring conference. Domestic Violence and the Battle for Custody: Moving Towards Child Safety will take place on April 8, 2018 from 2:00 pm to 5:30 pm at the Brunelle Performing Arts Center, 315 West 14 th Street, Davis CA 95616. The program includes: Rachel Meyrick’s excellent documentary What Doesn’t Kill Me A panel discussion including Kathleen Russell from the Center for Judicial Excellence Retired...

Some of England and Wales's favourite seaside resort areas are now among the towns with the highest rates of deaths from the misuse of heroin/morphine. Six of the 10 local authority districts in England and Wales with the highest rates of heroin- and/or morphine-misuse deaths are coastal holiday resorts, figures have revealed. Places that may have been more synonymous with family holidays are among the 10 areas that saw the highest rates of drugs misuse fatalities where heroin and/or...

It’s a chilly March afternoon in Marysville, Ohio, and I’m riding around on a golf cart with Clara Golding Kent, the public information officer for the Ohio Reformatory for Women. It’s right after "count," when officials make sure the women serving time at Ohio's oldest prison are where they're supposed to be. Just now, the women here are heading to lunch, jobs and classes, or socializing in the yard. Ohio Reformatory for Women was built in 1916 but has expanded beyond the original stone...

Air conditioners for people with asthma, healthy groceries , rides to medical appointments and home-delivered meals may be among the new benefits added to Medicare Advantage coverage when new federal rules take effect next year. On Monday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) expanded how it defines the “primarily health-related” benefits that insurers are allowed to include in their Medicare Advantage policies. And insurers would include these extras on top of providing...