Blog

By The HOPE Team, 1/26/23, https://positiveexperience.org/category/blog/ Recent news has focused on the U.S. hitting its debt ceiling , which makes it harder for the federal government to meet financial obligations. The discussion often turns to whether Congress will make changes to Medicare and Social Security in response. Although the political landscape around this issue can be polarizing, one thing is certain, supporting children and families and promoting access to positive childhood...

Sharpen's evidence-based 5 hour Mental Health Literacy course improves resiliency and mental health literacy for participants ages 14 and up.

By Helen Santoro, Photo: UAB Office of Standardized Patient Education, Kaiser Health News, January 23, 2023 For Tammy Rainey, finding a health care provider who knows about gender-affirming care has been a challenge in the rural northern Mississippi town where she lives. As a transgender woman, Rainey needs the hormone estrogen, which allows her to physically transition by developing more feminine features. But when she asked her doctor for an estrogen prescription, he said he couldn’t...

By Brandon Keim, Photo: Mladen Antonov/Agence-France Presse, The New York Times, January 24, 2023 When Lauren Strohacker received her second Covid-19 vaccine dose in the spring of 2021, she rejoiced. It meant she could see her friends again, go to concerts and live with far less fear that an infection might leave her physically or financially devastated. But it became a bittersweet memory. Not long after Ms. Strohacker, an artist based in Knox County, Tenn., returned home from the...

By Miriam Frankel and Matt Warren, Photo: Getty Images, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), January 22, 2023 Y our gut is a bustling and thriving alien colony. They number in their trillions and include thousands of different species. Many of these microorganisms, including bacteria, archaea and eukarya, were here long before humans, have evolved alongside us and now outnumber our own cells many times over. Indeed, as John Cryan, a professor of anatomy and neuroscience at University...

By Nesrine Malik, Illustration: Matt Kenyon, The Guardian, January 23, 2023 ou may have forgotten by now, but there was a brief moment during the pandemic when hopes were raised for a new “ roaring 20s ”. The Yale sociology professor Nicholas Christakis predicted that as in the 1920s, after the 1918 Spanish flu, society would embrace indulgence, with a rise in “sexual licentiousness” as well as a “reverse of religiosity”. We were poised to emerge from lockdown randy and flush. We certainly...

By Nicholas Kristof, Photo: Aaron Kehoe/Associated Press, The New York Times, January 24, 2023 Once again the United States is seared by screams, shots, blood, sirens and politicians’ calls for thoughts and prayers. Two shootings in California since Saturday have claimed at least 18 lives, leaving Americans asking once again: What can be done to break the political stalemate on gun policy so that we can save lives? For decades, we’ve treated gun violence as a battle to be won rather than a...

In light of the three recent mass shootings in the last three days in California—Monterey Park, Half Moon Bay and Oakland—take a look at " A Smarter Way to Reduce Gun Deaths " that Nicholas Kristof posted in the New York Times. To solve this plague of violence requires many parts working together, he says. Using alarming and revealing data and graphs, he includes these among his many recommendations: Keep guns out of the hands of people under 21 (Wyoming has such a law), as well as those...

January 27th is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It recognizes, as stated by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum , “the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators, the evolving process that took place throughout Europe between 1933 and 1945.” The historical trauma of the Holocaust will be explored by “History. Culture. Trauma.” podcast hosts Ingrid Cockhren and Mathew Portell this...

By Jillian McKoy, Boston University School of Public Health, January 19, 2023 Historic redlining and other racist policies have led to present-day racial and economic segregation and disinvestment in many cities across the United States. Research has shown how neighborhood characteristics and resources are associated with health disparities such as preterm birth and asthma, but most of these studies are limited in scale and overlook many aspects in a neighborhood that are difficult to...

By Scott D. Berns, National Institute for Children's Health Quality, January 20, 2023 What can we respectfully learn from indigenous cultures that have inhabited North America for thousands of years? Living symbiotically with the environment is a core practice and considering the impact of choices on the seven generations is a conscious way to make decisions. Many tribes are matrilinear and center women as leaders, and gender diversity is valued and protected. Traditional music pulses with...

By Nathan M. Greenfield, Photo: iStock, University World News, January 14, 2023 On 21 December 2022, Canada’s paper of record, the (Toronto) Globe and Mail published an op-ed by Meric Gertler, president of the University of Toronto (UofT). The article did not discuss noteworthy academic achievements or reflect on the first full year of on-campus classes since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Rather, it outlined UofT’s response to serious charges of antisemitism at its Temerty Faculty of Medicine...