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Residents of Grays Harbor County have shorter lifespans than any other county in the state. Local health officials say the key to reversing the trend is focusing on the early development of children age 2 and younger, instructing the parents of young kids how to spot the signs of normal childhood development and giving those parents the tools to provide their children with an environment that will lead to a healthier lifestyle as they grow. “What we have to do is look below the surface, and...

Gratitude has become a hot topic in recent years. Celebrities from Oprah to James Taylor to Ariana Huffington have promoted an “attitude of gratitude,” and gratitude journals, hashtags, and challenges have become immensely popular. Much of this enthusiasm has been fueled by research linking gratitude to happiness , health , and stronger relationships . [For more of this story, written by Christina N. Armenta and Sonja Lyubomirsky, go to ...

The National Housing Trust Fund is one of the only new social safety net programs in a generation. It was launched by the bill President George W. Bush signed into law in 2008 to try to rescue Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from the subprime mortgage crisis. The fund was designed to create and preserve affordable housing for families with worst-case needs, but it only recently came online. When the financial crisis threatened to become a global catastrophe in 2008, the Housing Trust Fund was...

Since the Great Recession, the economy has recovered on several key fronts—the stock market has rebounded, unemployment is down, the labor market has tightened, and employers are looking to fill jobs with talented workers. But for many millions of Americans, that recovery remains invisible: Their wages and productivity—two key measures of economic dynamism—have stagnated. Worse, both remain highly unequal and uneven across the nation, according to two new analyses. The first analysis by the...

The Netflix show 13 Reasons Why has caused some recent controversy. Some feel that the show encourages teens to think about suicide as a viable option to deal with their problems while others feel it spotlights the issues of youth suicide, bullying, and sexual assault which plague our society. What’s important is that the show has people talking, especially about the taboo subject of suicide and we’re overdue for this discussion. [For more of this story, written by Nicholette Leanza, go to ...

City life seems to take a toll on the adolescent mind, new research suggests. The study included more than 2,000 18-year-olds in England and Wales who were interviewed about psychotic experiences (such as hearing voices and feeling extremely paranoid) since age 12. The research team from King's College London and Duke University found that teens raised in large cities were over 40 percent more likely to report psychotic experiences than those who grew up in rural areas. [For more of this...

As reports of the carnage at Monday's Ariana Grande show in Manchester, England, continue to pour in, many teens with tickets to concerts during the coming summer music season may be reluctant to attend an event. But child and adolescent psychiatrists say it's important that parents let their teens follow through on their plans, even if the adults themselves are anxious about their letting kids go out. [For more of this story, written by Dennis Thompson, go to ...

We had our first Parenting with ACEs Group chat a few weeks ago. The full chat transcript is saved online. The topic was talking about tough topics with kids. I can't not think about the tragic world news . As we drove to school I asked my teen if she'd heard about the bombing at the Ariana Grande concert. We'd only been up for an hour. We hadn't been watching the news. But of course she had heard about it already. She learned about it on social media just as I had. Sometimes, I can still...

When her eldest son was in elementary school in the Oakland Unified School District, Ruth Woodruff became alarmed by the meals he was being served at school. A lot of it was frozen, processed foods, packed with preservatives. At home, she was feeding her children locally sourced, organic foods. Woodruff believes that feeding children well is a foundation of good education. “If kids come to school hungry, if they don’t have access to adequate nutrition ... their brains aren’t going to be...

Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s recent directive to federal prosecutors to seek the harshest charges and sentences against defendants drew swift opposition from criminal-justice reform advocates both in and outside of government. The policy contrasts sharply with recent efforts to reduce America’s prison population—a goal that’s made odd bedfellows from across the political spectrum—and effectively rolls back Obama-era sentencing reforms. Not surprisingly, former Attorney General Eric...

For some women, enrolling in an engineering course is like running a psychological gauntlet. If they dodge overt problems like sexual harassment, sexist jokes, or poor treatment from professors , they often still have to evade subtler obstacles like the implicit tendency to see engineering as a male discipline. It’s no wonder women in the U.S. hold just 13 to 22 percent of the doctorates in engineering, compared to an already-low 33 percent in the sciences as a whole. Nilanjana Dasgupta ,...

In a small stucco home in San Leandro, California, eight-year-old Kevin is playing Minecraft at his kitchen table when the phone rings. His little sister hands the phone to their mother, Yibi Heras. "It's my dad," Kevin says casually, returning to his game. The call has come from West County Detention in nearby Richmond, where Kevin's father, Maguiber Filomeno Ramos, has been held since immigration agents arrested him at their home in February. [For more of this story, written by Laura...