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Consider the case of an African American girl, born to a single mother into abject poverty. She was raped at age 9, and pregnant at 14. Or think about a young Latina, the child of an alcoholic father and a depressed mother. This girl developed diabetes at age 8 and lost her father the following year. You might think neither girl had much hope of success. Yet the first child grew up to be entertainment mogul Oprah Winfrey; the second, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. [For more of this...

Viral videos are not new. Every few weeks, something will be posted in a forum such as YouTube or Facebook; a few friends will share the video with one another, and then suddenly, that video is being watched by millions. The most recent viral video takes this to a new level. April the Giraffe was not just a video, it was a live camera streaming online, allowing viewers to watch a pregnant giraffe and ultimately watch the birth of her calf. So, what makes the viral giraffe cam different than...

In a video on the Resilient KC website, police officer Mikki Cassidy notes that “my regular day is everybody else’s worst day.” Then she describes how mindfulness training has helped her find peace amid the clamor: “This moment, right here, I’m okay.” Later in the clip, Sonia Warshawski, a Holocaust survivor, recalls being shoved onto a train to Treblinka and, later, losing her mother to the gas chamber. “One of my highest points is when I speak in schools, when students tell me, ‘You...

Last week, a group of California-based foundations announced a $1.3 million investment into nonprofit community-based organizations in 11 of the state’s counties, including Los Angeles, through the Positive Youth Justice Initiative. This comes after two previous investments as part of PYJI’s three-phase initiative to eliminate racial disparities and transform the state’s juvenile justice system to better serve California’s vulnerable youth in need of trauma-informed care. This third monetary...

By James Molnar / Janice Houchins / Michael L. Howard / Mike Johnson / Members, Stark County Family Council Trauma & Resiliency Initiative Charita Goshay’s April 5 article “ Did childhood help lead a man to murder ?” evokes thoughts of Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs. Many of us have at least one ACE, events we were around or witnessed in our youth. The 10 ACEs are: substance abuse, parental separation/divorce, mental illness, battered mother, criminal behavior, psychological...

“Homeless women are something of a sociological mystery,” wrote University of Virginia social scientist Ted Caplow, Ph.D . While he wasn’t talking about homeless women veterans, he might as well have been. As a phenomenon, they manage to be starkly invisible — rarely included in discussions about homeless veterans as a whole, ignored in the popular media and under-researched in the academic literature. Further adding to their marginalized status is the fact it seems almost impossible to come...

Sesame Street has unveiled a brand new website and initiative called Sesame Street in Communities . Here, you’ll find hundreds of bilingual multi-media tools to help kids and families enrich and expand their knowledge during the early years of birth through six. Our resources engage kids and adults in everyday moments and daily routines—from teaching early math and literacy concepts, to encouraging families to eat nutritious foods , to addressing serious topics such as divorce and food...

On a recent weekday, an unlikely crew of 18-to-24 year-olds gathered in a classroom in an office building, proving wrong a mantra often heard in economic development: Training programs aren’t effective at getting people good jobs. From 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., the students, mostly minorities from poor families, will tinker with computers, hone their e-mail skills,work on PowerPoint presentations, and even practice giving professional handshakes. And in a few months’ time, the 80 students will move...

As part of a growing movement that looks at stable housing as a health issue, a local insurance provider is wading into Los Angeles' efforts to end homelessness. L.A. Care, the county's largest MediCal health plan, announced Thursday it will donate $20 million over the next five years to a program that houses homeless people who have medical issues. "The research is showing that if people don't have basic needs like food and shelter, their health-care expenses are going to be higher because...

In this letter to the editor , a reader from California, Kathleen Streeter, questions whether or not young people are learning the skills they need through our public education system to become informed and engaged voters. To answer her, we reached out to Alex Robins, a social science high school teacher in San Rafael, California to get his perspective. To the Editor, I am a 75-year-old retired banker. I have always tried to be informed and have never failed to vote in an election, local or...

How do people become addicted to pain pills? This question has taken on prime importance, as about two million Americans are thought to be dependent on prescription painkillers, and prescription-pill overdoses have quadrupled since 1999. [For more of this story, written by Francie Diep, go to https://psmag.com/when-surgery-leads-to-a-prescription-painkiller-dependence-3120d6dacd76]

An important part of my job working as a pediatrician in one of the most impoverished communities in America for children, is writing for our local newspaper. My 50th article for the Inquirer was published yesterday and is all about resilience. Here it is, please share http://www.philly.com/philly/health/kidshealth/Overcome-toxic-stress-poverty-Oprah-Sotomayor-kids-health-resiliency.html...