Blog

Throughout his insurgent campaign for the presidency, Donald Trump spoke about the nation’s growing opioid epidemic, vowing to “ stop the flow of illegal drugs into the country. ” While these statements aligned with President Trump’s unsurprisingly tough stance on immigration, they also spoke to the real concerns of many rural, white voters who broke for Trump in states like Maine and West Virginia. On Wednesday, Trump appeared to make good on his promises to those voters, announcing that he...

If you were asked to imagine what a survivor of human trafficking looked like, how would you picture them? For someone exposed to stories of trafficking through blockbuster movies and Sunday night cable news specials, the image would probably be one of a woman, perhaps alongside images of someone who has done something awful to her. But who is that woman, outside that sensationalizing spotlight? She could be one of the nearly two million workers in the United States (according to an estimate...

Sen. Holly Mitchell sits at her desk on the fifth floor of the Capitol and holds up a book. On the cover a small boy in oversized jeans and a Tommy Hilfiger T-shirt stands on a plastic milk crate, too small to reach, as a police officer presses the young child’s ink-soaked fingertips onto a piece of paper. “That image just stuck with me,” Mitchell said. The senator from Los Angeles is pushing a bill through the Legislature that would bar the state from prosecuting children under age 12. In...

When my son was five weeks old, he began to turn away from my breast even when hungry. He’d suck, then cry sharply, and twist away. I called the office of the pediatrician I’d chosen while pregnant, but she had no free appointments, so I saw another doctor in the practice instead. I’ll call him Dr. Jones. He examined my son, told me he had “gas pains,” and asked me, “Are you feeling anxious about being a good mom?” The next day my son seemed better. Was I overly anxious, I asked myself? Then...

Knowing is not enough. Just being informed about trauma, the neurobiology of trauma, epigenetics is not enough. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) asserts an organization is more than just informed once the program or organization: " Recognizes the signs and symptoms of trauma in clients, families, staff, and others involved with the system; Responds by fully integrating knowledge about trauma into policies, procedures, and practices; and Seeks to actively...

Our Toolkit, called "Hard Times and Healing: Addressing the Intersections Between Domestic Violence and Other Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)" was launched at a statewide training with domestic violence advocates in Alaska at the end of February. In collaboration with the Washington State Domestic Violence Coalition and several tribes in Washington, the Toolkit will be shared through a series of training events in May, 2017. The concept of creating a toolkit on ACEs for domestic...

In 2015, New York announced it had reached a landmark settlement with the New York Civil Liberties Union, which sued over the state's aggressive use of solitary confinement to discipline inmates. Five Mualimm-ak is one of the activists who pushed for the changes. He spent five years in solitary and says it left him broken. "When people say you survived solitary? Nobody survives that," he says. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, agreed to a multi-year process phasing in limits on the time inmates...

People with schizophrenia may face an increased risk for serious infections, a new study suggests. "The preliminary data results suggest that individuals with schizophrenia have higher prevalence of all types of severe infections compared to the background population," study author Monika Pankiewicz-Dulacz, from the University of Southern Denmark, and colleagues wrote. "Clinicians should be aware that people with schizophrenia are the risk group for severe infections. General guidelines and...

On Jan. 21, hundreds of thousands of women gathered in Washington and other cities to send the message that “women’s rights are human rights.” The broad agenda for the marches included issues as disparate as LGBT rights, immigration reform, pay equality and even environmental protection. Though very different, all were issues we have come to expect to see appended to a gender equality agenda. What we don’t often hear on the national stage is a call for broad reform of how women and girls are...

In January, Dylann Roof was sentenced to death for killing nine black churchgoers at a prayer meeting in Charleston, S.C. Since then, some commentators have debated whether Roof should have had the right to fire his attorneys when they wished to introduce evidence of mental illness — and whether, or when, mental illness should disqualify someone for capital punishment. Most Americans oppose the death penalty for the mentally ill, a category that ranges from mild to severe. But our research...

The small immigration court in Imperial County, California, is arguably the country’s most inefficient. Planted squarely in a county that shares a border with Mexico, it is the only one of its 57 sisters in the country that hasn’t had a permanent sitting judge for over two years. At a backlog of about 4,000, the Imperial Immigration Court has the second-highest number of pending immigration cases per capita in California (behind only San Francisco). As far as the Department of Justice (DOJ)...

Did the many protests against killing the Affordable Care Act — including loud demonstrations at public forums — convince moderate members of the House of Representatives to vote no? A number of left-leaning commentators, including New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait , argue they did. Newly published research provides hard data that backs up Chait’s anecdotal evidence. It finds protests can and do change lawmakers’ minds — if they are well-organized and well-behaved. “Can protesters — by who...