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Many older patients in intensive care experience delirium, but until now it has been difficult for health care workers to gauge the severity of each patient’s condition. Now researchers from the Indiana University (IU) Center for Aging Research have developed a new easy-to-use tool designed to score and track delirium severity in the intensive care unit (ICU), helping health care workers make better decisions about the brain health of ICU patients. Delirium is a rapid change in brain...

The number of U.S. kids who overdose on prescription painkillers each year may be declining -- but the incidents remain a major public health problem, new research says. Since 2009, U.S. poison control centers have seen fewer calls about children and teenagers who've ingested prescription opioids, researchers found. Often, those incidents involved young children who'd gotten hold of an adult's medication. In other cases, it was a teenager who intentionally abused the drug, or used it to...

There’s little disagreement about the fact that economic inequality is problematic. But arguments persist over its origins, solutions, and which economic gaps are ultimately the most pernicious. In his new book, Toxic Inequality: How America's Wealth Gap Destroys Mobility, Deepens the Racial Divide, and Threatens Our Future , Tom Shapiro, a professor of law and sociology at Brandeis University, lays out how government policy and systemic racism has created vast gaps in wealth between white...

Our Louisville, Kentucky , neighborhood of Smoketown sits across the street from the largest concentration of health care services in our state. Yet people here live 9 years less than the typical Louisville resident. Poverty, racism, unemployment and other social determinants of health have created this gap between residents of Smoketown and those from more affluent parts of the city. An artist’s creativity has helped make that disparity concrete. Andrew Cozzens ’ Smoketown Life Line Project...

The girl had already burst into tears when the bold, yellow letters on the man’s jacket came into focus: “Police.” Rómulo Avelica-González had just dropped off his 12-year-old daughter, Yuleni, at a Los Angeles charter school — as he did every morning — and was heading next to the school of his 13-year-old daughter, Fatima. That’s when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents surrounded the undocumented Mexican immigrant’s Dodge Durango. Avelica-González, a 48-year-old father of four...

Like a steady drip, the tally of shootings in Chicago ticks up by the day. As it does, the raw data regularly makes its way to the national media stage—and, at times, even as a mention in the president’s tweets. But the figures alone barely begin to tell the story of the long-term trauma that kids suffer when exposed to such violence. Health experts are more and more coming to terms with the psychological and physical toll that exposure to violence takes on children—and that toll is quite...

On the night of January 26th, volunteers and officials in cities all over the United States fanned out to count the number of homeless people living on the street or in shelters, vehicles, or encampments. This survey, along with an annual count of just those housed in shelters, is mandated by the Department of Housing and Urban Development as a way to provide a snapshot of the U.S.’s homeless population. In California, which accounts for one-fifth of the country’s total homeless population...

The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) has released a report that suggests possible common ground for collaboration between prosecutors and others working to reform juvenile justice policy and practice. New Prosecutorial Perspectives: A Framework for Effective Juvenile Justice summarizes interviews with prosecutors who “have advocated for or advanced innovative practices in juvenile prosecution.” While the Foundation does not endorse this report, we believe it suggests possible common...

A father brings his 10-year-old to your office because the boy is having a hard time paying attention at school, gets in fights with classmates and is oppositional with his teacher. As you take the psychosocial history, it’s important to ask whether the child has been exposed to any abuse, neglect, abandonment or other traumas, according to the updated AAP clinical report Clinical Considerations Related to the Behavioral Manifestations of Child Maltreatment. [For more of this story, written...

I often mention in my blog posts how we had to disconnect from our body when we were children in order to survive the abuse we endured. This is how our nervous system protected us. It knew the abuse was too much for our tender young mind, spirit, and soul to handle. However, when you grow up, this coping skill turns toxic and works against you. To fix that, you must learn how to reconnect with your body. Why? Because you can’t connect with others in a meaningful way until you connect with...

Many American parents don't count on getting a same-day appointment with their child's doctor and turn to other health care options when their kids are suddenly sick, a new survey finds. More than 2,000 parents of youngsters up to age 18 were surveyed in the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health. The parents were asked about trying to make a health provider appointment or to get health advice if their child woke up with a sore throat and fever. Forty-two percent of...

Our success has been unquestionable. There has been a steep decline in youth incarceration in America and there has even been some progress moving juvenile justice systems away from being punitive and deficit-based and toward positive youth development. Much credit is due to youth justice reform advocates. According to the U.S. Department of Justice’s annual count of juvenile facility populations, there has been a 40 percent reduction in youth incarceration in the U.S. in the past 10 years.