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José Quiñonez has spent most of the past decade helping the financially invisible build credit and obtain loans. Last week, his commitment to helping low-income communities, which are so often excluded from the mainstream banking system, earned him $625,000 in the form of a MacArthur genius grant. He’s one of 23 this year to win genius grants, which are given to people who have demonstrated unusual creativity, are highly accomplished in their field, and show they have significant potential.

In 2006, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) launched a bold, ten year experiment that became one of its largest philanthropic investments—the Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) initiative which sought to lift the overall quality, equality, and value of health care in 16 communities across the country. In each AF4Q community, a regional alliance of doctors, patients, consumers, insurers, and employers worked collaboratively to transform their local health care system. Lessons from...

The First Way – Compassionate Accountability In my office, I’ve heard from clients stories of broken phones, punched walls, and even bent steering wheels. All in the name of anger. At themselves. For making a mistake. What You Didn’t Get When a parent sits down with a child who has behaved badly, used poor judgment, or made a mistake, and says, “Let’s figure out what happened,” that parent is teaching her (or his) child Compassionate Accountability. But many parents don’t know that it’s...

What makes a city fragile? There are eleven factors that “undermine metropolitan capacity and legitimacy,” according to a global ranking devised by the creators of this new world map of 2,100 cities that have more 250,000 or more residents. Some have their hands full with local issues like crime , unemployment, and pollution; others are grappling with the consequences of war, unable to provide even the most basic services required for the safety and well-being of their residents. Still...

Rita was the wife of a chemist at the Swiss drug company CIBA who concocted a new stimulant by modifying amphetamine, and Rita enjoyed tennis. The chemist shared his invention with his wife, and—to their delight—the substance had a wonderful effect on her tennis game. He named the new drug in honor of his darling. He named the new drug Ritaline. In 1956, CIBA began marketing this drug as Ritalin in the United States, for a wide range of adult psychiatric maladies. But soon, evidence emerged...

Russell Wilson, an ACEsConnection.com member from New Zealand, posted a question to the community in which he noted that a “heck of a lot of people” with ACEs who enter treatment are often never asked about those histories, and that this approach is not honoring their right to appropriate and adequate treatment. It’s an issue that’s come up often in many ways and in many settings besides mental health. Some trauma-informed training never mentions the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood...

The management philosophy I advocate, Lean Thinking [ LINK HERE ], adheres to a principle popularized by Dr. W. Edwards Deming, “Continuous Improvement.” [ LINK HERE ] He stated as his fifth point of 14 points for the transformation of management, “ 5. Improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease costs.” As I have explained in past blogs, the restoration to health strategy (RtH) I envision has a...

Looking out upon the worshippers at New Era Church in downtown Indianapolis, Rev. Dr. Clarence C. Moore sees row after row of families facing difficult challenges stemming from a pressing statewide problem: the over-incarceration of black people. Indiana ranks second in the country for the number of children who have an incarcerated parent. As a result, many children live in single-parent households or foster care, and live in poverty. Many lack a formal education until they reach...

Children and families dealing with mental health and behavioral issues have a new option for in-home specialized care with Family Institute of Tennessee’s expansion into the Memphis market earlier this year. The company works with Medicaid recipients under the age of 21 who have some type of behavioral symptom that qualifies them for mental health services. One in five children experience a mental disorder each year, including attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), disruptive...

If it takes three examples to label something a fad, then San Francisco, Seattle, and New York City have collectively been some of American labor’s most prolific trendsetters. In recent years, the three coastal cities were among the first and highest-profile polities to instate a $15 minimum wage, efforts that begot statewide regulations in California and New York and inspired legislation around the country. This urban triumvirate is also part of a handful of American cities to adopt...

My father said on numerous occasions when I was growing up that he would see other families that had problems like divorce and drug use, and he would thank God that his family was so perfect. Things would change, though. They always do. And that perfect family would face just as much struggle as any other. Growing up in the mountains above Boulder, Colo., our life was good. My parents had left their life in Chicago behind for an ideal they saw in a piece of art they found at a flea market, a...

I arranged a visit to the Chattanooga Girls Leadership Academy here fully intending to look into the rise of single-sex public education, particularly schools that focus explicitly on educating girls of color. In the decade since No Child Left Behind prompted changes in federal law that ultimately made it easier to create all-boys and all-girls schools, the number of single-sex public schools has exploded, many of them aimed at boys and girls of color. (Full disclosure: I attended an...