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By Adrienne Cole Johnson, L.T. Moon, Ram Bhagat and Trey Hartt Justice is a common theme throughout American history, with varying perceptions of goals and definitions along the way. While some may feel as though justice is alive and well, many, many citizens with a close pulse on the diverse communities of our country are identifying with a growing perception of the divide regarding just and fair treatment for individuals within the intersection of race, class, and culture. Attempting to...

Editor’s Note: Southern California Group’s sister publications in the San Francisco Bay Area produced this report, the latest installment in their series investigating doctors’ use of powerful anti-psychotic drugs to control the behavior of the state’s foster children. For years, few questioned how doctors treated the emotional trauma of California’s abused and neglected children — and nobody monitored how often they handed out psychiatric drugs that can turn fragile childhoods into battles...

Remember middle school? Remember how everything could be mortifying, especially if you didn't have the right brand of jeans or that certain kind of backpack or the expensive boat shoes everyone else (yes, everyone, Mom!) has? Now imagine middle school if you not only couldn't afford those brands, but you couldn't even find a way to clean the clothes you do have. The prospect might just be mortifying enough to make you skip class altogether. Now, two school districts have found that the...

As I write this, we are 10,288 strong! Sometime over the last month, we passed 10,000. Just three short years ago there were 1,000 members of ACEsConnection. This isn't your kids' social network. We don't just yammer or tweet or FB or snapchat at each other. The people who are part of ACEsConnection are either using the knowledge of ACEs science to change themselves, their families, their organizations, their systems or their communities....or they're planning on it. The other milestone was...

Shared learnings from 14 communities across the country are now available on the Mobilizing Action for Resilient Communities (MARC) website . MARC is funded by the Health Federation of Philadelphia , through support from The California Endowment and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation . This month's shared learning focuses on the use of film to mobilize action across communities. Films like Paper Tigers and the PBS documentary series The Raising of America , just to name a few, have been...

Before he nearly starved to death, Malik Staton was a goofy, charming 12-year-old with an infectious smile, good grades and the kind of potential that teachers get excited about. But life at home was difficult. His parents got divorced. His father went to prison, and Malik took on the role of the man of the house. Malik was stoic at first, telling his mom that he would help her with his five younger siblings. But the self-imposed pressure was too much. Malik stopped eating. As his weight...

Multiple new research studies indicate that there are many physical and mental health benefits to gain from taking a holiday, some reportedly remaining even two months after we have returned to the daily grind. However, research also shows that certain habits and attitudes can neutralize these benefits, and even leave you more tired, stressed out, unhealthy and overwhelmed than how you started out. With the average vacation time a year typically being less than 20 days per year, thankfully...

Philadelphia has plenty of primary-care providers overall, but there is far less access to care in communities with the highest concentrations of African American residents, according to a new study. [For more of this story, written by Don Sapatkin, go to http://www.philly.com/philly/health/20160809_Study_of_Phila__neighborhoods_finds_big_disparities_in_health-care_access_by_race.html]

Effective education 'reform' is student-centered

All too often, patients in psychiatric crisis end up in a hospital emergency room where they have to wait sometimes for hours to receive care. Once there, they get checked out by doctors and nurses and often wait to either receive treatment, sometimes resulting in admission to psychiatric department, or get discharged to go home. With that in mind, Billings Clinic announced Monday that its Clinic Classic fundraiser would go toward expanding its psychiatric department while building a new...

When music artist Kehlani posted photos of herself after her suicide attempt on Instagram , she was bombarded with backlash on the post itself as well as on Twitter and other social media outlets. Some users, mainly those of her primarily black fan base, called her “selfish” and an “attention-seeker.” Singer Chris Brown tweeted that “there is no attempting suicide. Stop flexing for the gram.” This aggression is the result of a stigmatized, biased understanding of mental health in the black...

Kofi Annan, the seventh U.N. secretary general, knew empowerment was key in 2005 when he said, “There is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women.” Turns out it’s good tool for girls in 2016, too. At least this is what For Girls Global Leadership , or 4GGL, found in its Women’s Empowerment Global Survey. The results, “Voice & Choice: What Young Women Want,” were released this spring. The survey found that 60 percent of the young women interviewed see...