For more than a year, members of Congress have been doing a lot of talking about the need to broadly reform harsh federal sentencing laws, which are a central factor in the explosion of the federal prison population. It’s an overdue...
LAST month, three ethicists from the University of Pennsylvania argued in the Journal of the American Medical Association that the movement to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill has been a failure. Deinstitutionalization, they wrote, has in...
The Obama administration often touts the health benefits women have gained under the Affordable Care Act, including the option to sign up for coverage outside of open enrollment periods if they're "having a baby." But advocates complain that...
When I first attended an ACES presentation by Dr. Felitti in the mid 2000-aughts, the data was not so much astounding as revelatory. As he ticked off the 10 adverse childhood experiences one-by-one, mental pictures of their...
To paraphrase a beloved children's book, trees are nice—they give us oxygen, filter air pollutants, and absorb rainwater. Plus, research shows that trees in urban areas slow down traffic, foster civic pride and identity, and improve...
I had intended to discuss President Obama’s plans for personalized precision medicine with my patient Barbara last week, but she missed her appointment. Or, more accurately, she arrived two hours late, made the usual giant...
Some clinics, says Dr. Margaret Harris, even had a "no touch" policy to help protect health care workers from infection. But this meant some children weren't getting held or loved. "Lots of things that would normally be done for children were...
Many pregnant teenagers in the Central Valley are highly motivated to graduate from high school and continue their education, but some schools make the task more difficult – and violate federal law–- by funneling expectant and parenting...
Why was it again that, as President Obama said, “we tortured some folks” after the 9/11 attacks? Oh, right, because we were terrified. Because everyone knows that being afraid gives you moral license to do whatever you need to do to...
I am often deeply disturbed by our remorseless witness. We are all implicated; we share responsibility for our witness of well-defined evil. We don’t protect our most vulnerable children; we value people according to arbitrary standards...
School breakfast continues to make significant gains in communities across the U.S., according to two new analyses by the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) released today, which look at school breakfast participation at the district, state, and...
Last year, as my wife and I prepared for the arrival of our second child, I began to worry. My wife is a mid-level manager at an advertising agency with offices around the world. She heads a team, and she’s ferociously dedicated to her...
Photographer Judy Gelles was volunteering in a reading class at a fourth grade in a Philadelphia school when she realized that her students didn't really relate to the stories in the books she was reading to them. So she asked them to tell...
As the plane descended above the lights of Salt Lake City, I wondered about the Mormons living below: "What was I getting myself into?" I (Tracy) was flying from North Carolina into Utah to co-host "Living Room Conversations" between gay people...
Anne Starr was on her way to the state Capitol to lobby legislators on behalf of the Iowa's mentally ill youth when I called her earlier this month. She had marijuana on her mind. No, not for personal use, or even medical use. Starr is CEO of...