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By Brian Rinker, Photo: Freida Frisaro/AP, Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, April 13, 2022 Even as drug use has declined among teenagers during the pandemic, overdose deaths increased, likely due to the highly potent opioid fentanyl, according to a new study . Overdose deaths among teenagers 14-18 held steady for years before doubling in 2020 as the pandemic set in, and they continued to climb last year. A total of 1,146 adolescents in this age group died in 2021 — 20% over 954 deaths...

By Madison Hunt, Illustration: Christine Ongjoco/The Imprint, The Imprint, April 13, 2022 I n a series of social media posts launched today, women cradle their pregnant bellies. They kiss their newborns and lovingly nurse their tiny infants. “Black mamas deserve quality healthcare and unconditional support,” the messages spread by a campaign of New York advocates for low-income parents and families state. “We must make healthcare safe for birthing people at all times.” The coalition behind...

By Moya Sarner, Photo: David Levene/The Guardian, The Guardian, April 12, 2022 P ete Knapp, 36, who lives in London, has visited North Korea, travelled overland from Kenya to Cape Town, motorcycled through Japan and Cambodia and trekked by horse through China. Until a few years ago, “I felt invincible,” he says. He had never experienced anxiety, or worried about the climate crisis. Then, in 2019, he went to Borneo. “I remember flying in one of those small planes over a part of Borneo that...

By Hang Do Thi Duc, Christy Harmon, Melonyce McAfee, and Jaspal Riyait, The New Work Times, April 12, 2022 This is not what Ida Adams thought life would be like at 62. She had planned to continue working as a housekeeper at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore until she turned 65. After retiring, she and her husband, Andre, also 62, thought they might travel a little — “get up and go whenever we felt like it.” She didn’t expect to be hustling a seventh-grader off to school each weekday. But...

The accelerating global climate-ecosystem-biodiversity emergency will increasingly disrupt every aspect of society. It is a "wicked" problem, meaning it results from numerous factors that interact in new and surprising ways to defy standard solutions. The pervasive distresses and traumas it generates are also "wicked" problems: they result from multiple forces that often interact non-linearly and will, over time, impact everyone and every community on earth. No single profession,...

TRIGGER ALERT - CONTENT REFERENCING SEXUAL ASSAULT, CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING, PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL ABUSE. April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. I don’t think it matters which month it is—when you feel called to share a portion of your story the calendar is irrelevant. In my case, the calendar serendipitously lined up with a surgery that occurred the same month. I had a full hysterectomy because of a large fibroid tumor in the wall of my uterus and multiple tumors in and on my ovaries. The...

Remembering past trauma begins the “re-membering” process of taking our fragmented pieces and putting them back together. This applies to individuals with trauma, as well as the collective traumas we experience in societies and our world. Remembering trauma is a growth process because the memories open the door to putting all the pieces together which leads to our healing. We know that our physiological reactions to trauma are held in our bodies and DNA. As individuals, before we can begin...

By Joseph Stiglitz, Photo: Unsplash, Roosevelt Institute, April 7, 2022 Like previous disruptions to the global economy, Russia’s war in Ukraine has highlighted the fallacy of relying on markets alone to mitigate risks and strengthen countries’ resilience. Neoliberalism has failed yet another test and must finally be replaced by a new economic vision based on new values. The fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reminded us of the unforeseeable disruptions constantly confronting the...

By Michael Warren, Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP Photo, Associated Press, April 12, 2022 The National Urban League released its annual report on the State of Black America on Tuesday, and its findings are grim. This year’s Equality Index shows Black people still get only 73.9% of the American pie white people enjoy. While Black people have made economic and health gains, they’ve slipped further behind white people in education, social justice and civic engagement since this index was launched in...

By Phillip Reese, Image: Screenshot from article, California Healthline, April 11, 2022 The stunning climb in homicide rates in recent years in California and big cities across the nation obscures a remarkably good-news trend involving young children: The number of child homicide victims fell dramatically in California over the past decade, the latest death certificate data shows, a pattern mirrored to a lesser extent nationwide. In 1991, California’s coroners officially classified 133...

By Noah Weiland, Photo: Elaine Cromie/The New York Times, The New York Times, April 9, 2022 In an underserved neighborhood of Michigan’s capital city, a health clinic is being built with nearly $900,000 in federal pandemic relief funds, a project that could transform the community’s access to care. Wedged among new affordable apartments and a community center, the clinic is a symbol of the rapid effect the funds have had on many local public health programs. In Michigan and some other...

By Margaret Sullivan, Photo: Brian Snyder/Reuters, The Washington Post, April 10, 2022 The unemployment rate is at an encouragingly low point. Less than 4 percent of the labor force is actively seeking work. And the latest monthly Labor Department report showed another healthy spike in the number of new jobs — they’ve been steadily on the rise for many months in a row. But if you ask regular Americans about the jobs climate, a surprising number of them seem to think the opposite is true.