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By Susan Gregg, University of Washington Medicine, September 30, 2021 A program to tackle youth incarceration by promoting paths to opportunity for young people, especially among youth of color, is being formed by the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine. The program, Allies in Healthier Systems for Health & Abundance in Youth (AHSHAY), will be directed by Dr. Benjamin Danielson, a clinical professor of pediatrics at UW...

From Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, September 15, 2021 Purpose The People, Parks, and Power initiative comes at a critical moment. Imbalances in political and economic power and a legacy of racial discrimination in the conservation movement have excluded groups led by people of color from full participation in park and green space work or have tokenized their involvement. The P3 initiative is grounded in the premise that urban parks are essential community infrastructure that should serve...

By Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz, The Cut, September 30, 2021 The toll the pandemic has taken on parents , teachers , and health-care workers has been well documented. But comparatively little has been said about how school nurses are handling the return to classrooms. Now they’re on the frontlines, trying to keep students safe as school districts insist on full reopenings, a decision the CDC began pushing in the spring when case numbers were low and vaccines made normal seem within reach. But now,...

By Maeve E. Wallace, Dovile Vilda, Katherine P. Theall, and Charles Stoecker, HealthAffairs, September 22, 2021 Abstract Homicide is a leading cause of death among women who are pregnant and up to one year postpartum in the United States. Most incidents are perpetrated by an intimate partner with a firearm. Some states have implemented laws that prohibit firearm possession by perpetrators of domestic violence and, in some instances, include explicit statutory language mandating...

By Nicole Chavez and Elizabeth Joseph, CNN World, September 30, 2021 Canada observed its first national holiday honoring victims and survivors of the country's residential school system. The statutory holiday came a day after a federal court upheld a 2016 ruling ordering the Canadian government to compensate Indigenous children who were placed into foster care. Thursday's National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and the court decision highlight the history of discrimination and harm toward...

Have you ever been snarky with a partner? Yelled at your kids? Lost it in rush hour traffic or when you couldn’t find your keys? Then you, my friend, have failed to self- regulate! No judgement here! Unfortunately, this is a skill we’ve never been taught and because of that...we see ourselves failing day in and day out. When we lose our cool, uncomfortable feelings come up and we start to feel shame, disconnection, guilt, or anger for our actions. We question ourselves and wonder who we...

Self-harm, also known as self-injury, happens when a person becomes overwhelmed and deliberately hurts their own body. The injuries inflicted on oneself can be anywhere from minor cuts to severe injuries that are life-threatening.

By Tom Wheeler, Brookings, September 30, 2021 F acebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg told listeners to his July 2021 quarterly earnings call that “I expect people will transition from seeing us as a social-media company to seeing us as a metaverse company.” A few weeks later, the business plan had morphed into a political plan and the Washington Post headlined , “How Facebook’s ‘metaverse’ became a political strategy in Washington.” “[T]he metaverse is already a full-on political push,”...

By Bobbi Nodell, University of Washington Medicine, August 25, 2021 John Nolan served in the U.S. Army and Marines and later worked in law enforcement and as a correctional officer. A career spent dealing with traumatic events led to post-traumatic stress disorder and insomnia. He felt like his life was spinning out of control. Nolan was greatly helped by telepsychiatry services in his town, 125 miles from Little Rock, Ark. He was invited to chair the community advisory board for the largest...

By John Blake, CNN, October 2, 2021 At first, Clint Smith had trouble making out the objects beside a white picket fence in the distance. Then he drew closer; what he saw made him shudder. Planted in a garden bed in front of the fence were the heads of 55 Black men impaled on metal rods, their eyes shut and jaws clenched in anguish. Smith, a journalist and a poet, was visiting the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana as part of his quest to understand the impact of slavery in America. He had...

By Carolyn Jones, EdSource, October 1, 2021 S chools should offer more counseling, suspend fewer students and address the underlying mental health challenges of students who misbehave in class, according to the state’s new school discipline guidelines . The guidelines, released last month by the California Department of Education, are intended to help schools navigate an anticipated uptick in student misbehavior following more than a year of remote learning, said department spokesperson...

Why is toxic stress in the first eighteen years of life being called our number one unaddressed public health problem? The suffering and costs associated with ACEs are largely preventable and treatable.