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A scan done in March by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) through StateNet of bills introduced in 2017 that specifically include adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) in the text produced a surprising volume of bills (close of 40) in a large number of states (18). A scan done a year ago produced less than a handful. NCSL is a bipartisan organization that serves both state legislators and their staffs. The shear volume of bills in so many states represents a promising...

It’s a warm spring afternoon and Arturo Soriano is in his old stomping grounds—at Teralta Park, a small urban park atop a sunken freeway in San Diego’s City Heights neighborhood. As a teenage gang member in the 1980s, Soriano roamed the park and the surrounding streets before spending the better part of two decades in prison. Now 40, he has returned with a different mission.

The wealthiest men in San Diego County can expect to live almost a decade longer than their poorest counterparts. That’s one of the findings from the Health Inequality Project , a report written by researchers from Stanford, Harvard and MIT. In 2014, the most recent year available, a 40-year-old San Diego County man in the top quarter of income earners could expect to live to almost 90. A man of the same age in the bottom quarter of income would only expect to live to 80. Steven Eldred with...

There is fresh reason to hope that San Diego really can solve its homeless crisis, arresting the moral and political decline that has made us a national disgrace. Last week, Mayor Kevin Faulconer proposed to raise hotel taxes, through a November ballot initiative that would guarantee funding for the homeless, expand the convention center and maintain roads. Meanwhile, the city’s Housing Our Heroes program of landlord incentives has put 630 homeless veterans (using mostly federal Department...

In an effort to prevent thousands of pounds of leftover school meals from being thrown away, the San Diego Unified School District is set to officially launch a new “food recovery program.” Dubbed the “Love Food Not Waste Program,” the goal is to divert leftover school meals into local organizations facing food shortages, according to a SDUSD news release. The Love Food Not Waste Program is a partnership between SDUSD and Feeding San Diego . Feeding San Diego coordinates with additional...

San Diego Unified School District administrators and teachers will have calendars showing Islamic holidays, students will learn more about the religion in social studies classes and safe places will be created on campuses for Muslim students as part of a multi-tiered approach to combat Islamophobia. Stan Anjan, the district’s executive director of family and community engagement, said elements of the plan approved this week will be laid out before the end of the school year — with a goal of...

What would it take to transform the Euclid and Imperial Avenue corridor into an art district in San Diego? Barry Pollard wanted to find out. The Urban Collaborative project is in talks with Civic San Diego to take responsibility for the vacant lot at Imperial Avenue and 50th Street. The space has gone unused since 1996 when the old Valencia Park Library closed. It reopened as the Valencia Park Malcolm X library on Market Street. Pollard said he is optimistic about the community’s future. He...

Broken-hearted children are more likely to suffer from mental and physical illnesses as adults. Leaders from all sectors came together to screen Jamie Redford’s Sundance-debuted film, Resilience: The Biology of Stress and the Science of Hope , which chronicles the promising beginnings of a national movement to prevent childhood trauma, treat toxic stress and improve the health of current and future generations. ACEs are defined as Adverse Childhood Events, such as the loss of a parent...

For youth in underserved San Diego neighborhoods, Francisco Carbajal is a turnaround specialist. He has a gift for diverting at-risk students away from the juvenile justice system and toward a path to educational achievement and community leadership. Francisco manages the Restorative Community Conferencing (RCC) Program at the National Conflict Resolution Center (NCRC) as part of the organization’s celebrated “Avoiding the Pipeline to Prison” Initiative. With strong support from regional law...

Every other year, the North County Gang Commission and County of San Diego host the Building Better Futures Summit, a free community event to provide residents with the latest information on gang reduction, intervention, prevention and suppression efforts in North County. The most recent summit was held earlier this year at the North Inland Live Well Center in Escondido on Thursday, February 2, 2017. Over 180 individuals representing the community, mental health, child welfare, public...

t’s easy to see why collective impact —the commitment of a group of important cross-sector actors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem—caught fire in 2010. During an economic downturn, when few new resources were available, a voice said there was a way to do more with what we already had. The concept offered hope for achieving results at the scale we desired, even though we were feeling constrained. And thank goodness. Collective impact both validated work that had been...

Father Joe’s Village’s bold announcement that it plans to add 2,000 housing units over the next five years is also a bold declaration: San Diego’s homelessness problem is a housing problem. To address that, Father Joe’s wants to invest $531 million in public and private dollars in permanent housing for people who are now homeless. They plan to renovate more than a dozen motels at locations to be determined, build hundreds of new units and transform some of those they’ve already got into...