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Why U.S. Maternal Mortality is WORSE Than You Think Homicide is the leading cause of maternal mortality, we just don't count it Jeremy Nay, AMERICAN INEQUALITY blog, March 5, 2025 Today’s article is about how America is dramatically under counting maternal mortality. This is because we fail to include the #1 cause of deaths for pregnant women and new mothers: homicide (usually associated with domestic violence). Homicide is the leading cause of maternal mortality Nationally, there were...

Original Investigation March 3, 2025 Rates of Population-Level Child Sexual Abuse After a Community-Wide Preventive Intervention Jennie G. Noll, PhD 1,2 ; Johnny Felt, PhD 3 ; Justin Russotti, PhD 1,2 ; et al Kate Guastaferro, PhD 4 ; Sunshine Day, MS 5 ; Zachary Fisher, PhD 5 Author Affiliations Article Information JAMA Pediatr. Published online March 3, 2025. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2024.6824...

Speaker Mike Johnson is "anxious" to get the Take It Down Act to the House floor, he said today during a roundtable with First Lady Melania Trump and victims of child sexual abuse material. Why it matters: Online safety legislation is moving quickly this Congress, despite tech policy bills often struggling to make it over the finish line, Maria Curi reports for Axios Pro: Tech Policy. The Take It Down Act — which would force platforms to remove child sexual abuse material and nonconsensual...

I Broke Up With My Abusive Mother. I Don’t Regret That Decision. By Eamon Dolan, The New York Times, March 2, 2025 Mr. Dolan is the author of the forthcoming “The Power of Parting: Finding Peace and Freedom Through Family Estrangement.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/opinion/my-family-estrangement.html Twelve years ago, I broke up with my mother. She beat me and my siblings hundreds of times in our youth, and she inflicted on us an array of other behaviors that qualified as emotional...

From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/federal-policy-debates-in-2025-carry-high-stakes Federal Policy Debates in 2025 Carry High Stakes Proposals in recent House Republican budget plans, the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, and past Trump Administration budgets call for massive disinvestment in a wide range of federally funded services and supports. If even some of these proposals are enacted, more families will struggle to pay their...

GOOD NEWS! In the midst of the chaotic and dysfunctional budgeting process at the end of the year the U.S. Senate passed H.R. 9076, the Protecting America’s Children by Strengthening Families Act , also known as the Supporting America's Children and Families Act, by unanimous consent! It was previously passed by the House. It now goes to President Biden for his signature into law. H.R. 9076 reauthorizes and updates Title IV-B of the Social Security Act, a critical child welfare law, through...

Middle-schooler finds goose poop that has cancer-fighting compound “My mom, auntie and grandma have all had cancer, so it makes me happy that something I found could help,” said Camarria Williams. https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2024/12/22/middle-school-stem-goose-poop/...

The Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act is officially headed to President Biden’s desk. The Stop Institutional Child Abuse Act, a bill Ro Khanna introduced last year, tackles abuse and neglect in the so-called “troubled teen” industry. Paris Hilton, a survivor of this abuse, spoke out about her experience and inspired change. Each year, tens of thousands of children are neglected, abused, and exploited by an industry that sells itself as a solution for troubling behavior while traumatizing...

Pediatrics is becoming medicine’s largest skeleton crew Low pay, high pressure, and a troubling political landscape — it’s all adding up By Jared E. Boyce and Faith Crittenden, STAT OPINION Nov. 27, 2024 Two years ago, the RSV epidemic shook pediatric hospitals across the country along with the pediatric residents in them. One of us, Faith, was a resident at the time, and she and her colleagues refer to it as the dark ages : Whether they were arriving for their morning shifts or leaving...

From MOTHER JONES DAILY December 11, 2024 by Julianne McShane https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/12/child-advocacy-centers-voca/utm_source=mjnewsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-newsletter-12-11-2024 While House Speaker Mike Johnson rushed to institute trans bathroom restrictions at the Capitol last month, the same swift action has not been extended to a looming crisis that could devastate services for abused children. It’s very possible you’ve never heard of these...

Abstract Intimate partner violence (IPV) can include emotional, physical, or sexual violence. IPV during pregnancy is a preventable cause of injury and death with negative short- and long-term impacts for pregnant women, infants, and families. Using data from the 2016–2022 Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System in nine U.S. jurisdictions, CDC examined associations between IPV during pregnancy among women with a recent live birth and the following outcomes: prenatal care initiation,...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/11/22/most-fulfilling-jobs-america-may-not-be-ones-you-expect/?utm_campaign=wp_news_alert_revere_trending_now&utm_medium=email&utm_source=alert&location=alert

WA voters to decide on future of funding source for child care, education Story by Eric Tegethoff, Public News Service, October 24, 2024 Washington voters are deciding on the fate of the state's capital gains tax this election. The tax supports child care and schools. If passed, Initiative 2109 would repeal a 7% tax on capital gains for assets worth more than $250,000. Supporters of the repeal said capital gains taxes are volatile and it could lead to an income tax down the road. Wesley...

The study described below documents the tragic effect caused by the medical establishment's - especially psychiatrists' - continued ignorance and avoidance of the traumatic effects of childhood abuse and neglect. The FDA adopted policies based on an ignorant understanding of adolescent depression, suicidality, suicides and antidepressant prescriptions. The lack of recognition of child abuse and neglect as the underlying cause of distress (and resultant treatment) in many patients led to a...

Project 2025 is a dense and detailed public policy road map over 900 pages long, developed to influence the functions of the US government for the long haul by the influential Heritage Foundation . This is a deep and thorough document which makes detailed policy and program recommendations for key White House staff, cabinet positions, Congress, federal agencies, commissions and boards. The plan goes so far as to outline a vetting process for appointing, hiring and educating the “right...

From THE CENTER ON BUDGET AND PRIORITIES Almost two-thirds of custodial families nationwide receive services from the federal child support program — nearly 8 million custodial parents and 13 million children . Child support can be a significant source of income for families struggling to make ends meet, helping them pay for children’s basic needs and other costs that often can only be met with cash, like housing, food, school supplies, and clothing. But families who are receiving or have...

Acevedo-Garcia, D., McArdle, N., Shafer, L., & Noelke, C. The State of Racial/Ethnic Equity in Children’s Neighborhood Opportunity: First Findings from the Child Opportunity Index 3.0. diversitydatakids.org and Brandeis University. https://www.diversitydatakids.org/research-library/state-racialethnic-equity-childrens-neighborhood-opportunity The Children’s Hospital Association (CHA) has integrated the Child Opportunity Index into its Pediatric Health Information System (PHIS), a vast...

From Axios, December 20, 2023 Stanford researchers have discovered over 1,000 child sexual abuse images in an AI dataset used to train popular image generation tools such as Stable Diffusion. Why it matters: Illegal child sexual abuse material (CSAM) represents an extreme example of the wider problem of AI developers not having or sharing clear records of what material is used to train their models. It may take only a small selection of CSAM images create many more new and realistic...

When bullied students end their lives, parents are suing. And schools are paying. A Washington Post analysis found nearly 200 incidents in recent years when a bullied student took his or her own life. Some schools are paying out millions and changing policies. By Donna St. George THE WASHINGTON POST, November 10, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EST Gabriel Taye was a slight boy who wore button-down shirts and neckties to his Cincinnati elementary school. Just 8 years old, he loved learning and made the...

Supreme Court poised to uphold federal domestic-violence gun ban While the outcome in U.S. v. Rahimi appeared clear, the real debate on Tuesday was over how to decide which gun regulations are allowed going forward. From LAW DORK, A blog by Chris Geidner, Nov 7, 2023 After 90 minutes of arguments on Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court appeared to be extremely likely to uphold the federal law criminalizing firearm possession by those individuals who have a domestic-violence restraining order out...

Childhood adversity and COVID-19 outcomes in the UK Biobank, Jamie L Hanson, Kristen O’Connor , Dorthea J Adkins, Isabella Kahhale http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0469-8886 Correspondence to Dr Jamie L Hanson, Learning, Research, & Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA; jamie.hanson@pitt.edu Abstract Objectives This study aims to investigate the association between childhood adversity and COVID-19-related hospitalisation and COVID-19-related mortality in the...

"The newly elected Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, has previously proposed trillions of dollars in cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and suggested that slashing the programs should be the top priority of Congress. During his tenure as chair of the Republican Study Committee (RSC) between 2019 and 2021, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) helped craft budget resolutions that called for roughly $2 trillion in Medicare cuts, $3 trillion in Medicaid and Affordable...

Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Causal Effects of Admission to Highly Selective Private Colleges Raj Chetty, David J. Deming, John Friedman NBER Working Paper NO. 31492 July 2023 Leadership positions in the U.S. are disproportionately held by graduates of a few highly selective private colleges. Could such colleges — which currently have many more students from high-income families than low-income families — increase the socioeconomic diversity of America’s leaders by...

By Lauren Weber , Dan Diamond and Dan Keating (The Washington Post) Oct. 3 , 2023 ASHTABULA, Ohio — Mike Czup unspooled the hose to wash his hearse. It was time to pick up the body of yet another neighbor who had died in the prime of life. Since he started working at 15 in the funeral business, Czup has seen plenty of tragedies. But the 52-year-old said he’s still coming to grips with a disturbing fact about the bodies he washes, embalms and entombs: About a quarter of the people he buries...

Viewpoint July 31, 2023 Seeking a Balanced View of Child Protective Services Howard Dubowitz, MD, MS 1 ; Richard P. Barth, PhD, MSW 1 Author Affiliations Article Information JAMA Pediatr. 2023;177(10):991-992. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2023.2578 A s professionals working closely with child protective services (CPS) for many years, we are well aware of its shortcomings, particularly undertrained and overwhelmed staff who may inadequately protect children and serve families as mandated by...

From AXIOS 10-2-23

With a long history of bipartisan support for corporate power and profit and continued systemic racism and neglect of basic needs, the United States is failing to provide basic resources and security to all its residents. These are the underlying causes of falling life expectancy, falling family formation, family stress, insecurity, and increasing mental distress, domestic violence and child abuse and deaths, including from drug use, alcoholism and suicide (deaths of despair). These are the...

The federal policy neglect of adequate community and family support for children to thrive in the United States is tragic and borders on the criminal. "Neighborhood context and children's health care utilization and health outcomes: a comprehensive descriptive analysis of national survey data" Health Affairs Scholar , Volume 1, Issue 3, September 2023, qxad038, https://doi.org/10.1093/haschl/qxad038 Abstract While child health and health care disparities arising from unequal distribution of...

Original Investigation July 24, 2023 Community Health Worker Home Visiting, Birth Outcomes, Maternal Care, and Disparities Among Birthing Individuals With Medicaid Insurance Cristian I. Meghea, PhD 1 ; Jennifer E. Raffo, MA 1 ; Xiao Yu, PhD 1 ; et al Ran Meng, MS 1 ; Zhehui Luo, PhD 2 ; Peggy Vander Meulen, MSN 3 ; Celeste Sanchez Lloyd, MA 3 ; Lee Anne Roman, PhD 1 Author Affiliations JAMA Pediatr. 2023;177(9):939-946. doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2023.2310 Question Is participation in a...

New proof that poverty is a policy choice The richest nation in the history of the world has chosen to impoverish millions of our children Robert Reich Sep 14, 2023 Poverty is a policy choice. Congress has chosen to have a significant percentage of our population impoverished, including — especially — our nation’s children. There is no law of nature or principle of economics or Constitutional provision that dictates such a high number of people in poverty within the richest nation in the...

This is a NEW YORKER article from 2016, but it so full of history and content it is well worth reading. Newer people with interest in our field may not be familiar with this history. https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/the-secret-formula-for-resilience How People Learn to Become Resilient by Maria Konnikova February 11, 2016 Norman Garmezy, a developmental psychologist and clinician at the University of Minnesota, met thousands of children in his four decades of research. But...

In over 15 states, schools can still paddle students as punishment https://wapo.st/3Yu3Iol Corporal punishment remains legal, especially in the South. It still has its defenders. But the costs can be steep. By Donna St. George Washington Post 8/10/2023 Kayla Brady’s son was in fifth grade when his elementary school principal smacked him with a paddle for, as she put it, “not minding the teacher.” The incident left bright red marks on the boy’s buttocks that she said bloomed into purplish...

https://theintercept.com/2023/07/22/metoo-defamation-lawsuits-slapp/ Bryce Covert , THE INTERCEPT, July 22 2023, 6:00 a.m. Elise Aubuchon felt she owed it to other women to speak out. It was 2020, and #MeToo had prompted countless people to publicly expose those who had harassed and abused them. Years after she says she was raped, and once she realized the police weren’t going to pursue her case, she decided to make a public post on Facebook naming the alleged rapist. “MY VOICE WILL BE...

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/teen-poultry-factory-child-worker-deaths_n_64b7ecbce4b0ad7b75f67af7 For the third time in five weeks, a 16-year-old boy has died after sustaining on-the-job injuries at an industrial site, as lawmakers in several states advocate loosening child labor laws that protect minors from hazardous work. The latest teen death was Friday night at the Mar-Jac Poultry plant in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, authorities said. It’s the third worker death at the plant since...

This English psychology grad student is conducting a study to assess the attitude toward, functionality and benefits of the C-PTSD DX now included in ICD-11. The study takes about 1 1/2 hours and anyone can take it: clinicians, students, academics, people with lived experience. C-PTSD has an affinity to the proposed Developmental Trauma Disorder DX, but is not really the same. Irecommend participation.

The Supreme Court Case That Has Me Worried, for Survivors and for My State, The New York Times , By Kathy Hochul. Ms. Hochul is the governor of New York. July 11, 2023 When my mother turned 70, she had a unique birthday wish. Instead of a party or a cake, she told our family she needed our help to open a transitional home for survivors of domestic violence and their children. She saw this birthday present as the culmination of a lifetime spent fighting for survivors of abuse, a journey that...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/10/ptsd-treatment-veterans-medicine-mental-health/ All around the conference room in Atlanta last fall, jaws were dropping. Michael Roy, a physician from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, had just revealed to the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies the preliminary results of a study comparing two treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder: Prolonged Exposure (PE) therapy, long regarded as the “gold standard,”...

The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) uses the most strict criteria and expansive view of impact and outcomes to make recommendations. They just published: "Screening for Depression and Suicide Risk in Adults, US Preventive Services Task Force Recommendation Statement " June 20, 2023 JAMA . 2023;329(23):2057-2067. doi:10.1001/jama.2023.9297 For asymptomatic adults 19 years or older, including pregnant and postpartum persons (Older adults are defined as those 65 years or older.) The...

Newly published Editorial, American Journal of Preventive Medicine- FOCUS : Jeoffry B. Gordon MD, MPH , Vincent Felitti MD , The Importance of Screening for Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) in all Medical Encounters., AJPM Focus (2023), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.focus.2023.100131 The practical, insightful value of individual ACE screening in the clinic to preventive and clinical medicine is profound. There are over 600,000 substantiated cases of child abuse or neglect (CAN) each year in...

House panel debates gender-affirming care bill Republicans in Congress are pushing a controversial new bill that would pull federal funding from children’s hospitals that provide gender-affirming care for minors — a move that public health experts and pediatricians warn could have a seismic impact on transgender children’s mental health and those hospitals’ services overall. The otherwise bipartisan hearing on a pack of bills got ugly fast. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) said the legislation...