January 2016

Last week Bernie Sanders was asked whether he was in favor of “reparations for slavery.” It is worth considering Sanders’s response in full: No, I don’t think so. First of all, its likelihood of getting through Congress is nil. Second of all, I think it would be very divisive. The real issue is when we look at the poverty rate among the African American community, when we look at the high unemployment rate within the African American community, we have a lot of work...

Giggles and the pitter patter of little feet echo through the halls of Providence Mount St. Vincent in Seattle—not exactly the sounds you’d expect to hear in a living-care community for older adults. Then again, “the Mount,” as it’s known, isn’t your typical nursing home. Five days a week, residents and staff share the 300,000 square-foot facility with up to 125 children, ages zero to five. These children and their teachers make up the Mount’s...

New episodes of depression in expectant dads may significantly increase the risk for a very premature birth, according to a new study published in BJOG: an International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. It is well-established that depression in expectant mothers is tied to low birth weight and increased risk of premature birth. This may be due to extreme stress, the death of a loved one, lack of social support, or a difficult or abusive relationship. However, there has been little...

In this series, professionals predict the ideas and trends that will shape 2016. Read the posts here , then write your own (use #BigIdeas2016 in your piece). Every year, U.S. businesses lose more than $225 billion because of sick and absent workers. In an effort to figure out why, the Vitality Institute  published a study a few months ago aggregating health data such as obesity, smoking rates and heart disease from more than 3,100 counties, cross-referenced with workforce data from...

“Ch-ch-tsss. Ch-ch-tsss.” On a chilly Wednesday morning, Baja Poindexter sounded out the steps of the rumba to a classroom of fifth-graders at West Athens Elementary School, located in one of Los Angeles’s most violent neighborhoods . She encouraged her class of mostly Latino students to do the same. They tenuously clasped each other’s hands in ballroom dance “frame,” or body position, and swayed to the music at “Miss Baja’s” command.

For years she had tried to be the perfect wife and mother but now, divorced, with two sons, having gone through another break-up and in despair about her future, she felt as if she’d failed at it all, and she was tired of it. On June 6, 2007, Debbie Hampton, of Greensboro, North Carolina, took an overdose. That afternoon, she’d written a note on her computer: “I’ve screwed up this life so bad that there is no place here for me and nothing I can contribute.”...

For centuries, the idea of “healing thoughts” has held sway over the faithful. In recent decades it’s fascinated the followers of all manner of self-help movements, including those whose main purpose seems to be separating the sick from their money. Now, though, a growing body of scientific research suggests that our mind can play an important role in healing our body — or in staying healthy in the first place. In the book Cure , the veteran science journalist Jo...

(l to r) Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, who appears in Resilience; Robert Redford, father of Resilience director James Redford; Clifford Beers Guidance Clinic site coordinator Laura Lawrence, who appears in Resilience; Resilience producer and director James Redford; Resilience co-producer Dana Schwartz _______________________________________   Resilience , a documentary that looks at the birth of the CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study and how it’s spawned a...

About 15 years ago, I was invited to join a knitting group. My reluctant response — “When would I do that?” — was rejoined with “Monday afternoons at 4,” at a friend’s home not three minutes’ walk from my own. I agreed to give it a try. My mother had taught me to knit at 15, and I knitted in class throughout college and for a few years thereafter. Then decades passed without my touching a knitting needle. But within two Mondays in the group, I...

My 14-year-old patient grabbed my hand and told me that he was going to die. Just seconds before, the nurse had wheeled him into the resuscitation room. His blood pressure and heart rate were more than twice the normal levels. He was pale, clammy and gasping for breath. The nurses and doctors with me in the ER worked to stabilize him. We put an oxygen mask on his face. We inserted two IVs and began pumping fluids into his body. When his oxygen level dropped, we inserted a breathing tube. In...

A City Council committee moved Tuesday to tighten penalties for taxi drivers who face complaints of discrimination for refusing to pick up an airport passenger on the basis of race. The action was spurred by a recent undercover operation by two black police officers, who found that taxi drivers rejected 20% of their requests for rides at LAX. [For more of this story, written by Laura J. Nelson, go tohttp://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-lax-taxis-race-20160120-story.html]

   Trevor Storrs likes to put an Alaskan spin on that oft-told allegory about the babies being swept downstream. In the story, rescuers keep pulling babies out of the current until someone finally decides to go upstream and learn why they’re being tossed in the water in the first place.    Storrs, executive director of the Alaska Children’s Trust (ACT), would go one step further: to the stream’s source, to find out why the glacier is melting and stop the...