September 2017

A year and a half after Los Angeles County shut a pair of emergency shelters for hard-to-place foster youth, Astrid Heppenstall Heger is still working to find ways to reach the county’s “invisble children.” Last week, Heger’s Violence Intervention Program (VIP) opened the doors of the Leonard Hill Hope Center, a space that she hopes will help Los Angeles County’s most vulnerable foster youth – those who are at the highest risk of leaving county-run care and ending up homeless, being sexually...

Comparing the methods of Oxford University in the U.K. with those of the University of Mississippi shows there’s much to learn from the latter’s conscientious attempts at dealing with its history of racism. Next month, students at the University of Oxford will return for their fall semester, known as the “Michaelmas” term—named after the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels—to a campus strewn with the sort of colonial- and slave-era tinder that has helped fuel the outrage and protests on...

How her prison education saved us a million bucks. The story we told this week of Michelle Jones, who was imprisoned for killing her son and remade herself into a nationally respected scholar of history, has inspired waves of admiration. It has also drawn a predictable chorus of resentment, posters complaining on social media that a woman convicted of murdering a child gets an education "at taxpayer expense" while so many law-abiding citizens are crushed by student debt. For a moment, let's...

It was a few days before Christmas. The roads were particularly icy that trip, and my mom, who had come to pick me up from college for winter break, was especially volatile. She was late, which frustrated me; I still wonder what that trip would have been like if I had kept my annoyance to myself. I didn’t, though, and my mom quickly became agitated. “Ashley’s being a little bitch,” she told my aunt on the phone when we stopped for breakfast. We drove in silence for a while after that —...

Last spring in Tyler, Texas, a small city two hours east of Dallas, an African-American couple had a series of agonizing conversations at their kitchen table at night, talking softly after their children were in bed. Their daughter, and oldest child, loved cheerleading in junior high; she was eager to try out for the squad at the local public high school, where she was set to enroll as a freshman in the fall. But the name of this particular school in Tyler, a community that some residents...

Sometimes, just when you’re about to leave, you see the past in a new way. For My-Linh Le, she was about to fly to Europe when she thought of her mom. Le is 30, about the same age her mom was when she got on a boat to leave Vietnam. “There was no food and no water and people were dying left and right,” Le remembers her mom telling her. “And every time somebody died, they were just thrown overboard.” Le wasn’t born yet. Her mom was divorced and had two young daughters at the time, but only...

Vincent “Vinnie” Pompei is director of the Youth Well-Being Project of the Human Rights Campaign, a national civil rights organization, and the chair of Time to Thrive, an annual national conference about LGBT student inclusion. He spent more than 10 years as a middle school teacher and high school counselor in the Paramount and Val Verde unified school districts in Southern California. Pompei is also a past president of the California Association of School Counselors. On Oct. 5 at the...

The Food and Drug Administration last week announced that it has approved the first mobile app to help treat individuals with substance use disorders (SUD). The app, known as Reset, uses cognitive-behavioral therapy and is intended to be used in combination with outpatient therapy to treat alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, and stimulant SUDs. The goal is to increase retention in outpatient therapy programs and promote abstinence from substance abuse. The app is not intended to be used for the...

We want to hear from communities that have placed a priority on health and are creating powerful partnerships and deep commitments to provide everyone, especially those facing the greatest challenges, with the opportunity to live the healthiest life possible. If your community is using innovative ways to catalyze and sustain positive change, take the time to learn more about what it takes to be an RWJF Culture of Health Prize winner. Register to join the informational webinar on September...

We are thrilled to announce the Fall Chat Series on ACEs Connection. Join these experts who will be chatting about ACEs, neurofeedback, self-care and guided imagery. Sebern Fisher / Neurofeedback for ACEs Oct. 10th (10 AM /1 PM EST) Donna Jackson Nakazawa / Well-Being, Self-Care & ACEs Nov. 14th (10 AM /1 PM EST) Belleruth Naparstek / Guided Imagery & ACEs Dec. 12th (10 AM / 1 PM EST)

Toxic stresses combined with poor infrastructure threaten hundreds of thousands of residents of U.S. communities on the Mexican border, according to new research that examines living conditions in the impoverished colonias. Texas counties lack zoning authority, except in a few designated areas, such as near dams or military bases. So for decades unincorporated colonias have been built throughout the Lower Rio Grande Valley. They often lack paved roads, electricity and sanitary services, and...

The New York Times and ProPublica have teamed up to investigate who is to blame for skyrocketing drug prices — and have turned up some surprising answers. This story was co-published with The New York Times. This much is clear: The public is angry about the skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs. Surveys have shown that high drug prices rank near the top of consumers’ health care concerns. What’s not as clear is exactly why prices have been rising, and who is to blame. For the last four...