January 2019

A new report from the University of East Anglia in England is the first to offer an empirically established causal path from climate change to conflict to cross-border migration. The report analyzes data from 157 countries between 2006 and 2015. While it didn't find an overall causal relationship between climate change, conflict, and migration across the world during that time period, it pinpoints a particular area and time period where it had a profound impact: countries affected by the...

January 24, 2019; New York Times “Can social service agencies…shift from a focus on isolated needs—safety, housing, health, or employment—in favor of a broad view that supports human well-being?” This is a central question that David Bornstein in the New York Times poses in an article that profiles a nonprofit called the Full Frame Initiative . The group works with social service agencies to help them push against bureaucratic boundaries and cooperate with each other to achieve better...

Claire’s Story: She didn’t know how to be a mom By P. Berman, K. Hecht, & A. Hosack I am being torn apart. This baby is killing me. This baby must hate me. Will anybody help me? Nurse Karin checks on Claire a few hours later to find her having intense and fast contractions. Karin stood with her and tried to help Claire breath through the contractions. When transition started, and the severe labor pains came right on top of each other, Claire grabbed Karin's hand and squeezed it and Nurse...

They didn’t write the lesson plan or instruct Cristopher Bautista’s ninth-grade English class. But members of United Teachers Los Angeles were a powerful presence in the classroom where he works at Oakland Technical High School. UTLA had taken to the streets 370 miles south, striking for smaller classes, a living wage and more help for their mostly low-income students. Bautista was teaching “Cannery Row,” John Steinbeck’s classic tale of Central Coast haves and have-nots. “I’ve been teaching...

January 21, 2019; Teen Vogue In an article posted on TeenVogue.com , two professors talk about the terms “reform,” “resistance,” “rebellion,” and “revolution,” and how they might be in play—or even possible—in today’s world. The article itself is remarkable in the frankness with which it covers the need for these activist reactions to what is happening in our society and our world. Given the realities people are facing in our society, and the challenges many nonprofit organizations are...

A new study suggests hospital emergency rooms across the country could play a bigger role in preventing gun violence. “The emergency department may be [gunshot victims’] only contact with the health care system, and what we know is that represents an opportunity to try and prevent a repeat injury,” said Dr. Kit Delgado, assistant professor of emergency medicine and epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the researchers on the study. One way trauma centers are working to...

We all know depression. It touches every family on the planet. Yet we understand surprisingly little about it. This dawned on me in an acutely embarrassing way one day in my first few years of training as a psychiatrist, when I was interviewing a man in the outpatient clinic at the Maudsley Hospital in London. In response to my textbook-drilled questioning, he told me that his mood was low, he wasn’t finding any pleasure in life, he was waking up in the small hours and unable to get back to...

The impact of stress and trauma on people’s physical and mental health looks set to become a central focus of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration in the wake of his appointment of the state’s first surgeon general. This week, Gov. Newsom tapped @Nadine Burke Harris to fill the newly created position. Burke Harris is a physician and pioneering leader in the field of toxic stress and health. She founded the San Francisco-based Center for Youth Wellness, an organization that’s working...

As I suggested in previous posts, many media , popular science , and official pronouncements about genetics , epigenetics , and genomics are sometimes at best misleading, and at worst, down-right wrong. As such, they are an obstacle to what you might call genetic literacy , and ought not to go unchallenged. The basic fallacies can be itemized as follows: 1. DNA reproduces organisms. In fact, this is the exact opposite of the truth. According to the modern, “selfish-gene” view of genetics ,...

It's been over a month since the Violence Against Women Act expired at the start of the government shutdown. Congress failed to renew the act after voting for short-term extensions in the months prior to its expiration, and many programs and shelters that address dating violence and sexual abuse are still without funding. Now, according to Rebecca Palmer, chief program officer of the Community Resource Center, a non-profit in the North County area of San Diego that serves domestic violence...

"Children's exposure to Adverse Childhood Experiences is the greatest unaddressed public health threat of our time." Robert W. Block, past president of the American Academy of Pediatrics National Public Health Week (April 1-7) is an opportunity to celebrate the work and contributions of public health professionals and advocates like you. This year, we’re celebrating the theme “Creating the Healthiest Nation: For science. For action. For health.” APHA will be coordinating activities, and we...

How many emotionally injured children are there? It’s uncertain, easily millions. Most of these children go untreated; many unnoticed or falsely labeled ‘bad’ kids. While the damage to them is not well understood, the increase in anti-social behaviors stemming from unhealed trauma and abandonment is disastrous. Our homes, schools, communities, and judicial system all pay a price for unhealed children. Healthcare professionals are either uncertain what to do with them or believe that they...