February 2018

Members of the business panel at the MARC National Summit (L to R): Scott Hall, Somer Gauthier, Melissa Merrick, Anne Jesko. ____________________________ Somer Gauthier knew the ACE training had worked when one of her general managers told her about an irate customer. Gauthier, owner of two McDonald’s franchises in Helena, Montana , experienced her own “aha” moment during a community meeting hosted by Elevate Montana. “I had never heard of ACEs,” she told attendees at the 2017 Mobilizing...

Accomplishing systems change is anything but simple or linear. It's emergent, defies predictability, requires strategic thinking and adaptive leadership. In this workshop, participants will learn about systems theory, systems phenomena, key considerations in initiating change in a system, adaptive challenges, adaptive leadership, social network theory and social network design. Participants will review the “Self-Healing Communities” framework that revolutionized a county in Washington State.

Lynn Black’s mother-in-law, who had lupus and lung cancer, was rushed into a hospital intensive care unit last summer with shortness of breath. As she lay in bed, intubated and unresponsive, a parade of doctors told the family “all good news.” A cardiologist reported the patient’s heart was fine. An oncologist announced that the substance infiltrating her lungs was not cancer. An infectious-disease doctor assured the family, “We’ve got her on the right antibiotic.” With each doctor’s report,...

As a teenager in foster care , Zack Zibrosky was detained eight times, five for running away from the same group home where some of the other kids had a history of aggressive behavior. Running away is considered a status offense, an activity that is prohibited only if you are a minor. In between trips to detention, Zibrosky spent time on the streets. School fell by the wayside amidst all that upheaval. “Kids who are going through this obviously have some type of turmoil or something in their...

People who were bullied by siblings during childhood are up to three times more likely to develop psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia in early adulthood, according to new research by the University of Warwick. Led by Professor Dieter Wolke (senior author) at Warwick's Department of Psychology, this is the first study to explore the relationship between sibling bullying and the development of psychotic disorders. Almost 3,600 children from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and...

VANCOUVER, B.C. — Beneath a blue tarp that blocks out a gray sky, Jordanna Coleman inhales the smoke from a heated mixture of heroin and methamphetamine, sucking the addictive vapor deep into her lungs. The drugs and pipe, acquired elsewhere, are hers. But the shelter, the equipment she uses to prepare her fix and the volunteers standing by to respond if she overdoses are provided by a small nonprofit. Funding and supplies come from the city of Vancouver and the province of British Columbia.

Can you be fit and healthy even if you're overweight? That's the question researchers at York University's Faculty of Health set out to answer in a new study that shows physical activity may be equally and perhaps even more important than weight for people living with severe obesity. According to the recent study, led by Jennifer Kuk, associate professor in York University's School of Kinesiology and Health Science, and collaborator Dr. Sean Wharton, MD, medical director of the Wharton...

It’s one of the most important questions of the 21st century: Will climate change provide the extra spark that pushes two otherwise peaceful nations into war? In the past half-decade, a growing body of research—spanning economics, political science, and ancient and modern history—has argued that it can and will. Historians have found temperature or rainfall change implicated in the fall of Rome and the many wars of the 17th century . A team of economists at UC Berkeley and Stanford...

The Trump administration is proposing a major shake-up in one of the country's most important "safety net" programs, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps. Under the proposal, most SNAP recipients would lose much of their ability to choose the food they buy with their SNAP benefits. The proposal is included in the Trump administration budget request for fiscal year 2019. It would require approval from Congress. Under the proposal, which was announced...

Barry Pollard told the San Diego Trauma-Informed Guide Team (SD-TIGT) how a small group of exasperated residents had rattled the corporate gates and won. During the “trauma-informed journey” portion of January’s SD-TIGT meeting—a regular feature in which a member or guest shares challenges, triumphs and lessons learned in the course of implementing trauma-informed practices—Pollard, founder of San Diego’s three-year-old Urban Collaborative Project (UCP), told how residents in Southeast San...

It's week two of our book club series, Reading The Reckoning with Rebecca Carroll .This week's book is a collection of essays by Morgan Jerkins called, " This Will Be My Undoing ." This New York Times best seller takes on a central question: What does it mean to “be” — to live as, to exist as — a black woman today? [To listen to this podcast from The Takeaway , go to https://www.wnyc.org/story/reading-reckoning-morgan-jerkins ]

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — With approval from the Trump administration fresh in hand, Kentucky is rushing to roll out its first-in-the-nation plan to require many Medicaid recipients to work, volunteer or train for a job — even as critics mount a legal challenge to stop it on the grounds that it violates the basic tenets of the program. At least eight other Republican-led states are hoping to follow — a ninth, Indiana, has already won permission to do so — and some want to go even further by imposing...