August 2016

Premiering Wednesday, Aug. 31, on Pivot, this heartfelt documentary explores trauma-informed education through the eyes of teens who have had troubling childhood experiences. [Watch the trailer and read more at http://www.takepart.com/video/2016/08/11/watch-official-trailer-paper-tigers-pivot]

A program at San Francisco State University has quietly been helping former prisoners earn college degrees for decades. Now, it’s gaining wider attention as schools around the state begin to look for ways to help formerly incarcerated men and women gain access to higher education. In 1967, John Irwin, who had been incarcerated before becoming a sociology professor at SF State, launched Project Rebound. The idea was that helping formerly incarcerated people earn degrees would drastically...

California takes a historic step forward this month as it moves to enact restrictions on the use of solitary confinement in state and local facilities for youth — curbing a manifest violation of human rights and protecting its youth from the trauma of isolated confinement. With the passage of Senate Bill 1143 , California will join the federal prison system and several other U.S. states in limiting solitary confinement for youth under 18. [For more of this story, written by Maureen Washburn,...

Your zip code may contribute to your brain development, according to a study of Southern California youth which found children exposed to violence and fear often lacked empathy as adults. Early results show a troubling trend: Kids who grow up with higher levels of violence as a backdrop in their lives, based on MRI scans, have weaker real-time neural connections and interaction in parts of the brain involved in awareness, judgment, and ethical and emotional processing. Two recent influential...

Some teachers and support staff with the Limestone District School Board headed back to school early this year for some professional development training to help learn ways to help students dealing with stress in and out of the classroom. More than 130 staff members came in on their vacation to spend a full day of learning on Wednesday at Cataraqui Woods Elementary School, developing tools and techniques from Sian Phillips on dealing with “Developmental Trauma and Adverse Childhood...

Next time you enter an elevator, walk in and keep facing the back wall. If you stay that way, in my experience, people will laugh or ask if you’re okay. (That’s an opportunity, if you want, to say you would lovefor someone to define “okay.”) Standing this way breaks unstated rules of how we’re supposed to behave in elevators. Detaching from expectations gives people an excuse to talk, to acknowledge one another’s humanity. Absent a break in the order, the expectation is silence. (Of course,...

Why do prescription drugs cost so much in the United States? A decade of science offers some answers. The major drivers for America’s drug prices are the extended patent protection companies get for new medicines and the lack of price negotiation by insurance companies, including public programs such as Medicare, according to a new paper . The paper reviews previously published studies, dating back to 2005, about drug costs in the U.S. Drug prices’ defenders often say that companies need to...

Leslie Lieberman, staff to the Philadelphia ACE Task Force, wrote this letter to the editor about the end of kindergarten suspensions in the Philadelphia School District: Curtailing K suspensions a good first step The School District of Philadelphia will no longer use suspension to discipline some of its youngest and most vulnerable students ("SRC curtails kindergarten suspensions," Friday). The Health Federation of Philadelphia applauds this decision, which is grounded in a growing...

It has long been established that being black in America is hazardous to your health. For one thing, African Americans are at higher risk of heart disease  — the nation’s No. 1 killer  — than their white neighbors. Is racism partly to blame? A new study provides evidence that points in that direction. It finds that, while there is a nationwide racial gap in the rate of circulatory disease, it is more pronounced in counties where white residents are more overtly racist. “To our knowledge,...

Since 2013, Chicago police have been attempting to identify individuals most likely to experience or perpetuate gun violence. The program, known as the Strategic Subjects List , is supposed to help prevent shootings. But it has raised controversy : Its prediction analysis is based, in part, on identifying people who have been arrested for any crime with anyone who has since become a homicide victim. This selection criterion means that people could be placed on the list even if police have...

Elite tennis players have an uncanny ability to clear their heads after making errors. They constantly move on and start fresh for the next point. They can’t afford to dwell on mistakes. Peter Strick is not a professional tennis player. He’s a distinguished professor and chair of the department of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh Brain Institute. He’s the sort of person to dwell on mistakes, however small. “My kids would tell me, dad, you ought to take up pilates. Do some yoga,”...

When a medical emergency occurs, the first professional a patient comes into contact with is usually a paramedic in the ambulance. Paramedics often work long shifts in high-stress, life-or-death situations. Due to the physically (and psychologically) demanding nature of the job, workers frequently burn out, which can lead to shortages . Jason Hernandez is a paramedic with MedStar in Fort Worth, Texas. Hernandez was awarded the American Ambulance Association’s Star of Life award last year for...