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[Photo by sam deng ] The brain and the immune system are not fully formed at birth, but rather continue to mature in response to the postnatal environment. The two-way interaction between the brain and the immune system makes it possible for childhood psychosocial stressors to affect immune system development, which in turn can affect brain development and its long-term functioning. Drawing from experimental animal models and observational human studies, we propose that the...

Meredith Sawyer is an early childhood educator in Greensboro, North Carolina, who has been teaching for more than a decade. But as she reflects on the last seven years as a transitional kindergarten teacher in a childcare center that has the highest quality rating the state can offer — five stars — Sawyer realizes she’s grown tired of watching her peers meet life goals while she’s left unrewarded for her accomplishments and hard work. In a word? Sawyer is stuck. “I wait tables part time so I...

Digital health is booming. The market that includes health apps and wearables will increase around 1,200 percent over the next eight years, according to one forecast . So what’s propelling this surge in demand? “A growing proliferation of chronic diseases, namely diabetes, cancer and heart ailments … ” the report says. Not only is this trend alarming, said the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Stephen Downs at the recent Stanford Medicine X conference, but many of the solutions offered by...

The Department of Justice announced this week that an additional 11 tribes will be added to a program that allows tribal police and courts to exchange criminal information with federal databases. The Tribal Access Program, as it’s known, launched in August of 2015, and initially 10 tribes received training and equipment to obtain and submit records to national databases. [For more of this story, written by Kate Wheeling, go to ...

The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) has been law since 2008. MHPAEA provided that health plans could not limit mental health or substance use disorder benefits in a way that was more restrictive than how most medical/surgical benefits were limited. This sounds simple enough, but in this year alone there has been a White House task force , voluminous Department of Labor guidance , a SAMHSA best practices manual , and an Energy & Commerce Committee hearing to find...

In our efforts to promote children’s health and wellness, we need to ensure that they grow up at a healthy weight. Preventing children from being overweight or obese requires action in the earliest years since experts agree that reversing these trends later in life can be very difficult. It is currently estimated that one in four children are overweight or obese by the time they enter kindergarten. Racial and ethnic minorities and those families who are poor are at higher risk of being...

Around two out of three women with anorexia nervosa or bulimia nervosa will eventually recover in their lifetime, according to a new study at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). “These findings challenge the notion that eating disorders are a life sentence,” said Kamryn Eddy, Ph.D., of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Eating Disorders Clinical and Research Program. [For more of this story, written by Traci Pedersen, go to ...

Prevention Diaries reveals the unexpected (yet foreseeable) parts of daily life that shape our health. Health happens in our communities and homes, not just at a doctor’s office, and many illnesses and injuries are preventable through commonsense solutions – saving lives and reducing burden on families, communities, and taxpayers. Prevention Diaries outlines why prevention is the solution to many social challenges, and what we can do to advance prevention. Topics include violence, the food...

In late March, Donald Trump opened a rally in Wisconsin by mocking the state’s governor, Scott Walker, who had just endorsed his Republican opponent, Ted Cruz. “He came in on his Harley,” Trump said of Walker, “but he doesn’t look like a motorcycle guy.” “The motorcycle guys,” he added, “like Trump.” It has been 50 years since Hunter S. Thompson published the definitive book on motorcycle guys: Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs. It grew out of a...

The Chadwick Center for Children & Families at Rady Children's Hospital San Diego has just released a set of trauma-informed guidelines with concrete strategies for approaching secondary traumatic stress (STS). While these guidelines were created for intended use within child welfare systems, they may be easily adapted into other child-and family-serving organizations. These guidelines were created as part of the Chadwick Trauma-Informed Systems Dissemination and Implementation Project...

The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) has been law since 2008. MHPAEA provided that health plans could not limit mental health or substance use disorder benefits in a way that was more restrictive than how most medical/surgical benefits were limited. This sounds simple enough, but in this year alone there has been a White House task force , voluminous Department of Labor guidance , a SAMHSA best practices manual , and an Energy & Commerce Committee hearing to find...

Earlier this month, the surgeon general released a report on the state of alcohol, drugs, and health in the U.S. “Facing Addiction in America” is the first report of its kind, and one of its primary objectives is to change public perception of addiction. As Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy wrote, "For far too long, too many in our country have viewed addiction as a moral failing. This unfortunate stigma has created an added burden of shame that has made people with substance use disorders...