Working with data, it’s often easy to forget that each entry represents a real human being. An opioid abuse epidemic like the one taking place in San Diego isn’t just a statistically significant outlier — it’s a series of individual human tragedies.
Race and Equity
We know "toxic stress" can have a devastating impact on the longterm health and well-being of children. But how do we counter its effects? It turns out that strengthening relationships and building resilience is key.
The story of Darlene Evans, a 45-year-old single mother of 10 children living on disability without a car, reflects how toxic stress can attack maternal health before moving on to impair prenatal and early childhood well-being.
In California's Sacramento County, black children die at twice the rate of white children. The Sacramento City Council recently approved $750,000 for a county-led effort to lower the high death rate by connecting families with gang violence prevention, foster care assistance, health care and more.
It has long been known that growing up in impoverished and dangerous neighborhoods such as Ferguson, Missouri dims life prospects. But now a commanding body of medical research presents a disturbing, biological picture of why.
In the years after coming out to his family as a teen, Lotus Dao felt alienated from them. Lacking support, he began abusing cocaine and alcohol, and struggled with an eating disorder. His story is not uncommon in a community that does not openly discuss sex and gender, Thy Vo reports.
One way to present more culturally-balanced stories is to create more diverse newsrooms. But we still need to get better at talking to people in communities that aren’t our own. Here are some tips on how to do that.
About 128,000 children in Georgia and an estimated 103,000 grandparents and other non-parental relatives could be affected by legislation scheduled to be introduced this week by Rep. Stacey Abrams (D-DeKalb) and others.
Melody Cao's reporting was undertaken as a California Health Journalism Fellow at the University of Southern California's Center for Health Journalism.
Research by Princeton University sociology professor Sara McLanahan notes that a father’s absence increases anti-social behavior such as drug use and reduces a child’s chances of employment.