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The following is a post written by and from the perspective of Tirzah Enumah, Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion for the New Teacher Center.

We are in the education sector because we want to serve kids. However, despite the efforts of millions of adults in schools, districts, and education support organizations, we still have a system that perpetuates inequity and oppresses children of color. If we really want to serve kids, we need to do better— and fortunately, we can do better.

What does it mean to “do better?” In the education sector, one thing each of us can do is to bring a racial equity lens to our work (and lives). Equity is ensuring that everyone has what they need to be successful. Equity is also acknowledging, understanding, and working to dismantle the systemic, intentional, and institutional discrimination, often based on race, language, class, and learning variabilities, that have created today’s inequities.

Understanding Ourselves to Understand Each Child.

To give each child what he or she needs, we must know what each child needs. And in order to know what each child needs, we must get past our assumptions, unconscious biases, and overly simplified narratives about communities each child belongs to. We have to look in the mirror and examine ourselves: how do our own racial identities inform our beliefs about the world? What biases have we held about kids? How do our personal privileges blind us in how we understand the experiences of others?

When I was teaching for a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., it took a student asking me why our class spent so much time writing about rap lyrics and basketball players for me to realize that bias and assumptions were informing my work. Even as a black woman, I had internalized racist messages that our culture tells us about black and Latino kids: that they only cared about rap and basketball and that they definitely weren’t interested in academic learning. My biases were holding my students back.

Understanding Equity.

Every adult who serves kids can engage in the self-reflection necessary to disrupt inequitable systems. At New Teacher Center, we are fully committed to this journey. Since the fall, our whole organization has been collectively learning about the history of racism and inequity in the U.S., to reflect on our racial experiences and assumptions, and to have honest and uncomfortable conversations together about race. We know we have a steep learning curve ahead of us. We know it will be mentally, psychologically, and emotionally challenging— it already has been. And we know that if our goal is to support teachers, school leaders, mentors, and coaches in bringing an equity lens to their work, we first have to practice bringing an equity lens to our own day-to-day work.

Dr. King believed in the power of love, compassion, and service to bring about justice and equity. These are foundations for dismantling inequity, but we need to do more. We can want to serve, but just wanting to serve is not enough. We can be loving people and simultaneously hold racial bias. We can be compassionate people and still unwittingly perpetuate systemic and institutional racism. We have to reflect on our identities, examine our beliefs, and challenge ourselves and one another to replace any damaging assumptions we might hold about students of color with belief in their potential for greatness. Once we do that, we’ll get closer to the mountaintop that Dr. King envisioned for us all.

Read more on HuffingtonPost.com

Compared with people living along the coasts in the United States, those who are at risk for HIV and living in Midwestern cities are not as aware of the HIV prevention regimen called PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis). A $3.4 million research grant aims to figure out how to change that.

As Shepherd Express reports, a five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health was awarded to Jeffrey A. Kelly, PhD, and Yuri A. Amirkhanian, PhD, two professors of psychiatry and behavioral medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Center for AIDS Intervention Research (CAIR).

Currently, the only PrEP regimen approved by the Food and Drug Administration is the daily pill Truvada. When taken as directed, it reduces the risk of contracting HIV by 99 percent or more among men who have sex with men (MSM) and 90 percent or more among women. (The risk reduction for women may very well be greater than 90 percent, but there isn’t sufficient research available to refine the estimate.)

The CAIR research will focus on raising awareness of PrEP in Midwestern cities, notably among Black men who have sex with men (MSM), a population at particular risk for HIV.

The research will focus on Milwaukee and Cleveland and take place in two phases. The first phase entails talking to Black MSM and discerning their knowledge and attitudes about PrEP.

“We need to spend a long time listening to learn why PrEP uptake is pretty low,” Kelly told Shepherd Express. “Some people are not very aware of what it is. Others are aware but have concerns that it’s nothing they need because they’re not that sexually active. Others ask, Why would I take a pill when I’m healthy? There’s also a legacy of medical mistrust in minority communities. Why are they trying to get me to take pills? It goes back to the Tuskegee days. [Begun in the 1930s , the Tuskegee experiment was a government study in Alabama in which Black men with syphilis were allowed to go untreated while thinking they were getting health care]. We’re not trying to convince everyone but hoping to give them the ability to make informed choices.”

During the second phase, researchers will build the intervention and test it among the targeted populations.

Read more on POZ.com

People with low incomes and racial/ethnic minority populations experience greater levels of stress than their more affluent, white counterparts, which can lead to significant disparities in both mental and physical health that ultimately affect life expectancy, according to a report from the American Psychological Association.

“Good health is not equally distributed. Socio-economic status, race and ethnicity affect health status and are associated with substantial disparities in health outcomes across the lifespan,” said Elizabeth Brondolo, PhD, chair of an APA working group that wrote the report. “And stress is one of the top 10 social determinants of health inequities.”

Stress-related illnesses and injuries are estimated to cost the United States more than $300 billion per year from accidents, absenteeism, employee turnover, lowered productivity and direct medical, legal and insurance costs, according to the report.

People with lower incomes report more severe (but not more frequent) stress and having had more traumatic events in their childhood, said the report. African-Americans and U.S.-born Hispanics also report more stress than their non-Hispanic white counterparts, stemming in part from exposure to discrimination and a tendency to experience more violent traumatic events.

And all that stress can lead to mental and physical health problems.

“Stress affects how we perceive and react to the outside world,” Brondolo said. “Low socio-economic status has been associated with negative thinking about oneself and the outside world, including low self-esteem, distrust of the intentions of others and the perceptions that the world is a threatening place and life has little meaning. Stress is also known to contribute to depression.”

Stress may also play a role in physical health disparities by affecting behavior. High levels of stress have been consistently associated with a wide variety of negative health behaviors, including smoking, drinking, drug use and physical inactivity. These behaviors and their outcomes (e.g., obesity) are closely linked to the onset and course of many diseases, including diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease and cognitive decline later in life, according to the report.

A 2016 analysis indicated that men whose income is in the top 1 percent live almost 15 years longer than those in the bottom 1 percent, according to the report. For women, that difference is almost 10 years.

A number of interventions at the individual, family, health care provider and community levels that could be useful in helping to ameliorate the negative effects of stress on low-income and minority populations and potentially address some of the health disparities are identified in the report. For instance, at the individual level, mind-body interventions, such as yoga or meditation, were found to be accepted by disadvantaged groups and showed some effectiveness at improving mental and physical health outcomes. Other interventions cited included improving the quality of communication between patients and their health care providers and teaching parenting skills to promote positive parent-child attachments.

The report concludes with a series of recommendations, including calling for additional multidisciplinary research on the interrelationship of barriers to health experienced by disadvantaged individuals. It also recommends improving psychology training programs to make sure clinicians are capable of adequately discussing and addressing the effects of inequality on individual health. Increasing awareness among the public and policymakers on the stress-inducing implications of persistent exposure to implicit biases and microaggressions is also important, according to the report.

“Disparities in both stress and health may not be visible to those who have more advantages or who have relatively limited direct contact with those affected,” said Brondolo. “A well-informed community is critical to improving the health of racial/ethnic and poor communities.”

Read more on Science Daily.

It would seem that, by definition, social services and community health programs help the neighborhoods where they operate.

But talk to community leaders on the ground, like Adair Mosley, CEO of Pillsbury United Communities in Minneapolis, and it becomes clear that while intent isn’t lacking, designing services that really reflect community need is a challenge. “Typically, social service is prescriptive in nature, anchored in hubris,” says Mosley, whose group serves underestimated populations across the city. “If it’s funder- or legislatively driven, a service rarely gets to the heart of the problem. It’s about asking the right questions, and in social services, we often have the wrong answer, since we’re not listening.”

By putting human-centered design practices at the center of a new way of creating local programs and initiatives, a wide-ranging pilot project wants to change how communities design their own future. An nationwide effort funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that kicked off this past fall, Raising Places is giving six different communities $60,000 each, to help develop programs that support healthy childhoods.

This initiative differs from the nonprofit’s usual programming focus due to its process. Utilizing an engagement program designed by Chicago-based Greater Good Studio, a socially oriented design practice, community feedback doesn’t start with solutions, but with understanding problems. Consisting of a series of labs, prototyping sessions, and community discussions, the nine-month process is predicated on the idea that better understanding, involvement, and, ultimately, design—led by the community, not experts—creates lasting, effective solutions.

Reflecting a larger change in the health community that recognizes the how health and community development are intertwined—that your zip code can play as big or bigger a role than your genetic code—Raising Places takes the next logical step and asks the community to diagnose its own challenges.

In August, Raising Places chose six groups from a pool of 156 interested community organizations: Mosley’s group in North Minneapolis, Minnesota; Bighorn Valley Health Center on the Crow Reservation in southeast Montana; Greater Hudson Promise Neighborhood in Hudson, New York; The Health Foundation in rural North Wilkesboro, North Carolina; South of Market Community Action Network (SOMCAN) in San Francisco; and SBCC, Thrive LA in Wilmington, a community near the ports of the Los Angeles harbor.

While the circumstances and areas of focus, ranging from healthy food access to police-community interaction and air quality, differ between groups, all said the curriculum laid out by Greater Good has led to deeper insights.

Greater Good’s idea grows out of its experience with nonprofits, local governments, and what it calls mission-driven organizations. Grants for these tend to be proscriptive, and while it’s great when a non-profit gets money to pursue a project or program that’s a perfect fit, often, community end up adjusting their programs to fit with funding guidelines, stifling innovation.

“Designers have a unique amount of power, but we’re often unaware,” says Sara Cantor Aye, co-founder of the studio with her husband, George. “We’re trying to share that power as much as we can.”

The Ayes proposed a different way of delivering solutions: start with a better understanding of the problem, to eventually end up with a better solution. The Raising Places program and grant offers communities the luxury of time and an ability to discuss and debate what they need best and enact a program based on community wisdom, not outsider observations.

Each community has a convener, a local service agency that facilitates the events, or labs, and a design team made up of other organizations and local leaders. Groups began with a kick-off lab that brought the team together to focus on areas of research, which then led to weeks of observation, emersion, and discussion of root causes and framing goals. Next, an ideas lab helped groups synthesize findings, brainstorm, and create prototypes.

Finally, after local teams finish the 12 weeks of prototyping and iteration they’re currently engaged in, they’ll hold the action lab in February, when they’ll examine and evaluate prototypes, and figure out a plan to move forward. Throughout the entire process, Greater Good Studio offers technical assistance and guidance.

“We are intentional about not prescribing what needs to come out of the process,” said Katie Wehr, Senior Program Officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “By funding a process, rather than a specific intervention, we enable the outcomes to be shaped, and ultimately owned, by the people living and working in each community.”

While many of the community leaders involved have already used some variation of human-centered design, or design thinking, in their work, they’ve found value in the Raising Places process.

Dr. Megkian Doyle, of the Bighorn Valley Health Center in southeastern Montana, an organization that serves a large Native American population, says that the community has been “over-surveyed and over questioned,” left with the feeling that they’ve given information with little action or change in return. Raising Places has helped them expand their community outreach, leading to more long-term relationships and hard, but necessary conversations.

“It allowed us to listen to people that usually don’t get listened to,” Doyle says. “Usually with Native American communities, people go ask the elders. We also went to regular parents, people who were using drugs, and asked them about subjects they hadn’t been asked about before.”

Recently, the Raising Places team in Montana created a yard sign with the silhouette of people raising a teepee that they use to promote events and activities. The idea, says, Doyle, is wanting people to see that everyone is doing this together.

Heather Murphy from Wilkesboro hopes Raising Places can show other communities a better way to design their own better future. “Product designers discovered a long time ago that you could give a product to someone, they’d tell you what they do and don’t like about it, and you could make it better,” she says. “Why should the systems in our communities, that ones take care of our kids and our families be any different?”

Read more on Curbed.com

The following is a piece written by and from the perspective of Maris Medina, a journalism student:

I believe strongly in mental health days. My parents — the traditional, borderline Tiger Parent stereotype — weren’t so supportive of this notion. As nurses, they knew mental health disorders existed, but I always felt like they were dismissive of the idea because they couldn’t fathom their two perfect daughters having them.

My parents shrugging away mental illness, even on a small scale, is a microcosm of what happens within the greater Asian-American community. Among Asian-Americans, mental health issues are taboo and stigmatized — clearly seen by the numbers.

According to the National Latino and Asian American Study, Asian-Americans are three times less likely to seek help for their mental health problems than white Americans, and they’re less than half as likely as the average American to use mental health services.

These startling statistics can be attributed to distinct cultural values within the Asian-American community. In many Asian cultural groups, upholding the family name is of utmost importance. One study documented how some Chinese-Canadian boys with schizophrenia suffered at home because their families refused to seek treatment for them.

When these boys’ behaviors got out of hand, the families typically dumped them off on a psychiatric facility and became uninvolved in their lives. In contrast, the families of European-Canadian boys with the same affliction ensured their children got the treatment they needed. The researchers surmised that the Asian families didn’t want others to view their names in a bad light. Collectivism, the notion that the group is more important than the individual, is a defining element of many Asian cultures. A research paper detailing the barriers that Asian-Americans have toward mental health services stated traditional psychotherapy emphasizes the individual and open verbal communication — inherently conflicting with Asian-American values. The paper also states people in collectivist communities believe admitting to personal problems shames the entire family.

Because mental health is a taboo issue in Asian communities, it’s hard to even get the conversation going. To combat this, there are various groups specifically targeting the Asian-American community, including the South Asian Mental Health Initiative and Network and the National Asian American Pacific Islander Mental Health Association.

Rosalie Chan, in an article for HuffPost, detailed the need for more public workshops and community outreach events, although getting people to actually come out is a feat in itself. When patients speak to doctors that can speak their native language, they feel understood, Dr. Vasudev N. Makhija, the founder and president of South Asian Mental Health Initiative and Network, said in the article. In addition, when individuals see and hear people they can identify with talk about their own experiences with mental health, the conversation is a little easier to have.

Given my parents’ aforementioned careers, mental health is a topic they’re exposed to in the workplace a lot more than most people. But even then, these conversations aren’t easy to have at home.

I’ve always felt that I had a mild form of ADHD my entire life — I constantly fidget, I have serious trouble focusing on one task and I’m incredibly impulsive. I’ve never been diagnosed by a doctor because I’m afraid to bring it up at all. When I finally did a couple of weeks ago, the word “psychiatrist” didn’t sit well at the dinner table.

Whether I have ADHD or I don’t, this kind of conversation should be easier to have in Asian-American families. Being the model minority doesn’t mean we are excused from our share of problems. If anything, being upheld to such a pedestal makes us falsely invincible and these conversations invisible. It’s the 21st century — resources must be made available for us to finally address the elephant in the room.

Read more on The Diamondback, the Univeristy of Maryland’s Independent Student Newspaper.

Recovery programs on college campuses, often including special dorms, are multiplying fast amid the opioid crisis, spreading from a handful of campuses to around 100 across the country.

Most campuses offer substance-free housing — no alcohol or drugs allowed. But recovery housing goes further. With services like on-site counselors, peer support groups and sober social events, recovery housing is tailor-made for students recovering from substance abuse who need a supportive environment where they can stay clean amid the pressures of college.

“In the past, we talked about prevention,” said Tim Rabolt, director of community relations and strategic advancement for the Association of Recovery in Higher Education. “Now the topic of recovery is becoming more prevalent as individuals and organizations realize the need to support people who went through treatment in the long term.”

College students use opioids at lower rates than the general population, but campuses are not insulated from the crisis. Students who become addicted during college, as well as those who were addicted earlier in their teens and are now recovering, want to complete their education but need help in recovery and keeping their lives on track.

Neil King is one of them. Like many people struggling with addiction, King got hooked on painkillers that were legally prescribed. He was an eighth-grader when his doctor gave him two bottles of Vicodin for a broken arm. The death of a close friend shortly after led King to alcohol and harder drugs. By his senior year of high school, he had overdosed on heroin.

While recovering, his hospital roommate mentioned that Augsburg University, which he could actually see from his hospital window, had a recovery program. It wasn’t until a few years later, during a meeting in a halfway house following numerous attempts at sobering up, that he was reminded of the school’s “StepUP” program and decided it was time to apply. “The amount of suffering I went through put me in this point of desperation where I was willing to try anything,” King said.

Created 20 years ago as a pilot program to help students with any substance abuse disorder, the Augsburg program is now one of the largest recovery housing programs in the country. The StepUP house has a clinical staff and personalized counselors who meet with students every week.

When King first moved in to StepUP, he was in a perpetual state of crisis. He stabilized, got used to being back in school and worked through the initial difficulties of recovery with the help of his counselor. The staff also helped him get necessities; he had shown up to school with only a duffel bag and two trash bags filled with clothes.

Living in a residence hall where they check in frequently and their peers and recovery advisers see them all the time means the relapse rate is low, said Patrice Salmeri, the director of StepUP from 2002 to 2015. “It is a really good way to help students get through their opiate addiction.” That’s been the case on recovery-oriented campuses elsewhere.

“Historically, if a student relapsed, they didn’t have anybody that they could reach out to talk about what happened,” Chris Freeman, who supervises the Collegiate Recovery Program at the College of New Jersey near Trenton said. “Now, if a student is struggling, very often we can prevent them from relapsing. If they do relapse, we can get them back where they want to be.”

Read more on Politico.