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There are more than two million women veterans in the U.S. today, and women veterans who are homeless are the fastest-growing group of veteran homeless. Yet if you ask the average American — even the average veteran — to describe a homeless veteran, you’ll quickly hear an almost universal description. The picture most of us seem to carry in our minds is of a grizzled older white male who served in Vietnam, has chronic mental health and/or substance abuse issues, and can be seen panhandling at an intersection with a cardboard sign. The trouble with that picture, besides the fact that it’s become a cliché, is anyone who doesn’t present that way — specifically, women veterans who are homeless — are increasingly left out of the picture.

Ask women veterans who’ve experienced homelessness if they sense that they’re invisible, and they’ll tell you “yes,” but add that the problem didn’t start when they became homeless — it began when they first served in the military.

“When I came home from Iraq, I felt invisible as a woman vet,” says Kayla Williams, Army veteran, author, and current Director of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Center for Women Veterans, in a clip from C-SPAN. She describes how she would go out with groups of other veterans to a bar, and someone would buy just ‘the guys’ a round of free beers, figuring that they’d just come back from the war but that the women in the group must be “just wives, girlfriends or other hangers-on.” “No one looks at me and thinks, ‘combat veteran,’” adds Williams.

The phenomenon of “discounting” exists when we look past a population because we don’t actually “see” them — whether women veterans in general, or homeless women veterans in particular. Columbia anthropologist and public scholar Kim Hopper, Ph.D., author of the seminal work, Reckoning with Homelessness, raised that issue in the American Journal of Public Health in connection with the volunteer counts of street homeless, a big part of how the total number of homeless, veterans and otherwise, in the U.S. is estimated.

Read more on HuffingtonPost.com.

The Center for Juvenile Justice Reform (CJJR) at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy is accepting applications for the Evidence-Based Decision-Making in Juvenile Justice Certificate Program. This new program, hosted in partnership with Vanderbilt University’s Peabody Research Institute, will provide juvenile justice practitioners with instruction on how to use the appropriate tools, including the Standardized Program Evaluation Protocol, to develop an environment that supports comprehensive, evidence-based decision-making. The program will run from August 7 to 11, 2017. Apply by May 5, 2017.

Learn more about this program.

Mental health for decades has proven a vexing national issue; an estimated 10 million people live with a serious mental illness, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Washington state is no exception; in fact, in many ways this state stands out as an example of how not to address the problem.

A 2016 report by Mental Health America, a national nonprofit group, rated the 50 states and Washington, D.C., on 15 measures and found Washington ranked 50th — second to last — on getting care to those who need it. A federal judge last year held the state in contempt of court over providing timely services to mentally ill defendants. This came two years after the state Supreme Court ruled that boarding psychiatric patients temporarily in hospital emergency rooms and acute care centers, due to lack of room at psychiatric treatment facilities, is unlawful.

There are approaches that help those who need it, and one Yakima County program shows particular promise with mentally ill individuals who run afoul of the law. Superior Court’s Mental Health Court, which has been operating for three years, aims to help defendants find stability in their lives through efforts such as dealing with substance abuse, finding the right medications, reconnecting with family and friends, and eventually contributing to society through work or attending school.

That’s a lot to offer, and the numbers remain relatively small. The county says 26 defendants have gone through the program with seven currently enrolled. What is missing — at least for now — are hard numbers on recidivism rates, though a probation officer does regularly search to see if court graduates have committed new offenses. Those recidivism numbers would be useful, now that the program has a three-year track record, in gauging the long-term effectiveness of the program.

Advocates do have a point when they say that numbers themselves don’t tell a complete story about how well the program is doing. They cite personal narratives — testimonials, really — of participants who have re-established connections with family, friends and society. There’s no doubt that those connections are critical to ensuring the long-term success of both the individuals and the program. At the same time, quantifying the success — through the tracking of recidivism rates — is also important for evaluating the program.

Read more on YakimaHerald.com.

On April 1, 2017, the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Minority Health (OMH) will launch the annual observance of National Minority Health Month. The theme this year, Bridging Health Equity Across Communities, emphasizes the collaborative, community-level work being done across the nation to help achieve health equity.

During National Minority Health Month 2017, the HHS OMH will highlight partner initiatives in communities that address the indirect conditions that affect health, also known as social determinants of health. The conditions in the places where people are born, grow, live, work, play, learn, and age have significant impact on the health outcomes of individuals, families, and their communities.

As part of the 2017 observance, HHS OMH will host a #Bridge2Health Twitter Town Hall at 1:00 PM EDT on April 12 that will highlight examples from around the country of community-based efforts to address health disparities. Organizations can also support efforts to help reduce health disparities by participating in the HHS OMH Health Equity Thunderclap on April 28.

Health disparities among racial and ethnic minority populations—or the differences in health, health care and well-being—have a detrimental effect on our nation and our communities. In the United States, it has been estimated that the combined cost of health disparities and subsequent deaths among racial and ethnic minorities due to inadequate and/or inequitable care is $1.24 trillion. Healthier communities mean lower health care costs, which translate into a stronger economy and a more productive, competitive America. 

Read more on MinorityHealth.hhs.gov.

The unstoppable Chance the Rapper is having a great start to 2017. With three Grammys under his belt, an adorable daughter taking over his social media, and what he considers an official debut album on the way, the Chicago MC appears to be on cloud nine. However, Chance opened up about having anxiety to Complex, as well as unwavering faith in God. The Coloring Book artist explained that coming to terms with his anxiety has been a new process for him, particularly because of the lack of discussion about mental illness in the black community. He told Complex,

I think anxiety is also something that I’m just now being exposed to. A really big conversation and idea that I’m getting introduced to right now is black mental health. ‘Cause for a long time that wasn’t a thing that we talked about. I don’t remember it. I don’t remember people talking about anxiety; I don’t remember, when I was growing up, that really being a thing.

The interview brought up the fact that part of his anxiety may stem from seeing friends die in front of him as a teenager. However, when it comes to coping, he admitted to Complex that he’s apprehensive about taking medications. And he also said he puts his trust in the Lord. “I think I could to a certain extent have PTSD,” he said. “But, nah. I don’t got no PTSD. I don’t ever want to convince myself that I’m hindered by any of my experiences. I also believe in G-O-D. Everything that’s happened in my life, [someone] already knows that that happened, and what’s going to happen, and put things in place for certain things to happen.”

The rapper’s fears touch on an unfortunate reality for many black Americans. National Alliance on Mental Illness cites several reasons why some African-Americans are hesitant to seek treatment and receive optimum care for mental illness. These reasons include: “lack of information and misunderstanding about mental health”; “faith, spirituality, and community”; “reluctance and inability to access mental health services”; negative side-effects from medications; “provider bias and inequality of care”; and “lack of cultural competence” in mental health care. Chance’s Complex interview highlights two of NAMI’s aforementioned mental health care hinderances: faith and lack of information.

Read more on Bustle.com.

The County Health Rankings & Roadmaps program helps communities identify and implement solutions that make it easier for people to be healthy in their neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces. Ranking the health of nearly every county in the nation, the County Health Rankings illustrate what we know when it comes to what is keeping people healthy or making people sick and how the opportunity for good health differs from one county to the next. Supporting a call to action, the Roadmaps show what we can do to create healthier places for everyone to live, learn, work, and play. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation collaborates with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute to bring this program to communities across the nation.

Now in its eighth year, the County Health Rankings continue to bring revealing data to communities across the nation.

• More Americans are dying prematurely, notably among our younger generations
  • Premature death rates rose across urban and rural community types and racial/ethnic groups in 2015. Premature death has consistently been highest in rural counties and among American Indian/Alaskan Native and black populations.
  • In recent years, premature death increased most among those ages 15–44.
• Drug overdose and other injury deaths heavily influenced the rise in premature death
  • Drug overdose was by far the single leading cause of premature death by injury in 2015 and contributed to the accelerated rise in premature death from 2014 to 2015.
  • Large suburban metro counties went from having the lowest to the highest rate of premature death due to drug overdose within the past decade.
  • For those ages 15–24, an increase in drug overdose deaths was part of the equation, but more deaths due to motor vehicle crashes and firearm fatalities also played a role in the accelerated rise in premature death.
•  A focus on opportunities for youth and young adults
  • Disconnected youth (a new measure this year) are youth and young adults ages 16–24 who are not in school and not working, and represent untapped potential to strengthen the social and economic vibrancy of local communities. In 2015, there were about 4.9 million youth – or 1 out of 8 – not in school or working.
  • Youth disconnection is most prevalent among American Indian/Alaskan Native, black, and Hispanic youth. Rates of youth disconnection are higher in rural counties than in urban counties. Places with high levels of youth disconnection have higher rates of unemployment, child poverty, children in single-parent households, teen births, and lower levels of educational attainment – all barriers to a successful transition from youth to healthy adulthood.

Read more on CountyHealthRankings.org.