Archive for October 2025

North Carolina is casting a wider net in hopes of strengthening its social work sector, through a new partnership between the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (NCDHHS) and a coalition of 25 universities and colleges. This Public Service Leadership Program (PSLP) is setting out to rejuvenate the pipeline of future social workers while enhancing the capabilities of current ones over the next five years.

Pittsburgh public safety officials say they will now pair social workers in separate vehicles as “secondary responders” with police on mental health-related calls

The way forward is neither unbounded opinion nor fearful silence. It is the principled defense of creating, critiquing and reimagining knowledge through inquiry guided by evidence and protected from violence and censorship. To retreat from this responsibility is to weaken not only higher education but democracy itself.

Scientists have spotted a small set of easily overlooked brain cells that is activated during persistent pain — the kind that lasts long after an initial injury. The research was performed in mice, but if it can be confirmed in humans, the work could lead to new therapies for chronic pain. Such pain affects roughly one in five people worldwide. “Pain is in your head. But it is very real,” says Nicholas Betley, a biologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and a co-author of a new study describing the findings. The authors’ experiments also show that the release of a specific signalling chemical in the brain can dampen the activity of the persistent-pain neurons, suggesting that the brain itself has an innate pain-killing mechanism.

One in 10 doctors and nurses in Europe experience suicidal thoughts, a new survey carried out by the World Health Organization (WHO) in Europe has revealed.

Meet Emma Cowman, a graduate student in the MSW foundational program. Her research focuses on reproductive justice and the experiences of 2SLGBTQIA+ people who have accessed or tried to access to abortion care in Manitoba.