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Texas leaders have shown a decadeslong antipathy toward Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program that covers millions of low-income and vulnerable residents. They declined additional federal money that, under the Affordable Care Act, would have allowed Medicaid to offer health care coverage to more low-income families. The state was among the last to insure women for an entire year after they gave birth. And when the federal government last year ended a policy that required states to keep people on their Medicaid rolls during the coronavirus pandemic, Texas officials rushed to kick off those they deemed ineligible, ignoring persistent warnings that the speedy process could lead to some people being wrongfully removed.

Deaths of despair, which are caused by drugs, alcohol or suicide, are disproportionately experienced by men. Meanwhile, many of the traditional markers of manhood – earning enough money to raise a family, buy a home or even rent an apartment – are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. What does it mean for society if young men sense that their masculinity is under threat? Or for our politics if young men see less hope for the future?

More recently, New York Attorney General Letitia James (above) launched an investigation into non-consensual drug testing of mothers and infants. The AG’s special prosecutor, Galen Sherwin, has stated that the routine testing leads to “the separation of newborns from their parents in the first days of life, interfering with bonding and breastfeeding and causing government agencies to open unwarranted, invasive child welfare investigations.”

Access to psychotherapy has risen substantially among U.S. adults with mild to moderate distress since 2018, according to a new study. The increase in psychotherapy use is particularly notable among younger adults, women, college-educated individuals, and those with higher family incomes. Privately insured individuals also experienced greater gains in psychotherapy use compared to those who are publicly insured or uninsured.

Matt Moore, Ph.D., associate dean of student and academic affairs in the College of Social Work at the University of Kentucky, has been elected president of the Alliance of Social Workers in Sports.

Its annual report says education and social care professionals “are working hard under immense pressure” but “where systems are under strain, it is vulnerable and disadvantaged children” who are being most adversely impacted.

The study found widely varying responses in rats, revealing that individual reactions to the unpleasant aspects of drug consumption can be important in determining susceptibility to addiction.

Last week, Parliament passed sweeping reforms to Australia’s aged care system. These “once-in-a-generation” changes, set to begin next year on July 1, aim to improve how care is provided to older Australians at home, in their communities and in nursing homes.

Fluoridated water has been extensively studied, and its benefits are well documented. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, water fluoridation reduces cavities by about 25% across all age groups. It’s a public health measure that works passively – every sip of water helps protect your teeth, without requiring you to change your behavior. This is especially important for vulnerable populations. Above: ‘Stop Fluoridation’ banners hang from an overpass in Dallas.

History “may cause them to not see the investment in a public school education as a good use of their time,” said Dallas Pettigrew, director of Oklahoma University’s Center for Tribal Social Work and a member of the Cherokee Nation.

The cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) may be the most widely anticipated way Social Security changes from year to year, but it’s far from the only one. Inflation, wage trends and new policies directly affect not just the more than 68 million people receiving Social Security benefits but also the estimated 184 million workers (and future beneficiaries) paying into the system. 

Fewer psychologists and social workers in Connecticut accept patients covered by Medicaid compared to neighboring New England states…. Latest OHS data showed that more than 1.5 million people in Connecticut lived in places with mental health workforce shortages. That shortage comes as one in five adults statewide has experienced a mental health disorder.

The first study to definitively show a link between cannabis use and schizophrenia was conducted in 1987 and examined 45,000 Swedish soldiers. They found that those soldiers with high cannabis use (more than 50 uses) had a sixfold greater chance of developing schizophrenia over 15 years.

Between 2010 and 2021, we found that 15.7% of people aged 18 and older in Stockholm experienced shifts in their sexual identity. Bisexual people had a high rate of change, with 52% reporting a shift during the study period. Within this group, 33% changed to identifying as heterosexual in 2014 or 2021 and 9% moved towards a homosexual identity.

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has issued a serious warning about the state of the nation’s mental health system, claiming it’s failing those who need it the most.

The Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve any medications for treating stimulant use disorder. What does the evidence say?

To express solidarity with the “Zehar se Mukti” campaign, many social workers on Tuesday staged a dharna outside Nehru Park in Abohar. They condemned those factories which regularly discharged chemical laden water into Buddha drain of Ludhiana.

Dozhier is one of a growing number of students from UM’s social work, school counseling and mental health counseling programs who have delivered such services for K-12 children in Montana’s far-flung rural districts. What began as an experimental effort to address the mental health side of school safety has, over the past five years, evolved into a fixture both for the university’s Safe Schools Center and for the small schools it serves. Dubbed VAST — short for Virtually Assisted School Teams — the program now boasts six grad students and 22 participating districts stretching from the Bitterroot Valley to the North Dakota border.

I had heard rumors about men having sex in Mexico City’s subway system. But nothing prepared me for what I witnessed on my first ride in the último vagón.

A Wall Street Journal analysis of Medicare and VA data found that Medicare Advantage insurers collected billions of dollars a year in premiums to provide medical coverage for about one million veterans like Kitt, even though they go to the VA for some or all of their healthcare needs.

The author Joyce Carol Oates weighed in on social media, after an initial version of this story was published, saying that the outpouring of negativity “is better described as cries from the heart of a deeply wounded & betrayed country; hundreds of thousands of Americans shamelessly exploited by health-care insurers reacting to a single act of violence against just one of their multimillionaire executives.”

Quebec’s decision is part of a global “culture change” in recent years as countries have become aware of serious shortcomings in the way many adoptions are carried out, Dr. Anne-Marie Piché, a Professor in the Social Work Department at the Université du Québec à Montréal who studies adoption, said in an interview.

“If the Labour government maintains the current course, we must assume that mental health and emotional wellbeing are being attacked with strategic intent, not merely as a side effect”

UnitedHealth Group is the largest health insurance firm in the country and the health care giant has grown to control a growing share of the health care industry overall. It now also holds the title of the largest employer of physicians.

Dr. Nguyen Trung Hai, Head of Social Work Department, University of Labor and Social Affairs, shared at the training session.

Nearly half of adolescents and three-quarters of adults in the U.S. were classified as being clinically overweight or obese in 2021. The rates have more than doubled compared with 1990. Without urgent intervention, our study forecasts that more than 80% of adults and close to 60% of adolescents will be classified as overweight or obese by 2050.

Most adults with Medicaid benefits who are able to work are doing so. According to the health research organization KFF, of those under age 65 who do not have other state-sponsored care, 91% are either working, or not working because they are students, caregivers or are ill themselves.

The sector is though in desperate need of more money as demand for its service balloons. Spending on children’s social care in England is expected to increase by £8.4 billion by 2030. The Independent Review of Children’s social care stated the sector needed a cash injection of £2.5billion. In the budget in November, the Treasury promised £250 million.

I fought for a colleague’s tenure. Then I started looking deeper.

Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni called the new surrogacy ban “common sense” and celebrated it as protecting women and children from “commodification”. Others see the ban as the opposite of protecting women and children. Above: Italian senators cheer after voting through the ban.

The Social Welfare Department has further expanded the day respite service network for elderly people to relieve the pressure on their carers.

This 2025 theme builds upon the previous recent World Social Work Day themes of Ubuntu and Buen Vivir by recognising the crucial interdependence of peoples and expands on these bodies of knowledge by focusing on intergenerational caregiving. The theme highlights that care is everyone’s responsibility and not just the domain of ‘women’s work’ as some societies promote.

Research shows that individual acts of kindness and connection can have a real impact on global change when these acts are collective. This is true at multiple levels: between individuals, between people and institutions, and between cultures. This relational micro-activism is a powerful force for change – and serves as an antidote to hopelessness because unlike global-scale issues, these small acts are within individuals’ control.

“If a patient chooses to make a request for medical assistance in dying, the patient must do so voluntarily and free from any external pressure. Medical assistance in dying must not be promoted or advocated under any circumstances,” says NWT Health Minister Lesa Semmler.

We’ve long been warned about the risks of binge drinking, usually defined as having four or five drinks in a two-hour span. And now researchers are increasingly focused on a more dangerous pattern of alcohol use that they call high-intensity drinking: consuming eight or more drinks in a row for women and 10 or more drinks in a row for men.

Minister for Social Housing, Heather Humphreys TD has said that both the Christmas Bonus and the double Child Benefit Payments will be paid this week…. Over 1.38 million people are due to receive the Christmas Bonus payment which provides a 100 percent increase in the weekly rate of payment for eligible recipients.

My life’s markers may differ from those of my peers, but a year of freedom and fun has taught me to appreciate myself

DSWD Secretary Rexlon Gatchalian has also issued a memorandum for the celebration of this year’s Social Welfare Week through a mix of traditional and digital activities that highlight the vital contributions of social workers in nation-building.

The Australian Federal Police (AFP) alleged one of the men arrested on Saturday night was vice-president of the Comanchero outlaw motorcycle club’s Brisbane chapter. Biker gangs are notorious in Australia for their drug violence, with more than 1,000 shootings recorded since the 1980s.

Systemic workplace ageism continues to derail employment for many older workers before they are eligible for government benefits. A 2022 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research revealed workplace age discrimination as a leading indicator of financial instability and heightened poverty risk.

Make no mistake: this new law protects tenants, as the screams of outrage from their predators attest.

In today’s Europe, an inverted trend of coercive assimilation is emerging in northern nations grappling with high levels of immigration. As a part of what has been described as both “ethnic engineering” and among the “harshest immigration policies” in the world, Denmark is forcibly uprooting people from neighborhoods they call “ghettos” and redirecting them to alternative housing. In neighboring Sweden, politicians have expressed a desire to pursue similar plans.

Maison de Lauberivière, a Quebec City shelter, will serve as the site for the expanded PRISM program…. Mayor Bruno Marchand said the new program is a welcome step, but isn’t enough to address what has become a major problem in his city, and others across the province.

The study focused on Italian mayors. Our findings support the idea that women face double standards when it comes to political violence. They are targeted even when they make the same decisions as men. Misogyny and gender bias may cause people to judge female leaders more harshly. Using detailed measures of mayoral performance, we found that the gender gap in attacks only appears when mayors perform poorly. In these cases, women are more likely to be targeted than men for similar shortcomings. This aligns with other evidence of double standards against women in the corporate world.

These daily oral antiretrovirals, more commonly referred to as PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), such as Truvada®, are extremely effective at HIV prevention, but only if they are taken daily as directed. Truvada’s efficacy is greatly compromised when taken inconsistently. However, results from a recent Gilead-funded clinical trial (Purpose-2) led by physicians at Emory University and Grady Health System indicate that a twice-yearly injection of Lenacapavir offers a 96% reduced risk of infection overall, making the injection significantly more effective than the daily oral PrEP.

Welfare chief Chris Sun has pushed back against concerns that a new scheme mandating an hour of unpaid work weekly will stigmatise or burden welfare recipients.

Liberals backing away from their preelection and election-time commitments have a touch of the wrong Marx — Groucho, not Karl. A quotation attributed to the comedian goes something like this: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them, well, I have others.” And that’s the problem. Even if we might be inclined to welcome a tepid, mealy-mouthed mea culpa from Brooks and company, who can trust them? And who wants their advice now? It seems far better to trust those who have long reached and maintained the conclusions and positions that cynical elites are now pretending to discover — the same people who’ll still believe those things, and be correct, when the political winds blow in a new direction.

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), announced a record-breaking 90.6 percent of people with HIV receiving medical care through the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program are virally suppressed, exceeding national viral suppression rates. Viral suppression means people with HIV taking their medication cannot sexually transmit HIV and can live longer and healthier lives.

Sudbury native was once class president, but in his 20s he ended up on the streets, ‘lost in daydreams’: to mark World AIDS Day, he tells his story

New data from Statistics Finland paints a grim picture of rising drug-related deaths in Finland, particularly among young people. In 2023, drug overdoses claimed the lives of 310 individuals, including 91 under the age of 25. Above: Supervised drug consumption room simulation