Long COVID is a generation-defining health challenge. According to the CDC, in 2022, at least 9 million people throughout our country were struggling with post-COVID-19 infection effects, and over 18 million people have ever experienced Long COVID, including nearly one million children.
Patients, Advocates Push Biden to ‘Reclaim Medicare’ From Privatized Medicare Advantage
Patients on Medicare Advantage spoke out against the privatized plans this week as part of a coordinated campaign to shed light on the program’s care denials, treatment delays, and overbilling—and to pressure U.S. President Joe Biden to rein in the insurance giants raking in huge profits from such abuses.
Indiana Enacts Law to Allow State Child Services to Investigate More Abuse Claims at Youth Centers
Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signed a bill into law that aims to curb abuse at youth treatment centers for those 18-21 years old. It comes after a ProPublica-IndyStar investigation into employees at Pierceton Woods Academy.
Older Adults Now Able to Receive Additional Dose of Updated COVID-19 Vaccine
CDC Director Mandy Cohen endorsed the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ (ACIP) recommendation for adults ages 65 years and older to receive an additional updated 2023-2024 COVID-19 vaccine dose. The recommendation acknowledges the increased risk of severe disease from COVID-19 in older adults, along with the currently available data on vaccine effectiveness.
Colorado librarians are now front-line crisis workers, managing homeless patrons, mental illness, book-banners
While library districts often provide training to their staff around homeless outreach, de-escalation, mental health resources and beyond, at the end of the day, most public librarians are not social workers, yet they are often confronted with scenarios that require those skills. Above: Friends read together at the Denver Public Library’s Central Library
Terrance Ruth Announces Plan to Run for Raleigh Mayor This Fall
Raleigh voters will see a familiar name on their ballots this fall. Dr. Terrance (Truth) Ruth, 41, an Asst Professor in NC State University’s School of Social Work and community activist, will run for mayor once again after narrowly losing to Mayor Mary-Ann Baldwin in the race for the office in 2022.
The magic of the mundane
Goffman realised that behaviours of this kind, much as they might feel like it, are not the results of idiosyncratic anxieties, of excessive self-consciousness or awkwardness. Instead, they are sensible responses by people appropriately attuned to the complexities of the social world. Goffman’s ‘microsociology’ reveals that even the most incidental of social interactions is of profound theoretical interest.
Ukraine receives 200 electric scooters for social workers from Japan and UN Development Programme
Social workers will be provided with vehicles to use while working and increase their mobility. The procurement of 200 scooters and their delivery to Ukraine were made possible by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Ukraine and the funding of the Japanese government.
Where Have All the Volunteers Gone?: Behind the Decline of After-College Service
Past and present (front row) Jesuit Volunteers gather at the Ella Baker House in New York City.
How meth became an epidemic in America, and what’s happening now that it’s faded from the headlines
Rural America has long suffered from an epidemic of methamphetamine use, which accounts for thousands of drug overdoses and deaths every year. Above: Police detectives sort through evidence after raiding a suspected meth lab.
‘Working-Class People Aren’t Lazy, They’re Fed Up,’ UAW Leader Tells Senate
“But the truth is, working-class people aren’t lazy, they’re fed up. They’re fed up with being left behind and stripped of dignity as wealth inequality in this nation, this world, spirals out of control,” he continued. “They’re fed up that in America… three families have as much wealth as the bottom 50% of citizens in this nation. That is criminal. America is better than this.”
Vermont Senator introduces four-day workweek bill
Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont who twice ran for the Democratic presidential nomination, introduced a bill to establish a four-day US working week…. “Moving to a 32-hour workweek with no loss of pay is not a radical idea,” Sanders said on Thursday. “Today, American workers are over 400% more productive than they were in the 1940s.
Elena Botts: Goddard College’s very existence is threatened
To jeopardize Goddard’s future is to deny countless individuals the opportunity to engage in transformative learning experiences that challenge conventional wisdom and inspire social change.
Trying to stay alive in a town of despair
S, who grew up in Blackpool, has survived a life of addiction and is now helping others get clean
Who bears the risk?
Under the guise of empowerment and freedom, politicians and business are offloading lifethreatening risk to individuals. Above: London’s Dreadful Visitation: A Year of Weekly Death Statistics during the Great Plague (1665)
OPINION: Social workers are also heroes
The author, Dr. Dana P. Damron is a physician at Alaska Native Medical Center and Providence Alaska Medical Center. Above: Social worker Tanya Vandenbos
What my mother’s sticky notes show about the nature of the self
I’m caring for my 98-year-old mother Joyce, who’s had increasingly debilitating memory problems for many years. For a decade or two, she managed to compensate for these problems with amazing effectiveness. To a significant extent, her life was arranged to make it possible to function as she remembered less and less. The process – not atypical of people with memory problems, I’m told – indicates that the mind palace is more than imaginary. As she lost the internal structure of memory, the galleries of her mind became literal and external. First systematically, then chaotically, Joyce Abell has used her home here in rural Virginia as her memory.
Social Distortion
On the fourth anniversary of the pandemic, a look at how America pulled apart as the rest of the world pulled together
Book bans in US schools and libraries surged to record highs in 2023
More books were banned in 2023 in US schools and libraries than any other year for which records have been kept, the American Library Association (ALA) reported on Thursday…. The group documented 4,240 unique book titles targeted for censorship in 2023, which was more than the previous two years combined: 2,571 in 2022 and 1,651 in 2021. There was a 65% spike in 2023 over 2022.
Should you confront your worries or try to banish them?
In a recent study in Science Advances, Anderson and the paper’s first author Zulkayda Mamat taught 120 people how to suppress worrisome thoughts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The people who did so reported less worry and improved moods after the training, and felt less depressed three months later.
New Location for NIH Public Access Policy Content & Resources
As of March 12, 2024, the NIH Public Access Policy content and resources have been consolidated into the NIH Sharing Site.
Homeless complain of starving in city shelter
Homeless people were placed in tents and halls by the municipality during Covid-19 in 2020. Since then, people claim they are still trapped in the appalling conditions of makeshift tents. Above: Inside the homeless shelter run by eThekwini municipality.
Talk therapy cuts risk of postpartum depression
Results of the trial, conducted in Pakistan, suggest that the approach could help avert postpartum mental health challenges in low-resource regions.
Southern Oregon University among universities splitting $4 million for behavioral health programs
SOU will use the money to create a Master’s in Social Work program, in collaboration with Portland State University. Bailey said the specific details still need to be worked out. SOU will also expand its existing counseling programs.
Pre-Preemption
There’s a huge asymmetry between the two parties’ approaches to the regions where their rival party dominates. Through both the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, President Biden has jump-started investment in rural America, places that private capital had largely abandoned in recent decades. The Democrats see this public investment as a strategy to co-opt rather than preempt, to gain a political foothold on opposition turf. Republicans, by contrast, view cities as the Visigoths viewed Rome. Unable to sufficiently disenfranchise urban voters, they are moving to disempower those voters’ governments. In the battle now before us to preserve and advance democracy, the fight for cities looms large.
Mayor delivers 9% pay bump to city’s social service workers
New York City Mayor Eric Adams allocated $741 million to increase pay for the city’s nonprofit social services workforce on Thursday.
Sick, and Sick of It All
Living in a technological world of the internet divorces us from real life as it passes into inert, abstract, and dead screen existence. It should not be surprising that people grow sick and tired of the steady streams of “news” that fills their days and nights….. Being sick and out of it for a while allows one a different perspective on the world. This is especially true for those of us who often write about politics and propaganda.
Hebrew U Suspends Professor Who Said Israel Lied About October 7 Rapes
Prof. Asher Ben Aryeh, dean of the School of Social Work, wrote a letter to his colleagues in academia saying that he would not allow Dr. Shalhoub-Kevorkian to teach at the school because her statements contradict the values of social work.
Social worker thanks ‘inspirational’ father-in-law
Dr. Daryl Dugdale (l) was living with terminal lung cancer when Alice (r) first met him
Motion hearing for suspect charged with kidnapping and holding social worker hostage for 16 hours
Societal Self-Regulation
Despite the underlying reasons why we do not regulate as a society, the simple fact is we no longer do. There was a time, in a galaxy far, far, away, when the culture set these boundaries (if it were free to do so), and although the ruling class would attempt to cross them, they often failed. Today it is far more likely that boundaries can be crossed without even a glance from the masses. Today, they’ve got us eating out of their hands.
Amid faculty objections, UC considers limiting what faculty can say on university websites
Whatever the final version says, the fact that regents are considering the issue at all is alarming to some UC faculty. They argue that issues of academic freedom are outside the purview of the regents and question how the university would enforce the policy. And although the policy doesn’t explicitly mention a specific issue, faculty see it as an attempt to prevent them from discussing Israel’s war in Gaza.
Social workers who help newly arriving migrants hope for empowerment, better support
“They’re leaving their home country because they feel they have no choice if they want to survive,” said Dr. Aimee Hilado, an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice. “Oftentimes, their journeys are filled with trauma and a great deal of stress. So many of them talk about never feeling safe and never knowing when the fear is going to subside.”
Kathy Hochul Doesn’t Get New York City
If she did, she’d understand the grave error of flooding with subway with armed troops. Above: National Guard patrol at a subway station in New York on March 6, 2024
Delta-8-THC use reported by 11% of 12th graders in 2023
Delta-8 is a psychoactive substance that is typically derived from hemp, a variety of the Cannabis sativa plant. Delta-8 has intoxicating effects similar to delta-9-THC (delta-9), the primary THC component responsible for the “high” people may experience from using cannabis.
Social Housing in America: Architects Must Answer the Call
Karl-Marx-Hof is a community owned apartment building, in Vienna, Austria. Vienna is visited for its imperial palaces but also for its social housing: “capital of low rent” for nearly a century, the city has defended a model of affordable housing that makes it an European exception.
Social service groups face continued challenges in detecting, addressing rising financial abuse cases in Singapore
Some social service agencies in Singapore have seen a jump of over 50 per cent in the number of financial abuse cases over the past three years. Above: Minister for Social and Family Development Masagos Zulkifli speaking in Parliament.
Online dating in your middle age feels like praying for a miracle
‘I’m like an online dating heavyweight champ – battered, beaten, bewildered and down for the count, but refusing to give up the title.’
Conservatives seize counselor shortage to press school chaplains
Since Texas introduced it own blueprint last year, allowing schools to use safety funds to hire chaplains who do not have the same licensing as counselors, similar bills have ricocheted across more than a dozen states including Florida, Georgia, Nebraska, Utah and Kansas…. Those who oppose the school chaplain movement say it reflects a rise in Christian nationalism in the U.S. — even as most young people sour on religion.
Student nutrition programs in Ontario grapple with nearly ‘limitless need’
Half of a tangerine instead of a whole one, half of a hard-boiled egg or an apple cut six ways — student nutrition programs across Ontario are finding ways to stretch increasingly insufficient dollars.
Retired Holyoke firefighter picked to lead Amherst police alternative CRESS
Camille Theriaque is a retired Holyoke firefighter who has worked as a licensed clinical social worker. She is being appointed as the director of the Community Responders for Equity, Safety and Service department, pending review by the Town Council.
Should people suffering from mental illness be eligible for medically assisted death? Canada plans to legalize that in 2027 – a philosopher explains the core questions
John Scully, a retired journalist in Canada living with mental illness, has advocated for expanding access to medically assisted death.
Australian students struggling to put food on the table in unpaid training, but this could be a thing of the past
Federal government’s University Accord report recommends financial support for nurse, teacher and social work trainees…. While the education minister, Jason Clare, wants placements to be paid, he has not committed to funding them, saying the federal government will spend the coming months considering reform.
Femicide in Italy: A modern phenomenon deeply rooted in country’s cultural past
Shoes dyed red have become an emblem in Italy’s protests against anti-woman violence.
The Lonely, Fractured Lives of Estranged Grandparents
Thousands of grandparents today have been cut off from contact with their grandchildren. While this sometimes results from the grandparent’s highly problematic behavior toward the grandchild, my clinical experience, as illustrated in the case above, reveals that grandchildren are often a casualty of the conflict between parents and grandparents.
The Scariest Part About Artificial Intelligence
A.I. isn’t worth its significant costs. You don’t have to be a Luddite—or an insecure creative like me—to fear this technology and the sinister disregard for the human future it reflects. Communities, governments, and even those working in the tech industry should shut these dangerous and parasitical robots down before it’s too late. And meanwhile, let’s at least pass Senator Markey’s bill.
A Small University Goes Big on Psychedelic Therapy Training
As research on psychedelic drugs grows, campus leaders at Naropa University hope to carve out a niche for their small Buddhist-influenced university in Colorado. The university is training health clinicians in psychedelic-assisted therapy, which they predict will become a burgeoning mental health practice in the state.
Take Five with Donna Flanagan: School Social Worker at Dyett High School
Donna is a licensed clinical social worker and certified school social work specialist who has been with CPS for 26 years, serving the students at Walter H. Dyett High School for the Arts for the past seven. In 2021, Donna was named School Social Worker of the Year by the Illinois Association of School Social Workers, and she is currently working toward her doctorate in curriculum and instruction.
Middlemen Are Profiting off the Broken US Pharma System
Pharmacy benefit managers push expensive medications and slash drug reimbursement rates, pocketing the profits for themselves. Congress looked set to regulate these shadowy middlemen — but $50 million in industry lobbying later, the effort has stalled. Above: Small, independent pharmacies say that pharmacy benefit managers are putting them out of business.
Social Work in Animal Welfare: Strengthening Communities and the Human-Animal Bond
Dillon Dodson, RSW, MSW – Director, Social Work