By Yesenia Barrios Shawanna Vaughn had no choice. She was born in a prison hospital to an incarcerated mother. She endured a tough childhood, only to land back in prison at 17, and continue the harmful cycle. “Nobody got to prison without adverse childhood experiences which turned into adult traumas,” said Vaughn, founder of Silent...
Category: Health disparities
Social media: a complex challenge for youth and parents to protect mental health
By Yesenia Barrios Using social media– specifically apps like Instagram and Snapchat--requires tricky negotiation for young people to engage socially while avoiding its potentially intense toxic impact. “Their brains are not fully formed, not fully myelinated—they’re more at risk for the addictive aspect of these devices and these apps, and (teens) have less protective factors,”...
Is back to school better or worse than pandemic eating, couch surfing at home?
Virtual schooling led to increased obesity in students, but cafeteria food offerings often not healthy By Julianne Hill and Gabriella Fuster As young people returned to the classroom this fall, they faced the dual challenges of undoing unhealthy eating and exercise habits developed during virtual learning and searching for healthy food choices in the cafeteria---issues...
Health disparities hit survival rates for cancer, COVID
By Jayne O’Donnell, Julianne Hill, and Enijah Brennon Leana Wen knew her mother, who got winded walking to her car, wasn’t simply anxious or depressed. But that’s what the medical doctors treating Sandy Ying Zhang thought and that’s what mattered. It was the early 2000’s and Wen was in medical school, but her mother scoffed,...
Meet Justin Fernandez: UHMP Student Journalist and Mental Health Advocate
By Aileen Delgado Justin Fernandez says he got two big things out of the UHMP boot camp on community health storytelling for high school journalists: “a good opportunity to better immerse myself in the community’’ and “experience writing and reporting on things that really mattered.” The senior at Coral Reef High School in Miami was...
Homeless, Anxious, Depressed and Young
But there’s hope and help when home conflicts, mental health struggles lead to homelessness for 500,000-plus youth each year By Julianne Hill, Caitlyn Hutabarat and Amira Horowitz Urban Health Media Project (Photo: Berri Wilmore) After Jordan DeVega’s grandmother died when he was 16, leaving him without a legal guardian, he was moved in and out...
Abuse: No One Talked About It
By Sierra Lewter October, 2017 Editor’s note: This is the personal story of one young African American woman’s rape as a child. Her name is being withheld to protect her privacy. “Margaret” grew up on a farm in rural Georgia with her mother and grandmother. At the age of six, the 60-year-old white man...
HeLa cells give life to mankind, heartburn to Lacks family
By Asha Davis May, 2017 BALTIMORE – African -Americans have had a complicated relationship with the health care system for years, going back at least to the distrust and fear caused by dangerous “studies” performed on African-Americans without their permission. In the most infamous of such studies, from 1932 to 1972, African-American men suffering...