Category: Health
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City of Boston Receives $50,000 Grant for Substance Abuse Disorder Assessment
The City of Boston was selected to receive a $50,000 Special Initiatives Grant to take steps toward developing a city-wide strategy for prevention of substance use disorders, Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s office said in a press release on Nov. 28. The grant funding will be used to develop a comprehensive needs assessment to help develop…
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Senate and Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless criticize budget cuts
Republican governor of Massachusetts Charlie Baker has drawn criticism from the Democratic Senate and other organizations for his unilateral budget cuts. The cuts, allowed by section 9C of the Massachusetts Legislature, have drastically cut funding to many public programs in the upcoming year’s budget. After deficient sales tax revenue of it’s the administration’s projection, Massachusetts…
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Helping Homeless Women Manage Their Periods Around the World
In two short years as of this December, 18-year-old Nadya Okamoto and her organization, Camions of Care, will have managed to provide feminine hygiene care for over 48,000 individual women’s menstrual cycles. That’s a lot of periods. As Okamoto has pointed out many times in her advocacy work, every women on the planet has their…
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National Suicide Awareness Week: How to Save a Life
National Suicide Awareness week took place between Sept. 5 and 11. We saw yellow ribbons tied around trees in memory of people lost to suicide, candle light vigils, community rides, walks and runs. The Massachusetts Coalition for Suicide Prevention, a group of suicide prevention agencies across the state, offered information on local events and resources…
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Running Through a Journey of Hope
David Noriega was first arrested when he was 21, and had been in and out of jail for the following 13 years. He had been battling with alcohol and drug addiction since he was 13 years old. He had three heroin overdoses, three cocaine over doses, and he’s had seizures. Then he started running, at…
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Boston’s 311 line can now connect citizens with addiction recovery services
Tuesday afternoon, the city of Boston announced that people looking for addiction recovery services can now call 311 for help. Officials hope this new integration will make it easier for Bostonians to find a recovery program for themselves or their loved ones. “A lot of families… don’t know who they should call or when they…
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HUD supports housing services for HIV/AIDS community
The Justice Resource Institute received $1.4 million in funding to support tenant-based rental assistance and other supportive services for the HIV/AIDS community in Plymouth, Bristol and Northern Essex counties earlier this month, HUD said in a press release. HUD awarded $24 million in grants nationwide to help more that 1,200 low-income persons living with HIV/AIDS…
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John Lozier Retirement
In 1950, The National Health Care for the Homeless Council was formed with the mission to eliminate homelessness in the United States. After 27 years as the founding executive director of the council, John Lozier will retire on December 31, 2016. “Over the last three decades, we have built a strong organization that is well-integrated…
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Vaccinating Against Addiction
There is no magic pill, but one day there could be an inoculation against addiction to certain substances, including heroin and other opiates. Dr. Kim Janda of the Scripps Research Institute, one of the country’s largest biomedical institutes, in San Diego, California, has been at work for over 20 years formulating vaccines against drugs like…
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Changing the conversation: SCN talks to Gloria Lucas, founder of Nalgona Positivity Pride
An estimated 30 million people in the United States have eating disorders. It would seem as though ample resources should be available to a demographic this large, but Gloria Lucas says this is not the case. Lucas fought for years to validate and treat her disorder, which began when she was only 10—a daunting battle…