Wherever I Can Lay My Head: Homeless Youth on Homelessness

Research about the issue of homelessness largely has focused on understanding the characteristics and addressing the needs of homeless adults and families in our communities. Much less research has been conducted to document the characteristics and needs of homeless youth. In recent years, a number of studies have come out in Illinois that address the situation of homeless adults and families as well as youth. Yet there remains a lack of data documenting the perspective of homeless youth concerning their own needs. Providing services that youth report they need can serve as a gateway to other needed services. In the summer of 2003, the Chicago Department of Health sponsored a symposium on the needs of LGBTQ homeless youth. Discussions during this meeting made it clear that assessing the needs of homeless youth would require looking beyond those who were living in shelters, and that the needs of subgroups within the homeless youth population were likely to vary considerably. In response to this need for more information about homeless youths' needs, the City's Department of Children and Youth Services (CYS) partnered with the Night Ministry, an agency with a history of addressing the needs of marginalized youth, to commission the Center for Impact Research (CIR) to conduct a study of the needs of homeless youth in the City of Chicago. The purpose of this study was to learn what the youth themselves identify as their needs, and to understand the differences in these needs among a variety of subgroups-those experiencing their first episode of homelessness, those cycling in and out of homelessness, and those experiencing chronic homelessness. Both the non -profit service providers and the City hope that identifying and meeting these needs not only will act as a gateway to other needed services, but also will expedite resolution of problems that result in homelessness and lead to the establishment of permanent, stable, and safe living situations. With guidance from the Homeless Youth Task Group of the Chicago Continuum of Care 3 and an advisory group composed of government policy makers and program personnel and non-profit agency directors,4 CIR conducted a survey of homeless youth in Chicago between the ages of 14 and 21 during April and May 2004. Twelve youth, nine of whom were homeless, were recruited and trained to interview homeless youth for the project. They conducted 400 interviews with homeless youth throughout Chicago -- at bus stops, fairs and festivals, on trains, streets, and basketball courts, in parks, shelters, schools, homes, drop -in centers, churches, and restaurants. In addition to conducting the survey, CIR interviewed homeless youth service providers, advocates, and public policy personnel working at public and private agencies. These interviews provide further information about the needs of homeless youth and the resources currently available to them, as well as ways that the various systems serving homeless youth might be improved

Is Meat the New Tobacco? Regulating Food Demand in the Age of Climate Change

Switching from a meat-heavy to a plant-based diet is one of the highest-impact lifestyle changes for climate mitigation and adaptation. Conventional demand-side energy policy has focused on increasing consumption of efficient machines and fuels. Regulating food demand has key advantages. First, food consumption is biologically constrained, thus switching to more efficient foods avoids unintended consequences of switching to more efficient machines, like higher overall energy consumption. Second, food consumption, like smoking, is primed for norm- shifting because it occurs in socially conspicuous environments. While place-based bans and information regulation were essential in lowering the prevalence of smoking, the same strategies may be even more effective in reducing meat demand. Several policy reforms can be implemented at the federal level, from reform of food marketing schemes to publicly subsidized meal programs

Report of the third Asian Prostate Cancer study meeting.

The Asian Prostate Cancer (A-CaP) study is an Asia-wide initiative that was launched in December 2015 in Tokyo, Japan, with the objective of surveying information about patients who have received a histopathological diagnosis of prostate cancer (PCa) and are undergoing treatment and clarifying distribution of staging, the actual status of treatment choices, and treatment outcomes. The study aims to clarify the clinical situation for PCa in Asia and use the outcomes for the purposes of international comparison. Following the first meeting in Tokyo in December 2015, the second A-CaP meeting was held in Seoul, Korea, in September 2016. This, the third A-CaP meeting, was held on October 14, 2017, in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with the participation of members and collaborators from 12 countries and regions. In the meeting, participating countries and regions presented the current status of data collection, and the A-CaP office presented a preliminary analysis of the registered cases received from each country and region. Participants discussed ongoing challenges relating to data input and collection, institutional, and legislative issues that may present barriers to data sharing, and the outlook for further patient registrations through to the end of the registration period in December 2018. In addition to A-CaP-specific discussions, a series of special lectures were also delivered on the situation for health insurance in the United States, the correlation between insurance coverage and PCa outcomes, and the outlook for robotic surgery in the Asia-Pacific region. Members also confirmed the principles of authorship in collaborative studies, with a view to publishing original articles based on A-CaP data in the future

Hon. Peter Dearing

A discussion with Judge Tjoflat regarding his involvement in the Jacksonville school desegregation case Mims v. Duval County School Board