The nation’s first firearm violence research center will be located at UC Davis’ Sacramento campus, University of California President Janet Napolitano announced Monday.
Violence & Justice
Five years ago, when Lisa Conn became a mental health provider for juvenile justice in Santa Barbara County, she noticed a disturbing trend: A large number of the incarcerated girls were displaying symptoms of complex trauma and, in particular, sex trauma.
Aswad Thomas made a quick stop at a convenience store to buy a bottle of pink lemonade on a hot summer night in 2009. He had recently graduated from college—the first in his family to attend a university—and he’d been recruited to play professional basketball overseas. He was leaving the market when two men approached him in the parking lot. One pointed a gun at Thomas; the other pointed two at him. They shot him twice in the back.
On June 15, the state legislature voted to spend $5 million to create a gun violence research center, which will work to understand the public health problem in the hopes of preventing deaths. It will be the first center of its kind in the country.
Doctors can help prevent gun violence by asking their patients whether they own firearms and counseling them on safety, a new report states.
The 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey reported more than one in four women has experienced severe physical violence inflicted by an intimate partner, including being slammed against something, hit with a hard object or beaten. Studies show that many of these women would disclose abuse to health care providers if they were asked—but few are.
When Los Angeles County resident Cynthia Smith mustered the courage to leave her abusive husband, she had nowhere to go but her car. She lived out of her vehicle until she began to accrue parking tickets she couldn’t pay for—and then her car was towed. Suddenly, the former middle-class housewife found herself alone on the streets. Her only option was a homeless drop-in center on Skid Row.
In a suburban neighborhood on one of the busiest corners in Rocklin, California, Origin Coffee & Tea serves award winning java along with some awareness about human sex trafficking.
Chrissy Keenan was sexually assaulted when she was 17. Now 22, and in her fourth year at UCLA, Keenan has devoted her college years to doing everything she can to stop that from happening to someone else.
When Toody Maher first moved to Richmond, she was dismayed to see how many of the city’s parks were in shambles. Local residents described the parks as being “dirty, dull and dangerous,” and one in particular caught Maher’s eye – Elm Playlot, a half-acre park set in the middle of the Iron Triangle, one of Richmond’s toughest neighborhoods.