Health

The Free Hotline That's Saving Women's Lives by Disarming Dangerous Men

https://level.medium.com/the-free-hotline-thats-saving-women-s-lives-by-disarming-dangerous-men-f8da49f3b31f?gi=sd&utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker

Christina Noriega

Medium

22 January 2021

Text / 800-1500 Words

The Calm Hotline takes calls from men in Bogotá, Colombia, in an effort to address the root causes of domestic violence: a culture of machismo. Four psychologists take emergency calls – about 700 calls came in the service's first month – and works to refer the callers to an eight-week "gender transformation program" that will attempt to change men's toxic attitudes that can lead to violence. The program is patterned on a counseling hotline in the Colombian city of Barrancabermeja that was associated with a steep decline in domestic violence.

'They probably saved my life' | Former inmate says nonprofit keeps him, others out of jail

https://www.ksdk.com/article/news/crime/they-probably-saved-my-life-ex-con-talks-about-how-nonprofit-is-preventing-him-and-others-from-reoffending-in-exceptional-numbers/63-cb36b1f3-f59f-429f-8a02-9c81685b9955?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker

Christine Byers

KSDK-TV

21 January 2021

Broadcast TV News / Under 3 Minutes

St. Louis' Concordance Academy of Leadership turns the traditional approach to prison re-entry programs on its head. Rather than pushing people just released from prison to find housing and a job, the academy pays its participants a living wage while it provides them with the counseling and other support they need not to slip back into trouble. Once their lives are stable, they focus in the 18-month program on employment. The 6-year-old program improves the chances of staying out of prison by more than 40%, according to one study. Concordance is raising the money it needs to expand to other cities.

In Eugene, Oregon, civilian response workers—not police—are dispatched to nonviolent crises

https://www.christiancentury.org/article/features/eugene-civilian-response-workers-are-dispatched-nonviolent-crises?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker

Caitlin Yoshiko Kandil

The Christian Century

19 January 2021

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Eugene's well-established CAHOOTS program for replacing police as first responders to certain types of 911 calls has become a model for multiple cities as they seek to replicate its success in an era of questioning the role of police. While it saves its city money and replaces arrests and possible violence with social and health services for people needing housing or mental health care, or suffering from addiction, CAHOOTS is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of programs responding to these challenges. Communities' differences will dictate what works best for them.

Albuquerque's vision for non-police first responders comes down to earth

http://nmindepth.com/2021/01/17/albuquerques-vision-for-non-police-first-responders-comes-down-to-earth?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker

Ted Alcorn

New Mexico In Depth

17 January 2021

Text / Over 3000 Words

In response to the 2020 policing protests, Albuquerque was among the first cities to embrace a major change in handling mental-health-crisis calls to 911. But its new Community Safety Department has foundered in its first year, a victim of inadequate planning and resources. The plan to send unarmed first responders on such calls, to reduce the risk of a violent over-reaction by the police, depended on reassigning city workers from other agencies, none of whom were mental health professionals. City councilors have sent the planners back to rethink the latest in a history of failed responses.

How British Scientists Found the More Infectious Coronavirus Variant

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/16/world/europe/uk-coronavirus-variant.html?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker

Benjamin Mueller

The New York Times

16 January 2021

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In March when fewer than 100 coronavirus infections had been found in the U.K, researchers in Cambridge decided to begin sequencing coronavirus samples as part of an "unparalleled surveillance system for Covid" that could identify and track possible mutations or the virus. This effort – which involves labs sending leftover material from testing swabs to the researcher's genomics lab where they are stored and analyzed – has culminated in hundreds of thousands of genome sequences and "sounded an alarm for the world" about the new fast-spreading variant.

An Algorithm Is Helping a Community Detect Lead Pipes

https://www.wired.com/story/algorithm-helping-community-detect-lead-pipes?utm_source=Solutions+Story+Tracker

Sidney Fussell

Wired

14 January 2021

Text / 1500-3000 Words

BlueConduit, an analytics startup, applies statistical models to identify neighborhoods and households that might have lead pipes. The models include dozens of factors, such as the age of the home and proximity of other homes where lead has been found, to help predict likely locations of lead pipes and create a ranking by likelihood that cities can use to prioritize which pipes to examine. In Flint, MI, about 70% of the homes identified using the models had lead pipes, compared to about 15% of homes where excavations did not use the model. The company is working with organizations in dozens of other cities.