Stopping US teens from smoking, one town at a time

The law often traps offenders in a cycle of lawbreaking. LEAD allows for drug users to become committed to a program that helps them through the quitting process instead of throwing them into prison and isolating them from the help they need.

For decades, the only good option for alcoholics seeking recovery was an abstinence-based 12-step program called Alcoholics Anonymous. John David Sinclair, an American neuroscientist, has developed a new method, where an alcoholic takes naltrexone one hour before drinking. The naltrexone blocks the brain's opioid receptors and prevents an alcoholics strong synaptic reward response from occurring, which allows their craving for alcohol to eventually subside.

About 40 percent more people in the state are seeking treatment for addiction today than a year ago - but the number of deaths from heroin is going up. Local government is scrambling for both funding and awareness to combat the issue.

Too often do veterans come back from fighting overseas to find little to no help in reacclimatizing to life at home. Programs in Tarrant County, Texas bring together a wide range of programs (housing placement, mental health counseling, legal services) to help those who have returned from fighting for their country.

During the twentieth century, imagery on cigarette packs communicated that smoking was cool and young, and it encouraged young people, as well as adults, to smoke. In 2012, Australia started “unbranding the pack,” which standardized cigarettes without a brand and showed the physically gruesome effects of smoking with health factoids on the packaging. Since then, the World Health Organization has recommended this new kind of packaging and the idea has spread to other countries to scale the success.

Northern Maine is home to some of America's poorest - but it ranks high on national measures of health. Hospital programs visit more patients in their homes where they can be more comfortable and receive everything they need, which in turn reduces medical costs.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drug overdoses are the leading cause of injury-related mortality. Naxolone, a drug used to revive overdose victims, is only available by prescription. However, private organizations have distributed Naxolone kits nationally, showing that the drug can save lives when it is more readily accessible.

Adolescent smoking remains a challenging health problem because of the allure of cigarette branding. Australia is piloting the transformation of cigarette packaging with a generic look that reduces the appeal of smoking. In Florida, the Truth campaign has exposed that cigarette companies targeted teenage consumers and, in response, created a set of new advertisements that presented the cigarette industry with transparency.

The recommended treatment for chronic alcoholism is abstinence. But at the Oaks - a permanent home for those who once lived on the streets - residents are given a measure of wine at hourly intervals. It is called the Managed Alcohol Program, and aims to change the drinking behaviour of inveterate addicts.

Obesity has become a health crisis for many women in the African-American community, but a group known as GirlTrek is working to change this by making exercise a social norm and creating supportive connections between women with shared goals. This new organization, which works to identify barriers that many in this community face, channels African-American history to encourage black women to walk their way toward better health.