Teams of ‘violence interrupters’ will patrol crime hotspots in the northern suburbs by the end of the summer as part of a million-dollar program announced by county officials on Friday. Lake.

The Gun Violence Prevention Initiative, funded by a state grant and federal COVID-19 relief funds, will train and pay 10 outreach workers who are expected to hit the streets later this summer, the prosecutor said. of Lake County State, Eric Rinehart. The launch of the program comes as gun violence has increased in the northern suburbs in recent years – albeit on a smaller scale than neighboring Chicago.

So far this year, there have been six fatal shootings in Lake County — out of a total of 11 homicides in 2022 — with more than 80% of all shootings concentrated in Waukegan, Zion and North Chicago. (With about 87,000 residents, Waukegan is the county’s largest city.) The county ended 2021 with 21 fatal shootings, a 33% increase from 2020 and more than five times the number from 2019.

“I have people saying to me, ‘Throw them all in jail,'” said Rinehart, a former public defender elected in 2020 on a reform platform. “Well, you can’t do that if they haven’t done anything yet. It’s an investment in prevention, doing something before the balls are in the air.

By a 21-0 vote, the Lake County Board approved $560,000 for the program in April, and the state awarded an additional $500,000, though the county has yet to choose a partner organization to administer. funds. Waukegan native Mark McAllister, who worked for the organization Cure Violence for years, creating awareness programs across the United States, will lead the training. Outreach workers will be recruited from the ranks of former gang members or returning criminals; both are seen as “credible messengers” who can mediate violent conflict.

Variations of the switch model have grown in popularity since the early 2000s, thanks in part to the sometimes mixed success of Cure Violence, a Chicago-based organization that has tackled violence as a public health issue. The idea is that violence spreads within groups like a disease, with switches serving to break the chain of transmission.

As crime rose during the pandemic, even as protests against police brutality swept the country following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, policymakers poured more money into switch-type programs. In Chicago, these organizations will approach $190 million in funding from charitable foundations, state and local funding, and the number of outreach workers citywide is about 200.

Recent research from the University of Chicago showed a significant drop in arrests and acts of violence among men who participated in the READI Chicago program, which sends outreach workers to the city’s south and west neighborhoods to find residents most at risk either to get shot or to shoot someone. Workers at READI and more than a dozen similar organizations are following up after breaking up the conflict by recruiting at-risk people into a program where they are paid to attend daily therapy sessions, job training and to advice.

Mayor Billy McKinney said he and his police department look forward to the day the switches hit the streets of Zion. The suburb, which has fewer than 50 police officers, recorded 182 incidents of “shots being fired” in 2021, including 27 times when people were hit by gunfire.

“We can’t wait for something to happen to act,” McKinney said. “Our police force, they understand who the players are and the jams they have. Being able to have someone who can get together with these groups and talk to them is key.

Bala Cynwyd, United States – June 3, 2022 —

June 2, 2022. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – A dedicated team of relationship counselors, therapists, and coaches are thrilled to announce the launch of a new website, GrowMyRelationship.com, created to encourage more couples to consider relationship counseling at all stages of their relationship. . The new platform connects couples from all parts of the country with the right counselor based on their personality and relationship goals.

The website is the next step in the more than thirty-year careers of Dr Ellyn Bader and Dr Peter Pearson, known for creating the Developmental Model approach to couples counselling. Their method has become an internationally recognized model that has benefited tens of thousands of couples around the world. The duo also train hundreds of Menlo Park, California-based Couples Institute counselors each year. Rather than seeing conflicts or struggles as anomalies, the developmental model encourages couples to accept relationship differences as a natural part of growth and progress.

Dr. Pete Pearson, one of two advisors who helped found Grow My Relationship, says, “We have two goals with this new platform. The first is to help prevent premature and unnecessary divorces in all types of relationships. We do this by providing education, resources and assistance in finding a counselor in their area. We bring together professional therapists providing the model on an easily searchable website. »

Whether or not someone is using the services, couples can find educational resources and content on different types of counseling, stages of therapy, and more to help answer questions and dispel myths about relationship therapy.

Dr. Ellyn Bader, another founder of the project, says: “COVID-19 has accelerated many trends that were slowly developing. Many advisors have struggled to switch to online counseling sessions. Digital health services are the future, and we’re excited to help transition a different way of delivering these services to those who need them. »

Because of the duos’ commitment to training and equipping therapists, they recently expanded www.couplesinstitute.com to provide additional training, resources, and mentorship to couples counselors and therapists around the world. The Couples Institute website will serve as a hub for therapists interested in the developmental model and couples counseling in general. Advisors can use the site to get information about the development model, access self-study materials, or register for highly sought-after places in their training program.

Jamie Markizon, co-founder of the new website, has worked with Ellyn and Pete for nearly two decades and says the duo’s commitment to counseling, couples and education in the field is infectious. “I’ve worked with many counselors over the years, but Ellyn and Pete really care about everyone. They care passionately about couples and counselors as well. They’ve spent decades helping to train new generations of advisors, so it’s only natural that they’ll expand their reach even further with this new platform.

The new couple counseling portal, www.growmyrelationship.com, is now available for couples and counsellors.

Contact information:
Name: Jamie Markizon
Email: Send Email
Organization: Developing my relationship
Address: 1 Union Avenue #76, Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania 19004, USA
Website: https://growmyrelationship.com/

Build ID: 89076128

If you detect any problems, problems or errors in the content of this press release, please contact [email protected] to let us know. We will respond and rectify the situation within the next 8 hours.

COMTEX_408135013/2773/2022-06-03T01:06:12

The Holyoke Clinic at River Valley Counseling Center in Holyoke, MA has always tried to make ends meet with its technology.

THE PROBLEM

His efforts to revamp and improve his technology were all trial and error.

Staff were band-aiding their technologies, struggling to figure out what the root of the problems were when disruptions occurred. Was it the computer itself? Network connectivity? A bug in the signal? To put the extent of the problems into perspective, some hardware was more than ten years old; it could easily take clinicians five minutes just to reach the login screen.

“When we thought one thing was solved, another hurdle arose,” recalls Chassity Crowell-Miller, LICSW, a clinical social worker at the clinic. “This element of touch and go was particularly challenging for mental health care, where providers can help with sensitive and traumatic issues and were unnecessarily disrupted and inhibited by outdated technology.

“Overall, the ability to help our clinicians, as well as the treatment and overall experiences of our patients, has been negatively affected,” she added.

Importantly, the organization’s Holyoke Clinic caters to an underserved population, with many patients being of low socioeconomic status. Throughout the community, rates of poverty, school dropouts, substance abuse and violence are high.

“For vendors in our community and beyond, the past two years are nothing like what they’ve ever seen in the field,” Crowell-Miller observed. “In the early days of COVID, when many organizations and communities were able to seamlessly transition to virtual learning and working in order to continue their work, the Holyoke Clinic at River Valley Counseling Center was not set up for this shift. abrupt to technology.

“While telehealth has improved access to many outpatient services, marginalized patients – rural, poor, elderly and minority patients – may not have benefited equally from the expansion of telehealth. “, she continued. “With all of this in mind, the River Valley Advice Center needed to be provided with the necessary IT equipment, infrastructure and advice to support its employees at our Holyoke site – both in person and via telehealth. .”

PROPOSAL

The cost of outdated technology is often not discussed, but for vendors to do their jobs effectively, a solid technology infrastructure is a table-top requirement, said Stephen Moss, senior vice president and general manager, workforce. connected work, at Insight, an IT and health company. infrastructure company.

“The past two years have forced healthcare providers to catch up on IT and dramatically accelerate digital transformation,” he said. “For many like River Valley Counseling Center, you have to start with the basics.

“They deal with the impact of legacy infrastructure that is sometimes decades old, not to mention extremely outdated devices that amplify the frustration of resources that should facilitate their work, actually hampering their ability to care for patients,” he said. he continued.

River Valley challenges stood out from Insight.

“To help, we focused on how to improve productivity and the customer experience, particularly to address lag and frozen sessions during telehealth consultations,” Moss explained. “A simple upgrade to 50 new Intel-powered desktops and laptops made daily multitasking an afterthought rather than a source of frustration for clinic staff.

“Being able to hold a telehealth session without hanging up not only allows medical providers in River Valley to more effectively meet the needs of their clients, eliminating disruptions, they gain credibility and the ability to treat more people on a daily basis,” he added.

The Insight and Intel teams have taken a hands-on approach to delivering and implementing the right technology, at the right price, said Jason Kimrey, vice president, US Channels and Partner Programs, Intel.

“The strategy was informed by the mindset that having the best technology was the most effective way to maximize productivity for River Valley and its advisors,” he said. “To help guide the process, we collaborated and leveraged our ecosystem of partners to understand the unique challenges and pain points of the organization.”

MARKET

There are many telemedicine technology and service providers in the health informatics market today. Health Informatics News released a special report highlighting many of these vendors with detailed descriptions of their products. Click here to read the special report.

TRY THE CHALLENGE

With River Valley considerations in mind, Intel prioritized implementing more modernized devices and hardware that updated core infrastructure, Kimrey said. Intel has upgraded network switches, physical hard drives, chips and more to accommodate the increased bandwidth needed to use telehealth, he added.

“As a team, Insight’s attorneys helped put it all together and put it together,” Moss explained. “Moving from almost all remote services before the pandemic to doing most of their work via telehealth is a monumental culture shift. Coping with new technologies should not be a burden for caregivers; it should be an intuitive and streamlined experience.

“When we work with organizations like River Valley, we start by understanding what their unique challenges are, who is affected, and what they need to accomplish in their day-to-day work,” he continued. “Then we determine the right technology based on the caregivers’ individual personalities and needs to optimize their user experience, productivity and ability to help their clients.”

Insight manages the rapid provisioning, configuration and deployment of virtual desktop environments so that new devices are ready to use with minimal configuration and network connection required by the organization’s IT team or employees, a he added.

“Insight also has the ability to provide virtual IT support for day-to-day device health management, freeing up organizations with limited internal IT resources, such as the River Valley Consulting Center, to focus on projects. more meaningful transformations,” says Moss.

“For River Valley, they have gained the ability to quickly deliver new devices to their staff that are ready to work with the applications they need,” he added. “Their healthcare providers can now work just as effectively from home or in the clinic.”

RESULTS

Technology is key to improving people’s lives, and River Valley has really felt it, Crowell-Miller said. Highlights of River Valley so far, she reported, have included:

• Improved client and clinician experience. There have been tangible benefits for the customer experience, both internally and externally. The provider organization increased its telehealth services from 5% before the pandemic to 95% at the height of the pandemic, while removing common barriers such as latency and loss of revenue due to no-show rates previous. Now, with the ability to adapt, adjust and switch to telehealth, if needed, clinicians can meet patients where they are.
• Increased productivity. The technology solved a loss of productivity and slowness for the River Valley consulting center, which impacted the quality of services it was able to provide. Even just connecting to computers is much faster and takes seconds. Specifically, the organization has significantly improved productivity by up to approximately 25% for clinicians with minimal access to home technology, making it easier to use the office for virtual or in-person visits if needed.
• Provide community resources. The River Valley counseling center is now able to better establish itself to help and serve the community. This technology is not only transactional from the perspective of the healthcare provider; the establishment of this infrastructure is mutually beneficial for clinicians and patients, well beyond traditional appointments and the organization of telehealth sessions. This technology has helped the River Valley Counseling Center put resources in the hands of clients. River Valley works on these computers while seeing a patient in person, and staff are able to help provide resources such as databases, printed materials and more to patients.

TIPS FOR OTHERS

“Because every organization is different, it’s really important to make sure you’re working with a technology partner who not only understands the healthcare industry and how technology plays a vital role in patient care, but also the challenges and the unique needs of your operations, the clinicians, patients and community you serve,” Crowell-Miller said.

Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT
Email the author: [email protected]
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.

Prestonwood Pregnancy Center, a ministry of the Prestonwood Baptist Church in Texas that has served the greater Dallas Fort Worth area for 30 years, celebrates the grand opening of its new family resource center on Tuesday.

The center is set up like a boutique where new mothers can choose free baby and maternity items they need during and after their pregnancy.

Products available include cribs, diapers, wipes, bath products, dietary needs, baby care, safety items and toys.

In addition, clothes for pregnant women are also available as well as clothes for newborns and toddlers. The center also offers parenting classes and other counseling options.

“The Prestonwood Family Resource Center was created to meet the growing demands of our clients who have chosen life,” Leanne Jamieson, the center’s executive director, told CBN News. “It’s a picture of the church pro-life in words and pro-love in action.”

“Although the initial motivation for establishing the center was for clients of the Prestonwood Pregnancy Center, we will be taking referrals from other pregnancy centers and ministries,” continued Jamieson. “Prestonwood values ​​all life and we promise to lift up those who have chosen life by equipping them to be the parents the Lord has called them to be.”

Jack Graham, the Prestonwood pastor, explained how the ministry focuses on serving women during and after pregnancy.

“With the Supreme Court’s impending decision, it’s critical that people don’t fall for the lie prevalent in our country that Christian centers like ours don’t care for women after the baby is born. We want to save babies, but we want to give people hope too,” Graham said.

“We want to be the kind of Christians who are there for people, not just during their pregnancy, but afterwards. We are pro-life from conception to the end of life,” he added. “As Christians, we have a responsibility to care for people at every stage of life. That’s why a family resource center is so important.”

And women who come to the pregnancy center have access to many medical services free of charge. This includes a pregnancy test, an ultrasound to confirm the baby’s due date and much-needed support for the mother-to-be.

Over the past three decades, more than 97,000 women have walked through the doors of the center and chosen life for their babies.

So far this year, the Pregnancy Center is celebrating several milestones, including:

• 1,707 changed their mind about abortion
• 46 recognized adoption references
• 113 women received salvation in Christ

According to the Prestonwood Pregnancy Center website, they even offer free, confidential coaching sessions available to the baby’s father. Male coaches can meet with men to listen, offer advice, and discuss pregnancy-related issues.

Texas Pro-Life Law

Last September, the Texas “Heartbeat” law (SB 8) was signed into law, banning most abortions in the state once the fetal heartbeat is detected around the six-week mark.

CBN News has extensively covered the new law, which pregnancy centers say is convincing some women who were on the fence to choose life.

For those prone to abortion, it led to fear and despair, especially in the first few weeks. The new law puts Texas in line with more than a dozen other states that are taking aggressive action to defend the unborn child.

To learn more about the Prestonwood Pregnancy Center and the new Family Center, click here.

*** Please sign up for CBN newsletters and download the CBN News app to ensure you continue to receive the latest news from a distinctly Christian perspective. ***

As the Indian government pools its efforts to digitize health data, technologies such as cloud computing that can foster data interoperability are at the center of attention. Nicola Murphy, Head of International Government Health, Amazon Web Services (AWS), one of the market leaders in cloud computing for healthcare, told BT how the technology can benefit India and to the world beyond the pandemic. Edited excerpts…

What is the future of cloud computing?

We are currently scratching the surface of what is possible in the cloud for healthcare applications. Cloud technology is the on-demand delivery of computing resources over the Internet with pay-per-use pricing. AWS provides a secure infrastructure for computing resources such as analytics, machine learning, databases, storage, and more. Our customers, including healthcare organizations, use these services with their data, and they retain complete control and ownership of the data they choose to use with them. services.

What are the important areas of the healthcare industry in terms of cloud computing? How has AWS helped India with its technology?

There are three important areas in health care. The first is cloud agility. You can go from idea to idea or from idea to implementation of something orders of magnitude faster than you could otherwise. We have found this to be extremely useful in response to rapidly changing demands during the pandemic and it will also be useful for organizations in the future. The second area is cloud flexibility. It is possible to grow and shrink the cloud in response to changing demands. Therefore, there is no need to forecast what demand will look like days, weeks, months or even years in advance. We found this to be beneficial during the pandemic, when suddenly there was new demand that no one could have predicted before 2020. For example, we worked with a volunteer and start-up organization in India called Project StepOne who created a telemedicine solution on AWS Cloud to strengthen government COVID-19 response resources by enabling volunteers with the required knowledge and skills to work remotely and directly within government systems. They help address issues such as staff shortages, training and onboarding delays, and create a system that can shrink or expand based on government capacity. Project StepOne has brought together more than 12,000 volunteer physicians, has over 30,000 total volunteers, and has supported more than 21 states and union territories. It has already facilitated more than 8.5 million teleconsultations and mental health counseling sessions for citizens through volunteer health professionals and is estimated to have averted more than 500,000 new infections. During the second wave of the pandemic in India (as of March 2021), Project StepOne witnessed an average of around 5 million events and an inbound traffic load of around 2 million sessions per day, which it has seamlessly increased by 8x since March 2021 leveraging AWS services.

The third and final area, highly relevant to healthcare organizations around the world, that AWS is very passionate and committed to, is helping healthcare systems achieve their overall mission. This does not just mean providing IT infrastructure, but also understanding what their challenges and priorities are and how we can partner with them to support them. As an example, we have seen many health systems around the world focusing on health equity and wanting to promote greater health equity. Something we saw was impacted during the pandemic, people who had generally poor health outcomes before tended to be more severely affected by the health effects of COVID-19. This is an area where we have seen the cloud respond or have been used to respond to the pandemic and will be used moving forward as well.

Are there any specific AWS engagements with the Indian government?

The Indian government has developed an end-to-end vaccination platform called CoWIN; it’s a great example of cloud scalability and flexibility. India has prioritized making the platform scalable, inclusive and open, sharing the platform globally for the public good. According to the May 2022 CoWIN dashboard, over 1.9 billion doses of vaccination have been administered in India. According to data from CoWIN as of September 2021, India has achieved a milestone by administering 22.5 million doses of vaccination in a single day, with 28,000 doses per minute or 466 doses per second. There is another example of AWS supporting the government in healthcare innovations in India – C-DAC’s work with AWS on eSanjeevaniOPD.

This is yet another excellent example of agility and speed. As you know, C-DAC is a premier research and development organization of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India, tasked with enhancing the technological capabilities and applications of the India by developing and deploying world-class electronics and technology solutions. . When COVID-19 hit and India was in lockdown, outpatient departments of hospitals and clinics across the country shut down. C-DAC worked with AWS to build and launch the eSanjeevaniOPD teleconsultation service in just 19 days and initially rolled it out to four states in India. eSanjeevaniOPD has so far provided over 3 crore (30 million) teleconsultations in India and set a record by achieving 1.7 lakh (170,000) consultations in a single day. This service has helped people from 28 Indian states to seek medical assistance virtually from the confines of their homes.

How to ensure the security of patient data when using these technologies, especially in a country like India? What can India learn from the world?

Safety is our number one priority. Organizations using AWS maintain full control over their data. So they choose where they use the platform and how they use it, and there are several tools provided by AWS to help them do that, but they retain complete control and ownership of their data and are responsible for management of data on the platform in complete safety. However, there are several areas where AWS supports this. The infrastructure AWS is built on is designed for the world’s most security-conscious organizations. And it’s the same infrastructure that we use in all of our regions, including regions like India.

This means that any organization that uses AWS can benefit from a high level of security focus in all aspects of the infrastructure. We have several security-related regions that our customers can use to learn how to use AWS securely, some of which specialize in healthcare. In the United States, many of our services are HIPPA eligible. In the UK it is the NHS Data Protection and Security Toolkit which helps organizations process or store NHS health data which can be used to assess the platform against standards safety requirements defined by the British NHS. AWS Cloud is very secure and we have several certifications that can be used to support it. Organizations using AWS retain complete control and ownership of their data through the suite of tools.

Read also: SC insists on the physical presence of lawyers; adjourn business

Also Read: Satyendar Jain arrested in ‘fake’ case as BJP scared of losing Himachal polls: Sisodia

TULSA, Okla. – The Tulsa City Court is holding two amnesty sessions for citizens who have outstanding citations for parking and traffic violations.

Amnesty sessions are part of Tulsa’s Resilient Strategy, which helps equip all Tulsans with resources to overcome obstacles and thrive. For more information on municipal courts and upcoming amnesty opportunities, visit Municipal Courts Online.

Parking amnesty, June 6 – June 10, 2022 The first session of amnesty will be limited to parking tickets. Currently, the City has 82,000 unpaid parking tickets.

During the parking amnesty period, the owner or driver of the vehicle will be permitted to pay the predefined parking fine to Tulsa City Hall or Tulsa City Court without late fees or warrant fees. If you are unable to pay the quote(s) in full, a request may be made to see a judge to set up a payment plan; ID is required.

Individuals can request to see a judge by visiting the Municipal Courts Office, Court Records, Room 228, between 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. daily, which will give them the opportunity to be added to a docket to establish a court plan. payment.

Moving Violation Amnesty, June 13 – June 17, 2022 The second round of amnesty will be limited to traffic offenses and not related to parking. The city currently has 108,000 citations in warrant status.

During this amnesty period, individuals will be allowed to pay their quotes in full with no late fees or money order fees directly from a cashier. If unable to pay the fines in full, individuals can consult with a judge to work out a payment plan. A dedicated judge will be available at the Municipal Court from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. and from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. during this amnesty week.

If a person has received a citation for an unexpired/unexpired driver’s license, unexpired/unexpired tag, or unexpired insurance, they must bring proof of current active status to be considered for low-cost or no-cost termination . If a fine has been imposed by a judge and a person has not paid it, they will have to see a judge.

You can pay in person at the two locations below. If you need to see a judge, it must be done in Municipal Court at 600 Civic Center.

Municipal Court, 600 Civic Center, 2nd Floor

• Hours: 8:00 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. Monday to Friday

City Hall, 175 E 2nd St.

• Hours: 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Monday through Friday

For those who cannot afford quotes, they can contact the Financial Empowerment Center. This one-on-one, free financial advice is provided by the City of Tulsa and Goodwill Industries of Tulsa to anyone, regardless of income. Call (918) 802-7279 to schedule an appointment.

©2022 Cox Media Group

Advantages

• Focus on CBT, an evidence-based treatment method with a high success rate treating a variety of behavioral health issues
• Resource toolkit included as part of treatment plan
• 20% off the first month for all new entrants

The inconvenients

• Only offers individual therapy sessions
• Live sessions not available with the basic plan
• No services for children or teenagers

Session format Messaging and live or voice-only video sessions

Cost $39.95 to $79.95 per week depending on subscription; 20% first month discount for new subscribers; plans billed monthly

Prescribes medication Nope

Accept insurance Nope

There are several counseling methods to treat depression, including CBT. According to the American Psychological Association, this form of treatment for depression involves making an effort to change thought patterns and behavioral patterns. What sets Online-Therapy.com apart from other platforms is that it prioritizes CBT for depression. This is different from other online sites that have therapists trained in CBT but don’t need it as a method of counseling.

Each of the three Online-Therapy.com plans includes a comprehensive toolkit of worksheets, journals, meditation and yoga videos, activity plans, and assessments to help you check your progress. The eight sections included in the worksheets can help you challenge and overcome issues related to depression or other mental health issues. Online-Therapy.com considers these tools to be important parts of CBT because they provide you and your therapist with a foundation to work from. Sometimes called “homework,” these tools are what distinguish CBT from talk therapies, according to the South Central Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (PDF).

Your therapist will provide feedback based on the information you share on the worksheets within 24 hours, Monday through Friday. Since the communication through the worksheets is not real-time, you don’t have to schedule a session with your therapist. But if you want video, voice, or live chat sessions, you can upgrade to the standard or premium plan.

Online-Therapy.com Plan Options and Pricing

The Online-Therapy.com basic plan is not CBT, as it does not involve talk therapy, but it does come with self-paced worksheets, yoga and meditation videos, journal , an activity plan and tests, as well as unlimited communication with your therapist through messages and the worksheet. Online-Therapy.com states that your therapist will respond within 24 hours, Monday through Friday. This plan is $39.95 per week with a 20% first month discount for new subscribers. Subscriptions are billed monthly.

The standard plan has the same benefits as the basic plan, plus one live session per week and unlimited messaging. This plan is $59.95 per week with a 20% first month discount for new subscribers. Subscriptions are billed monthly.

The premium plan has the same features as the basic and standard plan, plus two live sessions with a therapist per week and unlimited messaging. This plan is $79.95 per week with a 20% first month discount for new subscribers. Subscriptions are billed monthly.