Public Health

With new youth facility, Harris Center takes community-based approach to avoid recidivism

One of the central aspirations of The Harris Center for Mental Health and Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities is to reduce the footprint of criminal justice in the lives of people with mental health concerns. After providing services to over 90,000 individuals in 2022, it recently opened a facility specifically dedicated to juveniles between the ages of 13-17 with the launch of its Youth Diversion Center.

Physical activity is a magic bullet for our health. So what’s holding us back?

Regular physical activity may be the closest thing we have to a “magic bullet” to combat the obesity epidemic and alarmingly high rates of cardiovascular disease. Physical activity offers dramatic benefits for individuals but it also has the potential to knit together the social fabric of our communities, making us healthier physically and mentally. And it is free. So, what’s holding us back? As it turns out, something as easy as a safe walk around the neighborhood is out of reach for too many communities.

Houstonians have put aside concerns about public health as pandemic recedes from view

On May 11, 2021, Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research released the results of the 40th annual Houston Area Survey. Among the findings: 22% of respondents – a far higher share than in any previous survey – rated “public health” as the “biggest problem facing people in the Houston area today.”

Lone scarred state: Texas must contend with outsized death toll from COVID-19 and anti-vaccine attitudes

The United States of America leads all high-income nations in COVID-19 deaths, even though as a nation it had the greatest access to antiviral vaccines and therapeutics. To understand this disconnect, we can look to the COVID-19 deaths and disability in the state of Texas. Because of COVID-19, Texas is enduring one of the greatest human tragedies in its 186-year history. It did not have to be this way.

Accountability, capacity building and collaboration key to a healthier Settegast

Settegast’s estimated life expectancy of 65.7 years, more than 20 years lower than the highest expectancies in Clear Lake and River Oaks, makes it among the most vulnerable communities in our area. While residents of the historically Black neighborhood in northeast Houston have called out inequities over the course of several decades, those concerns have mostly gone unheeded. But there is hope that change is coming.