Good morning! ☀️

And Happy Sunday!

Today, instead of our usual question, we honor the remarkable legacy of Marian Wright Edelman, an 84-year-old champion of civil rights and the rights of children.

Marian was born in 1939 and became involved in the Civil Rights Movement in 1959. In 1960, she and 77 other students were arrested during a sit-in at a segregated Atlanta restaurant. Following this, she went on to study law at Yale, eventually becoming the first African-American woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar in 1964.

During her lifetime of work and service, she has been intimately involved in civil rights issues; helped establish the Head Start program, which provides early childhood education, health, nutrition, and parent involvement service to low-income children and families; helped organize the Poor People’s Campaign in an effort to gain economic justice for poor people; and eventually founded the Children’s Defense Fund “as a voice for poor children, children of color, and children with disabilities”.

Marian’s life shows us that while “social worker” is a professional title that is earned through education, there are individuals in our society who do not hold the title but who do embody the essence of social work—promoting justice and advocating for the marginalized.

Her portrait, shown below, is currently displayed at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC.

News

Lifesaving fentanyl strips are still illegal in some states

“At Cleveland's Urban Kutz Barbershop, customers can flip through magazines as they wait, or help themselves to drug screening tests left out in a box on a table with a somber message: “Your drugs could contain fentanyl. Please take free test strips.”

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine. It was the cause of 75,000 of the over 100,000 drug deaths in 2022. Yet fentanyl test strips, small trips of paper that detect the presence of fentanyl in all types of different drugs, are still illegal to possess in many states due to drug paraphernalia laws dating back to the 1970s War on Drugs.

Fortunately, states have started to recognize the importance of fentanyl test strips in preventing overdoses. Kansas recently signed a bill decriminalizing the strips and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas stopped his opposition to using the strips after a “better understanding” of their role in preventing overdose. Montana and other states are considering similar legislation.

The idea behind providing fentanyl strips is harm reduction, an approach aimed at reducing negative consequences associated with drug use. In other words, not everyone is ready or able to stop using drugs; In the meantime, we must use strategies for reducing the harm associated with use.

Other social work-related news

• Medical professionals are warning people on antidepressants to use caution when venturing outside over the coming months, as certain antidepressants can cause heat exhaustion to come quickly. 

• Bills that would ban conversion therapy in Michigan have been passed to the full body of the state Senate after being voted on by the Housing and Human Services Committee. 

• Social worker and artist Lisa Botti uses art to bring attention to human rights issues in Montana and the world

• Idaho has a higher incarceration rate than any democratic nation, and it incarcerates more women than any other state. Here’s how nonprofits and state programs there reintegrate people into society after incarceration

Reads on research

• When asked serious public health questions related to abuse, suicide, or other medical crises, the online chatbot tool ChatGPT provided critical resources – such as what 1-800 lifeline number to call for help – only about 22% of the time

• A report from Evernorth shows that:

  • 22% of people have a diagnosed behavioral condition. They account for 41% of healthcare spending. An effective behavioral health treatment (adherence to antidepressant medication and/or 3+ behavioral outpatient visits), however, can reduce this spend

  • Among patients with a behavioral condition, the research finds that 87% also have one or more medical conditions, such as a circulatory, endocrine, or musculoskeletal disorder or disease

• Gut Biome and Mental Health: Do Probiotics Work? Research suggests that probiotics may be effective in treating mental health disorders, but most studies “lack power and have weak study designs”, meaning that the evidence behind probiotics and mental health “remains inconclusive”

Reads on policy

• Arkansas is more than a third of the way through its six-month plan for redetermining whether people who remained on Medicaid during the pandemic should be able to keep their health insurance. More than 140,000 people have already lost their coverage — mostly because they have missed letters or have been snarled in paperwork problems and not because they earn too much

• 4 state policies that were introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic were led to expansion of telehealth availability for mental health care throughout the United States. Despite these policies, telehealth services were less likely to be offered in counties with a greater proportion of Black residents and in facilities that accepted Medicaid and CHIP

• A federal judge temporarily blocked portions of a new Florida law championed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis that bans transgender minors from receiving puberty blockers. In the United Kingdom (UK), the UK Health Service will limit puberty blockers to clinical trials. And Sen. Tammy Baldwin, a Democrat from Wisconsin, is reintroducing legislation that will include questions of sexual orientation and gender identity in government surveys to get a better sense of how the healthcare crisis is affecting LGBTQ groups

Tech, social work, and other resources 😎

• Sign up for NASW Legislative Alerts

• Last day to apply: Get Credentialed as an Emotional Fitness Instructor in order to teach online classes in resilience, burnout, etc.

P.S. If you found this interesting or informative, please share it with a colleague or friend.