10 Innovative Ideas That Propelled America Forward in 2016

The most contentious presidential election in modern history offered Americans abundant reasons to shut off the news. But if they looked past the front page’s daily jaw-droppers, our countrymen would see that there’s plenty of inspiring work being done. At NationSwell, we strive to find the nonprofit directors, the social entrepreneurs and the government officials testing new ways to solve America’s most intractable problems. In our reporting this year, we’ve found there’s no shortage of good being done. Here’s a look at our favorite solutions from 2016.

This Woman Has Collected 40,000 Feminine Products to Boost the Self-Esteem of Homeless Women
Already struggling to afford basic necessities, homeless women often forgo bras and menstrual hygiene products. Dana Marlowe, a mother of two in the Washington, D.C., area, restored these ladies’ dignity by distributing over 40,000 feminine products to the homeless before NationSwell met her in February. Since then, her organization Support the Girls has given out 212,000 more.
Why Sleeping in a Former Slave’s Home Will Make You Rethink Race Relations in America
Joseph McGill, a Civil War re-enactor and history consultant for Charleston’s Magnolia Plantation in South Carolina, believes we must not forget the history of slavery and its lasting impact to date. To remind us, he’s slept overnight in 80 dilapidated cabins — sometimes bringing along groups of people interested in the experience — that once held the enslaved.

This Is How You End the Foster Care to Prison Pipeline
Abandoned by an abusive dad and a mentally ill mom, Pamela Bolnick was placed into foster care at 6 years old. For a time, the system worked — that is, until she “aged out” of it. Bolnick sought help from First Place for Youth, an East Bay nonprofit that provides security deposits for emancipated children to transition into stable housing.

Would Your Opinions of Criminals Change if One Cooked and Served You Dinner?
Café Momentum, one of Dallas’s most popular restaurants, is staffed by formerly incarcerated young men without prior culinary experience. Owner Chad Houser says the kitchen jobs have almost entirely eliminated recidivism among his restaurant’s ranks.

This Proven Method Is How You Prevent Sexual Assault on College Campuses
Nearly three decades before Rolling Stone published its incendiary (and factually inaccurate) description of sexual assault at the University of Virginia, a gang rape occurred at the University of New Hampshire in 1987. Choosing the right ways to respond to the crisis, the public college has since become the undisputed leader in ending sex crimes on campus.

This Sustainable ‘Farm of the Future’ Is Changing How Food Is Grown
Once a commercial fisherman, Bren Smith now employs a more sustainable way to draw food from the ocean. Underwater, near Thimble Island, Conn., he’s grown a vertical farm, layered with kelp, mussels, scallops and oysters.

This Former Inmate Fights for Others’ Freedom from Life Sentences
Jason Hernandez was never supposed to leave prison. At age 21, a federal judge sentenced him to life for selling crack cocaine in McKinney, Texas — Hernandez’s first criminal offense. After President Obama granted him clemency in 2013, he’s advocated on behalf of those still behind bars for first-time, nonviolent drug offenses.

Eliminating Food Waste, One Sandwich (and App) at a Time
In 2012, Raj Karmani, a Pakistani immigrant studying computer science at the University of Illinois, built an app to redistribute leftover food to local nonprofits. So far, the nonprofit Zero Percent has delivered 1 million meals from restaurants, bakeries and supermarkets to Chicago’s needy. In recognition of his work, Karmani was awarded a $10,000 grant as part of NationSwell’s and Comcast NBCUniversal’s AllStars program.

Baltimore Explores a Bold Solution to Fight Heroin Addiction
Last year, someone in Baltimore died from an overdose every day: 393 in total, more than the number killed by guns. Dr. Leana Wen, the city’s tireless public health commissioner, issued a blanket prescription for naloxone, which can reverse overdoses, to every citizen — the first step in her ambitious plan to wean 20,000 residents off heroin.

How a Fake Ad Campaign Led to the Real-Life Launch of a Massive Infrastructure Project
Up until 1974, a streetcar made daily trips from El Paso, Texas, across the Mexican border to Ciudad Juárez. Recently, a public art project depicting fake ads for the trolley inspired locals to call for the line’s comeback, and the artist behind the poster campaign now sits on the city council.

Continue reading “10 Innovative Ideas That Propelled America Forward in 2016”

Baltimore Explores a Bold Solution to Fight Heroin Addiction

In the emergency room at George Washington University (GW) Hospital, in D.C., Dr. Leana S. Wen administered anti-inflammatory meds to kids choking with asthma, rescued middle-aged dads from heart attacks and sewed up shooting victims. Unlike a primary care doctor, she knew almost nothing about the strangers wheeled into the frenzied space: their medical history, financial situation and neighborhood all mysteries.
The usual anonymity made it all the more surprising when she recognized a 24-year-old mother of two. Homeless and addicted to opioids, the woman would show up nearly every week, begging for treatment. Without fail, Wen delivered the disappointing news that the next available appointment was three weeks away. Inevitably, the young mom relapsed during that window. The last time Wen saw the young woman, she wasn’t breathing. Her family had discovered her unresponsive, killed by an overdose.
“I always think back to my patient now: she had come to us requesting help, not once, not twice, but over and over again, dozens of times,” says Wen. “Because we do not have the treatment capacity, the people looking to us for help fall through the cracks, overdose and die. Why has our system failed her, just as it is failing so many others who wish to get help for their addictions?”
Last January, at age 32, Wen took a new job as the city’s health commissioner. As the leader of the country’s oldest public health department (established in 1793), Wen devotes much of her attention to an urgent problem: addiction to opioids (a class of drugs that includes heroin, morphine and oxycodone) and prescription painkillers. In the seaside port city of 622,000 residents, two-thirds of them black, heroin addiction grips 20,000 people. Many more pop prescription drugs before turning to heroin, a drug that’s cheaper than ever and more socially acceptable since it can be snorted and not just injected.
Baltimore’s drug addiction is lethal: Last year, 393 residents died of overdoses, a staggering number that surpassed the city’s 344 murders in a year of record gun violence. Long past a criminal “war on drugs,” Wen is implementing a public health response to this medical crisis. Her three-part plan involves preventing overdoses, treating addiction and ending stigma against drug users. By treating addiction as a sickness, not a scourge, she’s now saving lives on a broader scale than any emergency room physician.
“It ties into every aspect of the city. I’ve spoken to kids who question why they have to go to school every morning when everyone in their family is addicted to drugs and doesn’t get up. If we have employees that are addicted or have criminal histories because of their addiction, then what does that mean for a healthy workforce?” asks Wen, a fast talker who regularly works 14-hour days. “This is absolutely something we need to address as a critical public health emergency.”
Tenacious even in childhood, Wen spent the first eight years of her life in post-Mao China, until the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre forced her politically dissident parents to flee the country. They moved to Los Angeles’s gang-infested neighborhoods like Compton and East Los Angeles, scraping money together from jobs as a dishwasher and hotel maid. With money tight, Wen remembers her aunts choosing between prescription medications, food or bus passes. Never one to wait, Wen enrolled in classes at California State University, Los Angeles, when she was just 13 years old. By age 18, she finished her degree, graduating with the highest honors, and went on to earn her M.D. from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Working as a public health professor at GW, Wen spearheaded campaigns to cut healthcare costs, remove lead from homes and design walkable neighborhoods with access to reasonably priced, nutritious food, which caught the attention of Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and landed her a new job.
A key to Wen’s plan for fighting opioid addiction is the distribution of an antidote to reverse a life-threatening opioid overdose. Inhaled through a nasal spray or injected into the upper arm or thigh like an EpiPen, Naloxone instantly revives a person from an overdose with few, if any, serious side effects. During a heroin high, chemicals block pain and induce euphoria — dulling the body to such an extent that the lungs forget to breathe while sleeping or the heart fails to pump adequately. Essentially shaking the brain out of its high, Naloxone creates a 30 to 90 minute window in which medical treatment can be sought. “It truly is a miracle drug,” Baltimore County Fire Chief John Hohman tells the Baltimore Sun. “It takes someone from near-death to consciousness in a matter of seconds.”
There’s only one catch: “You can’t give yourself this medication,” Wen explains. A person in the midst of an overdose often doesn’t have the wherewithal to inject the antidote. “That’s why we need every single person in our city to have access to it,” she adds, explaining that friends, family and community members have the ability to save a life.
In a controversial move, Wen issued a blanket prescription to the entire city last October — meaning anyone can buy the drug from a pharmacist. (For recipients of Medicaid, the price was reduced to $1 at a time when the drug’s price spiked drastically.) Wen sent training videos to jails and hospitals. Health department staffers visited areas notorious for open-air drug markets. Last year, the agency distributed 10,000 units of Naloxone and trained 12,500 residents how to administer it. That’s a big number for a program’s first year, but it’s still only half the number of active heroin users in Baltimore.
Outside of the roughly 30 recorded uses of Naloxone by police officers, there’s little hard evidence whether the drug has saved lives inside the city’s crack houses, parks and underpasses. Using data from Poison Control and other sources, Baltimore estimates Naloxone saved hundreds since 2015. “This remains a vastly underreported statistic,” says Sean Naron, a city spokesperson.
Critics claim that Naloxone encourages risky behavior and perpetuates the cycle of addiction because it removes the risk of death. “Naloxone does not truly save lives; it merely extends them until the next overdose,” Maine’s Gov. Paul LePage, wrote in April when he vetoed a bill that would have expanded access to Naloxone without a prescription. Suggestions like that make Wen balk. She calls them “specious,” “inhumane” and “ill-informed.” “That argument is based on stigma and not on science,” she responds. “You would never say to someone who is dying from a peanut allergy that you’re withholding their EpiPen to make them not eat peanuts.” Similarly for drug addiction, Wen believes there’s no use in talking about recovery tomorrow, if we don’t have the ability to stop a fatal overdose today.
Most in the medical community agree on the dire need for Naloxone. Experts caution, however, that it can’t be the sole response to this health crisis. Like most other cities, Baltimore is still trying to figure out how to effectively direct users whose lives were saved by Naloxone into long-term treatment programs, says Dr. Marc Fishman, medical director at Maryland Treatment Centers, a regional clinic. After reversing an overdose, an addict may “get dusted off and given a piece of paper with some phone numbers. They’re told to call this number today, tomorrow, next week. Maybe somebody will answer. Maybe they’ll take your insurance. Maybe they’ll see you next week or next month,” explains Fishman, who is also an addiction psychiatrist and faculty member at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
Instead, Fishman suggests the medical system needs a “full continuum” from Naloxone administration to addiction treatment. It’s not unprecedented: just look to patients with heart issues, he says. They, too, receive lifesaving drugs to stabilize their ticker, but rather than being discharged immediately, a cardiac clinic assigns a care plan and prescribes maintenance medicines to patients.
Wen fully embraces the idea: she wants to see medication-assisted treatment that fools the brain into thinking it’s getting opioids without getting high or blocks an opioid high after shooting up, alongside housing and supportive social services. In the meantime, she’s set up a 24-hour hotline for users to get treatment option referrals. (Since October, it’s received 1,000 calls every month.) By next year, Wen wants to open a stabilization center where a person can drop in for several days to get sober.
It’s far from the perfect solution, Wen acknowledges. But at the moment, she’s constantly iterating new approaches. Last year, at a meeting of the Mayor’s Task Force on Heroin, Wen asked her colleagues to think of what they could do immediately that wouldn’t need further funding or manpower. That type of thinking fits with the approach she learned from life-or-death decisions in the emergency room: it’s better to act quickly now with what’s available than to wait for an instrument that might never come.
“Everybody is working hard and trying stuff. Some things are succeeding, and some are failing,” Fishman says. “I get a sense of dynamic enthusiasm. People are rolling up their shirtsleeves. I’m sorry that white kids from the suburbs had to start dying before anybody started paying attention, but it’s better late than never.”
Despite Wen’s tireless efforts, overdoses continue to rise in Baltimore. Last year, 260 heroin users overdosed, tripling the 76 intoxication deaths in 2011. Why are people still dying? Wen returns to the idea that a heroin user, on the brink of an overdose, can’t save himself; the rest of the city needs to be on the lookout, which isn’t always the case.
Baltimore’s response to this crisis has the ability to end an epidemic and to unite an ailing community. Wen, who says she’s an optimist by nature, might just find a way to cure a hurting American city after all.
Homepage photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
MORE: How Do You Breathe Life into a Neighborhood That’s Been Forgotten?

The Room Full of Recliners That’s Saving the Lives of Drug Addicts, An Investment in the Poor That Pays Off and More

 
Overwhelmed by Overdoses, Clinic Offers a Room for Highs, Boston Globe
The number one cause of death among Boston’s homeless? Opioid use. Overdoses are such a common occurrence that they disrupt workers’ daily tasks at Boston Healthcare for the Homeless Program. In response, the organization is making a drastic, controversial move: opening a room where addicts can come down from their highs while under medical supervision. Some claim that it’s a plan that will simply enable users; others, including the Boston Public Health Commission and the Massachusetts Society of Addiction Medicine, believe it’s an effective way to get the drug pandemic under control and reduce the number of fatalities.
Free Money Lifts People out of Poverty, and That’s an Investment That Pays for Itself, Tech Insider
Despite America’s vast wealth, more than one in five children grow up in poverty in this country. While many believe that giving the less-fortunate money increases laziness, North Carolina discovered that Cherokee tribe members receiving up to $6,000 a year from casino revenue gave parents the ability to save money and pay bills on time — all the while continuing to work the same amount as they previously did. Not only that, their children experienced a reduction in mental health problems, fewer behavioral problems and improved performance in school.
Crowdsourcing the Future of a Social Movement, Stanford Social Innovation Review
You’ve probably heard the popular saying, There’s no “I” in team. While running a major crowdsourcing campaign, funders and nonprofit leaders in the LGBTQ community learned just how powerful collaboration is at maintaining social progress. More than 14,000 ideas were collected from residents of all 50 states, creating a vast data set about LGBTQ issues — something that’s cost prohibitive for one organization to source, but that will help guide the entire movement for years to come.

The New Miracle Treatment That Could Prevent Thousands of Overdose Deaths

Cinephiles and casual moviegoers alike were shocked to hear of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death in February from an overdose of heroin and cocaine, among other drugs. Now, two months later, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved an overdose antidote that could save thousands of other users from a similar fate.
This medication — Evzio — works like a common EpiPen, but instead of protecting against bee stings and peanut encounters, it releases naxolone into those who have overdosed on opioids like heroin or OxyContin. Considering that opioid overdoses lead to nearly 17,000 deaths per year, according to TIME, this simple device has the potential to prevent thousands of drug-related deaths, as Evzio will revive a person long enough to survive until an ambulance arrives.
Evzio is designed so that anyone can use it — even the untrained family member or friend of an opioid overdose victim. The medicine comes in a kit that includes audio instructions for new users and a safety feature that prevents against using the same needle twice.
The British Medical Journal recently published the promising results of a pilot program of Evzio in Massachusetts. The study found that Evzio revived 98 percent of victims to whom it was administered, and it significantly reduced the number of opioid-overdose deaths in communities where it was widely available.
Currently, the drug is only available by prescription; though last month Attorney General of the United States Eric Holder urged states to make it available to all first responders. The same day the drug was approved, New York State launched a $5 million program to distribute it to all of its police officers.
Dr. Eric Edwards, the chief medical officer of Kaleo, Inc., the company that manufacturers Evzio, suggests that the drug may be available over the counter in the near future: “We think this is the first step to building the safety data needed to show that it can be used appropriately,” he told TIME.
At a time when drug overdoses are on the rise, Evzio is a drug that could bring the deadly numbers down.
MORE: A Push to Make the Lifesaving Antidote to Overdose Available to All