Fil-Ams on the frontlines: New York healthcare workers look after each other

It's unusual for health programs to find it financially beneficial to send a home visitor regularly to help patients. But medical programs in various parts of the United States are experimenting with using peer groups to help people stick to their treatment plans, and it is working.

With pressures of depression, anxiety, and suicide on the rise, teenagers in the United States are challenged to find the comfortable outlet and accessibility for emotional support. The Crisis Text Line offers a counseling service through mobile texting, which reduces the shame that can occur when approaching an in-person counselor, and expands access to professional mental health counseling nationwide.

Post-traumatic stress has dire consequences for U.S. veterans, including an increase in suicide, and not all therapeutic treatments for the disorder have succeeded. To treat and potentially cure the effects of PTSD, the Center for Mind-Body Awareness offers veterans Buddhist-inspired meditation, and mindfulness, as well as skills to develop creative expression.

While weight loss can be challenging to maintain, different structures are being created to help. Certain support groups, financial incentives, and tough love are proving to be effective.

Conventional school policies fail to address the needs of transgender students. A school district in Tampa changed its human rights ordinance to include gender identity and expression.

Physical illnesses trigger and exacerbate poverty because costs are too high to treat them. The Associação Saúde Criança in Rio de Janeiro counsels helps by assisting families with services such as food, medicine, vocational training, housing, and legal aid, which helps mothers achieve their personal goals.

Girls in India are sometimes forced into the prospects of child marriage, prostitution, or slave labor; alternatively, families often teach girls to be wives and mothers. To empower girls to make their own choices, Yuwa, an NGO based in India, introduces girls to sports for social development. Yuwa also promotes educational workshops for girls, where girls can discuss women’s rights and their thoughts about their own bodies.

Fixing the education system in the country requires addressing the problem of student motivation to endure and succeed in school. Pathways to Education is a Toronto-based program designed to keep at-risk kids in school. It offers four different kinds of support: counseling, academic, social and financial, all of which contribute to a 46 percent decrease in the student drop-out rate.

Team Rubicon, a non-profit organization of military veterans that provides disaster relief, has provided relief after flooding in Detroit, tornadoes in Oklahoma, a typhoon in the Philippines and an earthquake in Nepal, among dozens of other communities across the globe.

Expecting mothers, especially young ones, can often feel scared and unprepared about the pregnancy process. Maternity meeting groups help them gain more support and knowledge about their future pregnancies.