Peer leaders help depressed and suicidal students in Southie

When a youth suicide epidemic rocked the South Boston community in the late 1990s, the community put out a call for an intervention to help slow the escalating teen suicide rate. A program called Youth Centered Suicide Prevention (YCSP), developed and led by Glenn Saxe, MD, associate chief of Psychiatry at Children's Hospital Boston and the director of Children's new Center for Behavioral Science, developed the program in answer to this call. YCSP is the first program of its kind in the country. It started in 2006 after a program development process that lasted several years, and is being piloted at Monument and Odyssey high schools in South Boston—a community still plagued with higher-than-average teen depression and suicide rates. ... More

in this issue

Teacher tackles 13 marathons in 13 months | Science teacher Nick Hinsley is conducting quite the experiment. His laboratory: the open road, where he'll run 13 marathons in 13 months. His goal is to cross marathon finish lines in 10 different states and raise $25,000 for Children's Hospital Boston.

Unifying around childhood obesity | It sounds like a simple plan: eat right and exercise to stay fit. But for many Boston families, this is anything but easy. Poverty and lack of transportation often limit a family's access to healthful foods. Concerns about violence keep them from going outside to play, so children often stay inside watching TV and playing video games.

In his own words: Kevin Shapiro, MD | Let me begin with an admission: I never intended to be a pediatrician. When I started my core pediatrics clerkship—a six-week rotation during my third year of medical school to get exposure to pediatric medicine—here at Children's little more than a year ago, it was just another academic hurdle on the road to a career in adult neurology.

Employee of the month | Congratulations to Teodora Amado, clinical assistant (CA) in the Post Anesthesia Care Unit (PACU), Children's Hospital Boston's Employee of the Month for July.

24 years bridging Children's cultures |Social worker Maria Carvalho, LICSW, has a life-long passion for bridging cultural gaps. She was born in Portugal, spent time in Angola and then, when her parents' adventuresome spirits subsided, moved to Somerville, Mass., when she was 10.