Day-after-day the Good Good Good team collects one of the best excellent news on the planet and shares it with our community. Listed below are the highlights for this week!
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The Best Positive News We’re Looking Back On This Week —
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Only 5% of doctors are Black – educators and advocates worked all 12 months long to extend that number by connecting student-athletes and medicine
As of 2018, 13% of the U.S. population, but just 5% of doctors identified as Black or African American (an extra 1% of doctors identified as multiracial).
And while efforts to extend diversity at medical schools have made progress with other demographics, the proportion of Black men enrolling in medical school hasn’t modified much since 1978.
The absence of Black male medical professionals ripples across the health system and contributes to widespread health disparities. Black people are likely to be diagnosed later than white individuals with every little thing from cancer to kidney disease, resulting in more advanced diseases and earlier deaths.
In 2022, educators and advocates looked to reverse these trends by connecting sports, an area wherein Black men are overrepresented, and medicine, where the alternative is true. Along with helping address a few of each the health care disparities and education disparities, athletes are sometimes an incredible fit for jobs in medicine, as they possess a lot of the abilities and attributes medical professionals need.
Patagonia’s founder donated the corporate to make sure all of its profits will go to fight climate change
In September, Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard announced he could be donating the complete company, value about $3 billion, to a trust and a nonprofit organization fighting climate change. Any profits, about $100 million per 12 months, that they don’t reinvest in the corporate will go to fight climate change.
“Hopefully it will influence a latest type of capitalism that doesn’t find yourself with just a few wealthy people and a bunch of poor people,” Chouinard said in an interview with The Latest York Times. “We’re going to provide away the utmost sum of money to people who find themselves actively working on saving this planet.”
Chouinard’s trailblazing decision created a completely latest model for large-scale donations.
Making its largest adjustment ever, the International Energy Agency said global renewable energy capability will double by 2027
In its 2022 annual report on renewable energy capability, the International Energy Agency (IEA) found that renewables are on course to double by 2027 — 30 percent higher than the expansion forecasted one 12 months ago. The expansion will likely be driven primarily by solar energy.
Renewables are expected to account for 90% of worldwide electricity expansion and overtake coal as the most important supplier of energy even sooner — by 2025.
It’s yet one more reminder of the actual, meaningful, rapid change being implemented to save lots of humanity from a number of the worst impacts of climate change. Positive climate tipping points, just like the affordability and growth of renewable energy sources, are inside our reach.
Once-endangered humpback whales grew substantially in population globally due to conservation efforts
Humpback whales were almost entirely worn out by industrial whaling within the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and were one in all the primary species to be federally protected under the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1970.
Nevertheless, because of amazing global conservation efforts, the present global population has rebounded from a low point of 10,000 back to just about 80,000, as of 2022.
While numerous humpback populations in areas of the world are still listed as threatened, this upward tick shows incredible promise for ongoing conservation efforts.
On what would have been her a centesimal birthday, people did the #BettyWhiteChallenge by making donations to animal shelters and rescues
Betty White, who passed away on December thirty first, 2021, was known for her starring roles on The Golden Girls and Mary Tyler Moore Show — and was also a lifelong animal advocate who worked to make a difference within the lives of homeless pets, and advocate for animal rights around the globe.
White supported organizations just like the Humane Society and the Best Friends Animal Society, served on the board of trustees on the nonprofit Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association (GLAZA), and was a volunteer on the Los Angeles Zoo & Botanical Gardens.
She passed away just shy of her a centesimal birthday on January seventeenth, and as one in all the primary good things to come back out of 2022 — her fans organized a challenge to provide White “the movement she deserves.” Called the #BettyWhiteChallenge, the movement calls on animal — and Betty White — lovers to donate $5 (or any amount) to a shelter or rescue before or on her birthday.
Denver began dispatching mental health teams on certain 911 calls in 2020 – this system has been so successful, they expanded it for a second time in 2022
In June 2020, Denver announced its Support Team Assisted Response (STAR) program, which dispatches licensed mental health professionals as an alternative of police for certain 911 calls. In its first 12 months, this system was so successful, town expanded it to incorporate more vans and more response teams.
In 2022, the Denver City Council unanimously approved $1.4 million to expand the STAR program again — from 3 vans to hopefully 6 teams and 10 total response teams, in addition to a network of specific providers around town, for more accessible assistance.
Because it launched, the STAR program has responded to over 2,700 calls. This system dispatches a mental health clinician with a paramedic or EMT for every call they reply to.
An eighth grader in Dallas created book-based ‘grief kits’ to assist Uvalde students process the trauma they endured
Eighth-grader Sia Sankaran created a Dallas chapter of Loving Library and partnered with the San Antonio Area Foundation to create “grief kits” to assist Uvalde students process the trauma of the school shooting they endured. Sankaran hoped that providing books with stories they may relate to and materials for self-expression will help the children begin the healing process.
Sankaran’s goal is to offer 800 Uvalde Pre-K through eighth-grade students with a bundle of books, which they may receive after attending a Uvalde CISD grief camp.
While we wish students did not have to arrange and spend their energy creating fundraisers like this in the primary place, we’re inspired by Sankaran’s example — and can draw on that Helping energy to proceed to fight to make schools safer and end gun violence in schools, at home, and in our communities.
Dylan Mulvaney celebrated her first Pride as trans woman, taking us all along her journey into ‘girlhood’ on TikTok
“This 12 months, Pride looks just a little different for me: I’m now not that boy who would lie about my whereabouts to privately live my queer truth, I’m now a newly realized trans woman living in Los Angeles with a big queer social media following.
Although this 12 months I should wear tiny short shorts and flail my limbs to Katy Perry’s “Firework” (no guarantees!), the essential difference between then and now could be honesty. Honesty to myself, to my family, to my community.”
In 2022, LGBTQ+ influencer, advocate, and TikTok creator Dylan Mulvaney began highlighting her transgender journey in a TikTok series titled “Days of Girlhood,” which has received tons of of thousands and thousands of views. She also invited us along as she shared and celebrated her first Pride as a trans woman — giving us all a masterclass in vulnerability and kindness along the best way.
More excellent news of the week —
A Black woman-led nonprofit helps equip frontline leaders and organizations fighting for climate and racial justice. The Solutions Project helps women and other people of color access funding and have a “seat on the table” of decision-making.
In a near-unanimous vote, the House passed the ‘Emmett Till Antilynching Act’ to make lynching a federal hate crime. The bill was then passed within the Senate and signed into law on March 29 by President Joe Biden.
Ketanji Brown Jackson made history as the primary Black woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Adding to her significant and historical confirmation, Jackson can be the first-ever Justice with experience as a public defender.
President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, which included the largest-ever federal investment in fighting climate change. Around $370 million was allocated to constructing clean energy capability, consumer incentives for electric vehicles, investments in environmental justice, and so rather more.
California became the primary state within the U.S. to put in solar panel canopies over canals. The panels will serve a dual-purpose: fighting drought and generating clean energy.
A growing variety of “green infrastructure” projects are helping protect at-risk coastlines and communities from the impacts of climate change. These climate mitigation projects grow increasingly vital because the climate crisis’ threats intensify.
On Earth Day, California began construction on the world’s largest wildlife crossing over a 10-lane highway. The crossing be surrounded by an acre of native plants, sound partitions, and is a critical habitat for “specially protected” mountain lions.
The world’s largest shipping container line rerouted its entire fleet to guard endangered blue whales. The Mediterranean Shipping Company rerouted after research found it would cut back the chance of ships hitting the animals by 95 percent.
Up from just 2,000 in 2020, researchers counted nearly 250,000 monarch butterflies in California in 2021. We’re hopeful this positive trend will proceed as 2022’s count is announced next 12 months!
Over 600 Michigan schools adopted a social-emotional learning curriculum to support students’ mental health. The curriculum borrows techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy and was developed on the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 2013.
In July, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline ‘988’ officially launched across the U.S. While not an ideal solution, it was a major point of progress especially within the U.S., which so often fails to adequately and appropriately take care of mental health.
The suicide rate amongst U.S. military members dropped by greater than 15% from 2020 to 2021. Since 2011, suicide rate had been increasing steadily, so the Department of Defense’s 2022 report findings were incredibly encouraging.
Canada joined greater than a dozen other nations in officially banning conversion therapy. The law went into effect on January 7 and made it illegal for anyone to offer or promote services intended to alter someone’s sexual orientation or gender expression.
Utah’s governor vetoed a bill banning transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports. Amidst a barrage of anti-trans laws in places like Florida and Texas, Utah Governor Spencer Cox and Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb supported of trans youth participation in sports.
President Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law, bringing historic protections for same-sex and interracial marriage. Stopping in need of guaranteeing the correct to marriage on the federal level, the laws is a major, vital step on the journey to true equality and justice.