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Karen Brown

Karen is a radio and print journalist who focuses on health care, mental health, children’s issues, and other topics about the human condition. She has been a full-time radio reporter since for New England Public Radio since 1998. Her pieces have won a number of national awards, including the National Edward R. Murrow Award, Public Radio News Directors, Inc. (PRNDI) Award, and the Erikson Prize for Mental Health Reporting for her body of work on mental illness.

Karen previously worked as a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer in its South Jersey bureau. She earned a Masters of Journalism from the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley in 1996.

She lives with her husband Sean, and twin children, Sam and Lucy, in Northampton, Massachusetts.

  • The mascot is a caricature of Lord Jeffery Amherst, an English general who proposed giving blankets from smallpox patients to Native Americans. The school receives many complaints about the mascot.
  • Unlike prisoners who've served their sentences, prisoners who've been exonerated and released are not eligible for any re-entry programs from the state, and this is common across the country.
  • Kicking opiate addition is always hard, even with support. Lance Rice got that help from a very unlikely source: a woman whose house he had robbed to get money for heroin.
  • Requiring all Americans to have health insurance is one of the proposals now being considered in Washington, D.C. Massachusetts already requires its residents to be insured, but people aren't always able to afford a policy, even when the state helps out.
  • Last spring, Anna and Peter Mohan, a young couple from Western Massachusetts, were coping with the aftermath of war. Peter has suffered from severe post-traumatic stress disorder since his 2004 return from Iraq. They speak again about the unraveling of their marriage — which they see as one of the many hidden costs of the war.
  • An investigation by the U.S. Department of Education found that Springfield, Mass., schools were violating the civil rights of Somali students by failing to provide an adequate education. Ninety students shared a part-time tutor. The district says it is addressing the issues.
  • Bipolar disorder is one of the fastest growing diagnoses among American children. But one of the institutions on the front lines of dealing with bipolar -- the public school system -- may be ill-equipped for its role in identifying and educating children who may have the disorder.

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