The Tennessee Higher Education Commission announced the Free Application for Federal Student Aid deadline for the Tennessee Promise scholarship program will be extended to Friday, May 31.

The new deadline provides high school seniors and their families additional time to complete their FAFSA and remain eligible for the state’s tuition-free higher education program.

The Tennessee Promise scholarship program offers eligible high school seniors the opportunity to obtain a technical certificate or associate degree tuition-free, paying for tuition and mandatory fees not covered by other financial aid sources.

The decision to extend the deadline comes amid ongoing challenges faced by students and families navigating the college application process and experiencing difficulties due to the federal implementation of the new FAFSA.

Students who wish to remain eligible for the Tennessee Promise scholarship are encouraged to complete the FAFSA online at studentaid.gov before the May 31 deadline. Students and parents who encounter difficulties or have questions while completing the FAFSA can easily access support through the following avenues:

• Reach out to their college adviser or high school counselor.

• Call the THEC/TSAC FAFSA Hotline at 1-800-342-1663.

• Email [email protected].

• Contact the Ayers Foundation Trust or tnAchieves.

Meharry: Mental health could cost U.S. $14T

The School of Global Health at Meharry Medical College with support from Otsuka America Pharmaceutical, Inc., has released The Projected Costs and Economic Impact of Mental Health Inequities in the United States report.

Findings show that if not addressed, mental health inequities combined with expenditures related to chronic conditions, could cost the U.S. economy an estimated $14 trillion between now and 2040.

According to the Meharry analysis, the U.S. currently spends an estimated $477.5 billion annually in avoidable and unnecessary expenses related to mental health inequities, or disparate outcomes in quality and access to care across communities. This excess spending is expected to grow to $1.3 trillion annually by 2040.

Lower-income individuals and minority populations bear a disproportionate burden of both mental health and chronic conditions, which are intrinsically connected, exacerbating the economic challenges they face and contributing to continued productivity loss.

The report found that mental health conditions greatly impact the trajectory of other chronic diseases in America, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes and HIV. By 2040, the effects of care inequities will only increase.

This report builds on findings of The Economic Burden of Mental Health Inequities in the United States report released in 2022, which showed over a four-year period (2016-2020) at minimum, nearly 117,000 lives and approximately $278 billion could have been saved with proper investment in mental health care for marginalized and underserved populations.

In the latest report, Meharry takes this further to investigate how existing inequities in mental health treatment will overwhelm the American health care system if left unaddressed.

Full report

Redfin: U.S. home prices hit all-time high

The median U.S. home sale price rose 6.2% year over year in April to $433,558 – the highest level on record, according to a report from Redfin.

Today’s housing market is much slower than it was during the pandemic homebuying boom, but prices continue climbing because there still aren’t enough homes to go around.

New listings increased 1.7% month over month in April on a seasonally adjusted basis and rose 10.8% year over year. Still, they were roughly 20% below pre-pandemic levels, in large part because many homeowners don’t want to sell, as they feel “locked in” by the low mortgage rate they scored during the pandemic.

Home sales were little changed from a month earlier (0.2%) in April on a seasonally adjusted basis, but were down 1.4% from a year earlier.

Homebuyers are getting hit by the one-two punch of high prices and elevated mortgage rates. The average 30-year-fixed mortgage rate was 6.99% in April. That’s up from 6.82% in March and 6.34% in April 2023, and is more than double the all-time low of 2.65% during the pandemic.

Bridgestone touts Indy tire sustainability efforts

Bridgestone Americas is once again demonstrating and accelerating the use of more sustainable materials and technologies in motor sports at this year’s 108th Running of the Indianapolis 500.

As its Firestone brand celebrates 25 consecutive years as the exclusive tire supplier of the NTT IndyCar Series and Indianapolis 500, Bridgestone has produced a Firestone Firehawk Indy 500 race tire that incorporates two monomers sourced from the waste residue of palm oil processing.

The bio-styrene and butadiene monomers included in this year’s race tires are certified by the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) for the transparency and traceability of sustainable raw materials throughout the supply chain.

“The demands of racing also offer the ultimate challenge for our innovation,” says Cara Krstolic, executive director of race tire engineering and production for Bridgestone Americas. “In proving the same premium performance can be delivered at this level through more sustainable materials and technologies, we can work to extend these efforts beyond motor sports into solutions being designed for the future of mobility.”

The Firestone Race Tire Engineering team and nearly 60 race tire production teammates will produce more than 5,000 Indy 500 race tires for use in practice, qualifying and competition at Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) during the month of May.

Angel AI raises $4.75M in seed round

Angel AI, a parent-designed AI platform that provides an age-appropriate internet experience for children aged 5 to 12 years old, announces a $4.75 million seed funding round led by Cortical Ventures with significant participation from Village Global and several other prominent angel investors.

Angel AI uses the most powerful and advanced AI technology today, such as large language models, natural language processing (NLP), speech recognition and synthesis and agent-based systems with memory.

This technology allows Angel to generate age-appropriate answers to children’s questions, delivering compelling but safe content and entertainment.

Additionally, Angel’s platform has the ability to learn, personalize, and understand the child over time. The AI supports children’s curiosity and encourages them to find answers by providing multimodal content at their comprehension level, including video and audio, to enhance the learning experience.

Angel’s content is also free from distracting advertisements or predatory monetization tactics, which have become commonplace in children’s digital experiences – often to their detriment. In stark contrast to the status quo, Angel is also free of data collection for reselling and always will be.

The Angel AI platform will also include a parent insight portal, offering unique insights about children’s interests online and offline.

In addition to the platform’s current services, Angel will continue to roll out new capabilities in the coming months with the ultimate goal of creating a multifaceted ecosystem that will redefine how children experience the internet.

Family Care Center opens Mount Juliet clinic

Family Care Center has announced the grand opening of its state-of-the-art mental health clinic, poised to transform mental wellness in the heart of Mount Juliet.

With a commitment to providing compassionate care and innovative treatment options, the clinic aims to support individuals and families who are navigating the complexities of mental health challenges.

The new clinic offers personalized care plans that include everything from talk therapy to psychiatric services and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) – a highly effective FDA-approved treatment for depression, OCD and more.

When all three Family Care Center services are combined, over 90% of patients have reported decreased symptoms.

The new Mount Juliet clinic, located conveniently off I-40 and Mount Juliet Road, offers both in-person and virtual appointments. Family Care Center has several other clinics in Middle Tennessee, including Brentwood, Franklin, Murfreesboro and midtown Nashville, and will be expanding to Knoxville in June.

Information: www.fccwellbeing.com or 888-374-5066.

New online repository guides rare disease care

Vanderbilt University Medical Center has collaborated with Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., to develop the Rare Disease Clinical Activity Protocol Program, or RareCAP, a growing online repository of clinical protocols designed to offer quick, practical guidance on the care of patients with rare diseases.

The repository, now approaching 100 protocols, is intended to save physicians the work of digging through journal articles and other sources to determine the best approach to caring for patients with disorders that most physicians seldom encounter.

“If you’re in the emergency department and you’ve never seen someone with a particular rare disease, our goal is that you can come to this platform and find what you need to know immediately to treat this person in an acute care setting,” says Colleen Lawrence, Ph.D., an assistant director at the Vanderbilt Institute for Clinical and Translational Research (VICTR) and the project manager for RareCAP.

Jennifer Micham, Ph.D., RareCAP curator at VUMC, adds, “An ED physician can go right to seeing the topics under emergency management and zero in on exactly what he or she needs to know. Here is a site that is easy to use, simple to access and at your fingertips.”

The protocols are written in bullet-point format and use language geared toward busy clinicians.

In addition to guidance for the acute care setting, the protocols cover chronic management and include links to more in-depth open-source information from the web. Though designed with clinicians primarily in mind, patients and their families will also find the repository useful.

Globally, rare diseases, often defined as those affecting fewer than one in 200,000 people, are estimated to affect more than 300 million people. There are an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 rare diseases.