Dr. Monica Sweeney, chairperson of Health Policy and Management at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, tells students at Brooklyn College about the success achieved in protecting infants in New York City from HIV. “In 2015, as far as we know, not one baby in New York City was born infected,” she said. Sweeney spoke at a May 12 conference that underlined the importance of public health policy. Radhika Viswanathan reports for Brooklyn News Service.

Brooklyn News Service reporter Tiana Heath explores how the Long Island Small Business Center in Farmingdale helps businesses to get started. She speaks with Walter Reid, a business advisor at the center.

The three rooms of the future Bedford-Stuyvesant Museum of African Art were filled with ancient and modern figures, statuettes, and headdresses, all waiting to be seen and savored by the public. The executive director of the museum, Vira Jones, is also the owner of A.J. Archer Construction and Management, which is to develop and construct the space for African art.

In an interview with Brooklyn News Service reporter Aleah Winter, Jones discusses how arts and culture can contribute to economic development. “I want to create the Lincoln Center of Bed-Stuy,” she says.

With her current project, Jones is bringing her two worlds together and hopes to create the museum attached to luxury apartments. While people have suggested that Jones take her project to downtown Brooklyn, she insists on staying in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

Against that background, Brooklyn News Service reporter Deidra Brisco explores how presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are responding to such concerns as poverty, workforce development and the possibility of economic mobility for everyone.

In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, First Lady Chirlane McCray visited Washington  for three days starting May 10 to advocate for improved mental health services in New York City, and to raise funding for her initiative ThriveNYC: A Mental Health Roadmap For All.

In Washington, the city’s first lady met with members of Congress and urged them to pass bills that would overhaul the nation’s mental health services. She supported the Mental Health Reform Act of 2016, sponsored by U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and the Recovery Enhancement for Addiction Treatment Act. McCray also held a leadership discussion regarding minority mental health.

McCray said the lack of infrastructure and resources for mental health is a national crisis and that  “it will take attention from every level – city, state and federal – to make the kind of progress we need.”

Last November,  Mayor Bill de Blasio and McCray announced the $850 million mental health program called ThriveNYC that McCray is heading. It is made up of 54 initiatives aimed at supporting New Yorkers’ mental health.

City officials say that Mental Health Awareness Month offers the chance to focus on a neglected area of healthcare. “Thrive NYC is New York City’s ambitious and wide-ranging plan to address mental health and substance misuse challenges across the lifespan and across the continuum of care,” Deputy Mayor Richard Buery said.

As part of ThriveNYC, McCray launched “Today I Thrive” in April. It is a new mental health awareness campaign telling victims’ stories on TV, social media, buses, and subways, last month. The ads aim to open up the conversation about mental health, and invite New Yorkers to de-stigmatize the common issue. The campaign focuses on eight men and women who have struggled with some kind of mental illness.

McCray says that telling these stories will help erase the stigma associated with mental illness. “I hope this campaign encourages others to share their stories and talk honestly about mental health. Together, we can change the mindset around the mind,” McCray says. “We can make it as easy to talk about anxiety as allergies, so no one else suffers in silence.’

For McCray, the journey of mental illness hits close to home. Both of her parents suffered with depression, a close family member was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and one of her childhood friends committed suicide. But mental illness hit closest to home a few years ago when McCray and de Blasio’s daughter Chiara revealed her drug addiction, anxiety, and depression. Today Chiara is in recovery, and sharing her story to help others overcome mental illness.

Thrive NYC aims to change the conversation about stigma surrounding mental illness, and close the treatment gaps by providing equal health care to all New Yorkers. Over one thousand new providers will be trained to provide buprenorphine, a drug that prevents withdrawal symptoms in substance abuse users. Thrive NYC will help promote, prevent, detect, and treat mental illness in New York, to make a happier and healthier city. For all New Yorkers, NYC Support, a program finder which helps people quickly and easily find resources they may need.

During his time working at a federal detention center in Manhattan, former correctional officer Rudell Clark Mullings offered to smuggle makeup and Twizzlers candy into the cell of a female inmate. That, court records say, is one of the many ways he accosted her before raping the victim last year on Valentine’s Day in an unmonitored corridor while she waxed the floors.

The 350-pound correction officer from Brooklyn checked to make sure the secluded area was void of surveillance cameras before pinning the prisoner down, ripping off her clothing, and committing the rape, according to Assistant U.S. Attorney Hiral Mehta, who prosecuted his case.

The unidentified victim told Judge Edward Korman at a hearing in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn on May 4 that she suffered flashbacks from being “repeatedly raped” and getting “flak” for the sexual abuse from other inmates at the Metropolitan Correctional Center.

“I want to thank the court that I was believed despite my low status as an inmate,” the victim, who is serving a 30-year sentence for murder, said.

The 54-year-old Mullings was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to sexual abuse of an inmate.

As he handed down the sentence, Korman said that  “It’s necessary to send a message to people in positions such as his that the conduct is unacceptable and deserves severe punishment.”

Mullings is one of many correctional officers accused or suspected of sexual misconduct in the federal and state prison systems in New York State and in New York City-run jails.

New York State prisoners self-reported the highest rate of sexual abuse by staff in the nation on sexual victimization, according to a Justice Department review required by The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003.

According to a lawsuit filed at U.S. District Court in Manhattan, sexual abuse in New York women’s prisons is persistent and often unreported.

The class action suit filed against the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision in February alleged that the state has allowed a “culture of indifference” that condones the sexual abuse and harassment of women – who according to the department make up 4.7 percent of the inmate population in New York State – by officers monitoring the facilities.

The plaintiffs, six incarcerated women referred to in the suit as Jane Jones 1-Jane Jones 6, did not seek damages but requested an end to the “pattern of sexual misconduct” in jails for the sake of all women after being “involved in forcible sexual intercourse and other forms of sexual misconduct, verbal threats, harassment and voyeurism.”

Some allegations echo the Mullings case. Court papers show that the 24-year-old inmate known as Jane Jones 1 reported to the Department of Corrections commissioner in writing that officers at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility chose areas away from surveillance cameras to commit the rapes and worked together, alerting the guard on duty when a supervisor was on his way.

The case, called Jones v. Annucci, says there are only isolated instances of officers being disciplined “The culture of sexual abuse and harassment persistsThe lawsuit alleges that quote “all women prisoners” are at risk for “sexual assault, abuse, and harassment by correctional staff, including sexual intercourse, anal intercourse, oral sexual acts, sexual touching, voyeurism, invasion of personal privacy, and demeaning sexual comments,” it alleges.

A federal lawsuit in November 2015 accuses a Rikers Island correction officer of raping a female inmate on a bus while his colleague watched the 20-minute attack.

Documents filed in court by New York City Public Advocate Letitia James say the jail reported only two incidents out of the 116 complaints and none of the 28 accusations of rape to the NYPD. They say that the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which oversees health care at the jail, passed the complaints to the city Department of Corrections, which reported only two misdemeanor assaults to police. James’s filing charges that the women’s jail perpetuates a “pervasive culture of rape.”

“Staff sexual abuse is a serious problem in New York’s women’s prisons,” Veronica Vela, staff attorney in The Legal Aid Society’s Prisoners’ Rights Project, said in a statement.

New York City can be a tough place for up and coming chefs, and like those before her Veronica Espinoza found that out.

The Texan native worked as a paralegal for several years in Austin, but decided to start anew  after a painful breakup with a longtime boyfriend.

“I was dating someone for a long time and it didn’t work out and I was heartbroken. I had a cousin invite me to Mexico to this little town where the grade level was seventh grade and they would have people come in and show them how to make sweet bread and sell it so they could make profits for themselves,” she said. “I had a piece and it was delicious and at that moment I figured out no matter where you go I was still going to be heartbroken…I felt like I needed to change something about myself.”

She combined her love for the arts with her passion for desserts and enrolled at the Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Austin, gaining a degree in Baking and Pastry Arts. She pursued a pastry culinary degree in order to help others by creating foods with love and care that would touch their soul.

Espinoza had not intended to switch gears and become a pastry chef. In her mind she had everything one could ask for—a budding career, a good relationship, and a strong family bond. The thought of moving thousands of miles away from home never occurred to her, but with the curve ball life threw, she decided it was time to make a change. Making sweet breads in Mexico jump-started the idea and ultimately set her on the path to becoming a pastry chef in New York City.

Most restaurant patrons rarely see the chefs, and probably do not think much about them; but they do appreciate presentation, taste, and quick service, and it is the chef’s job to provide all three.

Espinoza began her career at the Ausable Club, a country club on the Adirondack Mountain Reserve in upstate New York, acquiring the title of executive pastry chef. From there she moved to Maine where she owned and operated a small non-profit business, Cakes for Kids in Care, in which she baked for children in need. Due to life changes, she sold the business and moved back to New York City.

Upon moving back, she worked as a pastry chef alongside the then sous chef and current executive chef, Scot Burnett, at the Carlton Hotel restaurant Millesime on Madison Avenue for an entire year. Afterward she partnered with Savory Chef Chris Van De Walt to open a catering service, Yummy Perfection, stationed in Manhattan. Her usual days are filled with catering events from weddings to corporate dinners, including vegan dishes.

Espinoza is no stranger to hard work and going after what she wants, and she also believes in not settling for less. She is aware of the battle for minimum wage increases and the disparate pay between female and male chefs in New York City and would like to see change in the future.

“It starts with today; you have to know what you’re worth,” she says.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 11,140 chefs were employed in New York City with an hourly mean wage of $24.24 in 2014. This could be a livable pay for other areas, but in New York low pay can stretch the pockets.

With the recent protest concentrating on higher wages for fast food workers, public and freelance chefs are less likely to see an increase any time soon. Some restaurateurs are considering an end to tipping to balance the “back of the house with the front of the house.”

Is the low pay and grunt work worth it for chefs?

Espinoza and Burnett say cooking is a job, like any other. It requires patience and love for the work. The money is not the best to start but the overall experience is worth it. The most important thing is to find your niche and build from there. Espinoza also founded and dedicated a Facebook page— Chefs and Cooks of New York— in honor of the skills and hard work that they display everyday.