Cait Harrison

Cait Harrison is a senior content editor for MultiBriefs, a leading publisher of association-branded email publications. She got her start in the publishing field at The Dallas Morning News, where she served as a community reporter and editor for three years right out of college after graduating with a journalism degree. She enjoys writing in her personal blog and cheering on the OU Sooners during football season.

Articles by Cait Harrison

• Can Uber, Lyft really help patients make more doctor’s appointments?

  Friday, March 02, 2018

  Uber has a new plan to help Americans who need rides to their medical appointments. On March 1, the ride-sharing company launched Uber Health, a new service that partners with healthcare providers to set up rides for patients to and from the doctor's office.

• 10 common mistakes band directors make during rehearsals

  Monday, November 20, 2017

  Are you frustrated by subpar performance from your ensemble? Do you see the same problems reoccurring over time? Many band directors do, and they may mistakenly blame their students for some of the issues.

• How we can make music education ‘beautiful’

  Monday, November 13, 2017

  Beautiful. That adjective is prevalent in our culture, but it's not spoken often in music education. And perhaps we should be saying it more often, Bob Duke said. Duke is the head of music and human learning at the University of Texas at Austin, and he delivered the keynote address Nov. 13 at the National Association for Music Education's (NAfME) National In-Service Conference.

• Employee education may be the best medicine for healthcare costs

  Wednesday, October 11, 2017

  Open enrollment season is here, but not all employees may be thrilled about signing up for next year's health plan when costs continue to go up. In a new survey by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, 79 percent of employees reported rising healthcare costs in 2016, which was up from 69 percent in 2015.

• Can learning from the past help us stop a mass extinction?

  Monday, July 31, 2017

  When Marcus Eriksen takes expeditions to Wyoming to find dinosaur remains, he's digging up more than fossils. The dinosaurs he finds — which date back 65 million years — are pieces of history that teach us the reality of extinction, particularly the one he and other scientists believe is happening right now.

• Are USDA’s changes to school lunches needed?

  Monday, June 12, 2017

  Changes are coming again to school lunches. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced last month that the department is taking steps to roll back lunch standards promoted by former first lady Michelle Obama. Perdue's interim final rule will give schools more flexibility in meeting whole grain and lower sodium requirements, and it allows schools to serve 1 percent flavored milk rather than skim.

• Have doctors gotten a bad rap in the fight against opioids?

  Tuesday, May 16, 2017

  Opioid addiction has become a sickening problem in America. The powerful pain relievers, available legally by prescription — such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, codeine, morphine, fentanyl and many others — are easy to become addicted to and even more difficult to break away from.

• How looking back can help today’s entrepreneurs look forward

  Friday, April 14, 2017

  Becoming an entrepreneur may be one of the most challenging things you've ever done, but it's probably also one of the most rewarding. Day-to-day, you're focused on your business. Whether you're developing new ideas or handling customers, staffing and marketing issues — the to-do list goes on.

• How changes to ESSA will affect schools

  Thursday, March 30, 2017

  ​A new presidential era means more changes are in store for education. On March 27, President Donald Trump signed bills rolling back two regulations measuring school accountability and teacher training under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). The school accountability measure overwhelmingly passed in the Republican-controlled House, but narrowly made it out of the Senate with a 50-49 vote — despite opposition from business, labor and civil rights groups, as well as Democrats.

• What’s the cure for cyberbullying in schools?

  Thursday, February 02, 2017

  Most of us can probably recall someone who tried to bully us during our school days. Back then, bullying incidents occurred mostly in person, where they could be witnessed by others — maybe even teachers or administrators. For today's students, it's not so simple. With the internet now woven into their social lives, they're susceptible to online bullying — cyberbullying — which has become more prevalent than ever.

• Online publications fight back against ad blockers

  Thursday, November 17, 2016

  ​For as far back as any reader of a newspaper or magazine can remember, there has always been one constant alongside journalists' stories: advertisements. Without ad revenue, it would be difficult to keep news organizations running, or to pay to keep journalists employed there.

• How can we fix America’s teacher shortage?

  Thursday, October 13, 2016

  The U.S. is facing a shortage of teachers in its K-12 schools, and the situation doesn't seem to be improving much. Teacher shortages across many districts became a hot topic in 2015, and a new study from the Learning Policy Institute details the causes of the shortage — primarily, teachers leaving the profession and fewer studying to become educators in the first place.

• What the Every Student Succeeds Act means for teacher evaluations

  Thursday, August 25, 2016

  For decades, the system for evaluating K-12 teachers has relied primarily on two things: observation and test scores. But under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), that could be changing. The new law will allow districts to use other kinds of evaluation measures including coaching and mentoring, said Anne Udall, executive vice president of program strategy at New Teacher Center (NTC), a nonprofit that aims to improve teacher effectiveness.

• Women can get ahead at work — by leveraging their value

  Friday, July 22, 2016

  It's widely known that U.S. women generally earn less money in the workplace than their male counterparts. This can vary by industry and geographic location, of course, but women are paid an average of 79 cents for every dollar earned by men.

• Google is making it less scary to search your symptoms

  Friday, July 01, 2016

  When you've come down with a few symptoms of illness, what better way to self-diagnose than just googling them? Chances are, you've probably done it. Google says 1 percent of all its searches (totaling millions) are symptom-related.

• Tablets: Tools for learning or distracting toys?

  Friday, June 03, 2016

  Classrooms have come a long way since the days of pencils, paper and textbooks. Now many school districts are trading those tools in for new ones — the latest tablets and laptops, to be exact. So what kind of impact is all this technology having on students, for better or for worse?

• Selfie pay: New technology could revolutionize online purchases

  Thursday, May 05, 2016

  ​Most of us have experienced the frustration of trying to remember a password — or worse, finding out that our personal information has been compromised. Now, a new payment initiative by MasterCard is working to address both of those problems with one solution: the selfie.

• Survey: Millennials are better at saving than older generations

  Friday, April 08, 2016

  ​Millennials haven't always been known for their financial stability — at least compared to their older counterparts. Most of them entered the working economy during the start of the Great Recession in the late 2000s, lowering their economic prospects just as they were starting careers.

• Gene study findings could one day prevent gray hair

  Thursday, March 17, 2016

  ​Spotted a few gray hairs lately? It turns out there could be more to blame than stress or aging. A large international study has uncovered the first gene identified for causing gray hair, which confirms graying is not based solely on environmental factors. The study, published this month in the journal Nature Communications, looked at more than 6,000 Latin Americans and identified a total of 10 genes affecting with hair shape, graying, monobrow, eyebrow and beard thickness.

• Studies find more reasons to be cautious of popular heartburn drugs

  Friday, February 26, 2016

  It hasn't been a good year so far for the popular heartburn drugs known as proton pump inhibitors (PPIs). Two recent studies have linked them to potentially dangerous side effects, including chronic kidney disease and dementia.

• Nature or nurture? Outdoor preschools combine the best of both

  Friday, January 29, 2016

  Imagine a day filled with nature walks, playing in the mud, studying worms up close and reading stories in the forest. Doesn't really sound like school, does it? Welcome to the world of nature preschool — where young learners spend part or all of their school day outdoors. There are more than 150 nature preschools across the country, up from about two dozen in 2012.

• Young physicians: Here’s how to get your finances back on track

  Wednesday, November 11, 2015

  ​It's not uncommon for doctors to enter the field with mounds of medical school debt and little savings — after all, they spend extended time in school before starting their practices. That can put young doctors at a disadvantage compared to their peers in other professions who have been able to start saving up to 10 years earlier, according to a new study by AMA Insurance, a subsidiary of the American Medical Association.

• Securing your smartphone: You can never be too safe

  Friday, October 23, 2015

  ​Your smartphone goes everywhere you go and is integral to your day-to-day life — it's a wonder how we ever lived without them. In a world where our cellphones have become our lifelines — and because October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month — it begs the question: How safe are they?

• Surviving cold and flu season in your office: 4 ways to stay healthy

  Tuesday, October 06, 2015

  Shorter days, changing leaves, football season and cooler weather can only mean one thing: Cold and flu season is coming. No matter how well you think you're protecting yourself this year, there's always more you can do to stave off sickness — especially if you work in an office in close quarters with others who may be contagious.

• Women entrepreneurship is growing, but still a long road ahead

  Monday, September 14, 2015

  ​It must be a sign of the times: More working women than ever are starting their own businesses. Recent data from the ​U.S. Census Bureau's Survey of Business Owners shows there were 9.9 million women-owned businesses in 2012, a 27.5 percent increase from 2007.

• Sitting may be killing us, but standing all day is just as bad

  Wednesday, July 29, 2015

  We know sitting all day in an office chair is killing us, and there's no shortage of stories in the news telling us so. And while you should limit sitting, standing for long periods isn't that much better, according to a new study. The research, published in Human Factors, the Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, found that workers who stood all day experienced significant muscle fatigue, regardless of age and gender.

• Underage boozing is on the decline, but is America really drinking less?

  Friday, June 26, 2015

  ​Kids these days: Maybe they're actually doing better than we thought. Or at least better than our own generations did as youths. Here's why: A new report from Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration shows that both rates of underage drinking and underage binge drinking are on the decline. The study of people ages 12 to 20 found that between 2002 and 2013, underage drinking dropped from 28.8 percent in 2002 to 22.7 percent, while binge drinking fell from 19.3 to 14.2 percent for the same age group.

• Testing overkill? Students, districts push back against high‑stakes assessments

  Friday, May 29, 2015

  Testing season will soon draw to a close, but a whole new crop of issues is just bubbling up. A few weeks ago, all 280 juniors at Nathan Hale High School in Seattle chose not to take a Common Core-aligned standardized test because they didn't think it accurately measured their skills.

• As companies eliminate artificial ingredients, is food really getting healthier?

  Friday, May 08, 2015

  You've probably heard the recent announcement that Panera plans to remove artificial ingredients from its food. But it comes among a plethora of other companies who have also vowed to remove additives, preservatives and other so-called "bad" ingredients from their recipes.

• A look ahead: Most women physicians feel financially prepared

  Friday, April 24, 2015

  For women physicians, life never slows down. Patient appointments, lab results, medical records, prescription refill requests — it's all in a day's work, and the list could go on. And that's not including the kids and household chores when you get home. But one day it won't be as busy — if you can dream far enough into the future to retirement, that is. Have you thought about that?

• Peer-review scandals shake up scholarly journal community

  Thursday, April 09, 2015

  ​Call it a new form of academic cheating. Peer reviews for scholarly journals have come under the spotlight lately — and the future isn't looking so bright. U.K.-based publisher BioMed Central recently retracted 43 scientific and medical articles because of peer reviews — mostly out of universities in China — written by people who forged scientists' names.

• Study: If you use Internet Explorer, you just might be a bad employee

  Thursday, March 26, 2015

  ​What defines a great employee? Persistence, attention to detail, a drive to succeed? The list could go on, but here's a new addition you likely won't find on a resume — choice of Internet browser. A recent study found that employees who use Firefox or Chrome are more likely to be doing better on the job than those who use the computer's default browser.

• Study: Your heart may love coffee as much as you do

  Thursday, March 12, 2015

  ​Addicted to your morning java jolt? Here's a reason why that may not be so bad: A recent study found people who drink three to five cups of coffee a day may have a lower risk of heart disease than people who drink none at all.

• Zoomable contacts could be next eye-opener in vision technology

  Friday, February 27, 2015

  ​Look out: The next generation of wearable vision technology is closer than you think. Among the up-and-coming trends is a unique product: telescopic lenses that zoom as much as 2.8 times — activated by a wink.

• Flexible work policies could be key to more rested employees

  Friday, February 06, 2015

  Are your employees getting enough sleep? Likely not. Chances are they’re sleeping less than the seven to nine hours recommended by the National Sleep Foundation — averaging 6.8 hours per night, according to Gallup. But there may be something you can do about it. A new study published in the journal Sleep Health shows that workers will likely get more sleep when their employers play a more active role in ensuring they're better rested — especially when they offer flexible work policies.

• Is this the end of standardized testing as we know it?

  Monday, January 26, 2015

  No Child Left Behind is back in the news again. And this time it may mean big changes are in store. The U.S. Senate has begun its most concentrated effort yet on revamping the 13-year-old law. The sweeping overhaul began Jan. 21 with a hearing focusing on one of the law's most notorious requirements: standardized testing.

• New program helping schools streamline HR tasks

  Wednesday, November 19, 2014

  ​Does it feel like you're more in the business of running an HR department than a school? Hiring, onboarding, paperwork, payroll and health insurance — the job never ends. And chances are, you're not alone. Until earlier this year, Adam Wilson felt that way, too.

• Why do women prefer male bosses?

  Friday, October 31, 2014

  If you asked workers six decades ago if they had a preference on their boss's gender, most would tell you they wanted a man. Maybe not surprisingly, that's still true today, even though the statistics have improved some.

• 6 tricks to make your office’s Halloween party a real treat

  Tuesday, October 21, 2014

  Halloween isn't just an excuse for kids to play dress up and consume too much candy anymore — it's also a great reason for a little team building and fun in your workplace. Never made a big deal of the holiday before? Maybe this is the year to start.

• 4 difficult work personalities — and how to deal with them

  Wednesday, October 01, 2014

  It goes without saying that if you don't like someone you have to work with, it's going to make your job harder — and possibly even slow productivity. With that in mind, here's a rundown of a few difficult personality types I've seen in the workplace over the years, along with a few tips on how best to deal with them.

• Addressing gender discrimination in fire departments

  Thursday, August 21, 2014

  Women have made strong gains in the fire industry over the last four decades since the first career female firefighter joined the ranks in 1973. Today, women make up 3.6 percent of the career firefighter population and 34 percent of the EMS workforce, according to the U.S. Fire Administration. Yet gender discrimination and hostile work environments persist.

• What fire chiefs can teach us about leadership principles

  Friday, August 15, 2014

  Firefighters face some of the most difficult and dangerous situations in any profession, so effective leadership is crucial. "No matter what you want to do with your fire department, leadership is the only thing that matters," said Dennis Compton, chairman of the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation and former fire chief in Mesa, Arizona.