April is sexual assault awareness month and the Family Support Center wants you to know that there are resources available if you or someone you know has been a victim. Alex Mueller, Community Educator and Victim Advocate for the Family Support Center has written this editorial explaining how our response affects those who have been hurt:

We’re a small community: that sort of thing doesn’t happen here.

If we don’t talk about it, it didn’t happen.

That only happens to poor people.

Only women need to worry about that.

Only promiscuous women need to worry about that.

Only women who fraternize with strangers are at risk.

The state of Washington fared better than most in the American Lung Association's State of Tobacco Control 2013 report.

The report measures state and federal efforts to enact regulations and legislation that limit access to tobacco.

Washington received an F in Tobacco Prevention and Control Program funding - 41 states and Washington, D.C., also failed that category.

"A struggling economy and weak revenue forecasts continued in 2012, dashing hopes of re-establishing Washington's once successful tobacco prevention and control program," the report said. "The prgram was victim to regular cuts and was completely eliminated at the end of the 2011 legislative session leaving Washington as one of the only states without quitline services available for residents throughout the state.

A stolen laptop with patient information is going to cost the Hospice of North Idaho $50,000 in a settlement with the  federal government.

The Coeur d'Alene Press reported Friday the hospice agreed to pay the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' office of human rights after the facility realized an employee's car was broken into and the laptop was missing. The hospice said in a news release that patient information was unlikely to be compromised.

"In the summer of 2010, an employee's vehicle was broken into, and their laptop was stolen," Spokeswoman Amanda Miller said. "While the thief was apprehended, the laptop was never recovered, hence all the steps Hospice of North Idaho took in case of malicious activity.

Potentially vulnerable patients were reached and offered credit monitoring, according to the hospice.