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California Health Report
Opinion: How to Address the Crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous People
For far too long, missing and murdered Native people haven’t received the attention they deserve from law enforcement and government agencies across the state. Instead, their cases have often been ignored and California has failed to bring justice to the victims and their families. The number of missing and...
Can Cash Payments Improve the Health of Pregnant People and Children?
It was like money falling from the sky. Except the city of Los Angeles would be sending it to her in a debit card every month. A thousand dollars. To spend however Sara Calderon and her family wanted. For the first time in two years, the 25-year-old mother from South...
Analysis: Racism in Academic Medicine Is Hindering Progress Toward Health Equity
Time and time again, scientific reports and surveys cite some version of the following findings: Black people have the worst health outcomes. Black patients have better health outcomes when they see Black doctors. Black patients prefer Black doctors. Black doctors tend to care for higher proportions of Black patients than their White counterparts.
Analysis: When the Power Goes Out, These Devices Save Lives. More Californians Need Them
Our house lost power a few nights ago, during one of 2023’s record-setting storms. For most people, losing power is a minor inconvenience. For our family, losing power is a medical emergency. People who use medical devices that depend on electricity need continuous access to electricity. Some of my...
Opinion: How More California Children Can Get the Mental Health Care They Desperately Need
Health plans are denying crucial mental health care for children, and parents are struggling to find a solution. A new bill can help catch the families that are falling through the cracks in our mental health system. One child, who we’ll call Monica, was in eighth grade in 2021 when...
Opinion: A Solution For Keeping Kids Out of the ER: Making Sure They Have Enough to Eat
This winter, the U.S. experienced a dramatic increase in the number of children needing emergency medical care for respiratory infections, all while hospitals continue to face staffing shortages and other challenges stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. Although this type of surge isn’t always predictable, these events should renew attention to factors we can control to keep demand for routine pediatric emergency medical care to a minimum. In a recent article published by my colleagues and I in the medical journal Pediatrics, we added new evidence about one such factor: food access.
Opinion: We Need to Talk More About Heart Disease in Women And Gender Nonconforming Californians
As a breast cancer survivor, I’ve worn a lot of pink to raise awareness of the disease over recent years. But my mom had heart surgery last week, and it opened my eyes to another health threat facing women. It turns out we should be talking a lot more often about heart disease.
Opinion: Legislature Should Ban Insurance Language that Makes Vital Medications Unaffordable
As a physician, when a patient comes to me with an issue or illness that can be treated or even cured, my priority is to make sure they receive the correct and most effective treatment or medication. Unfortunately, I am often forced to include another consideration in what I prescribe: a patient’s ability to afford the medication.
Opinion: It’s Time to Address One of the Leading Causes of Health Care Complications: Racism
Kira Johnson died 10 hours after a routine C-section in 2016 at a Los Angeles hospital. The medical cause — and the subject of her family’s ongoing wrongful death lawsuit — was hemorrhagic shock due to massive internal bleeding. But there was another contributing factor, according to...
Community Workers Fan Out to Persuade Immigrant Seniors to Get Covered
For three years, Bertha Embriz of San Francisco has gone without health insurance, skipping annual wellness exams and recently tolerating a broken molar by trying not to chew with it. As an immigrant without legal status, the 58-year-old unpaid caregiver knew that California’s Medicaid program was closed to her.
Nursing Shortage Puts Medically Fragile Children at Risk, Spurs Calls for Change
Analicia Brokloff just wanted to take her daughter home. Her 2-year-old, Mila, was ready to be discharged from UC Davis Children’s Hospital in Sacramento after having a lung infection. Mila, who has cerebral palsy, still required the care of a home nurse, as she recovered last fall from having...
Financial Abuse Is Common. Now There Are Protections For Survivors
Leigh Ferrin knew she had to find a way to help the single mother who called her legal aid office. The mom, who lived near Ferrin’s office in Orange County, had escaped domestic violence and was trying to move on with life — for her child and herself. She was scraping together rent money for the home they shared. She was starting over.
For Many Rural Californians, Abortion Isn’t Accessible. Here’s What Can Be Done
One day this spring, after an intense day at work, Megan packed an overnight bag and got in the car with her boyfriend. She needed a medical procedure. But because the procedure was an abortion, she would need to drive for four hours to the nearest clinic with an appointment that month.
There’s A New Pathway to Special Education for Up to 300,000 California Children
When Maria and her husband adopted their 2-year-old about a decade ago, in many ways he was a typical toddler. He loved to climb on furniture, and his curly hair bounced as he walked. But the boy, whose parents requested he be identified by his initials DL, was small for his age, had a lazy eye and said only a handful of single words. The reason, the parents had been told by a caseworker, was that DL had been exposed to illicit drugs and alcohol in the womb.
Analysis: 30 Years After the Americans with Disabilities Act, There’s Still Work to Be Done
As an abled parent of a disabled child, I’m learning to help my son manage accessibility burdens because our communities and institutions aren’t designed with him in mind. We can do better for children with disabilities by building more accessible, more inclusive communities and by teaching them how to assert their rights in situations that aren’t in compliance with the law.
Analysis: Most Californians Have Health Coverage. Now Is the Time to Bolster the System
California is a national leader when it comes to providing health care coverage to low-income residents. The state was one of the first, in 2014, to expand Medicaid — known in California as Medi-Cal — under the Affordable Care Act, which allowed millions of previously ineligible low-income adults to qualify for the program.
Students Experiencing Homelessness Are Supposed to Get Extra Help. Here’s How California Can Do Better
This article was produced in partnership with the Center for Public Integrity, The Seattle Times, Street Sense Media and WAMU/DCist. On a sunny morning in March 2014, Yenni Rivera picked up her infant and stepped outside her Long Beach home. She would not be going back. With the help of family members and her best friend, she loaded a few cardboard boxes into the back of her parents’ car. Inside the boxes was everything she now owned. In her arms was her reason for leaving and her hope for the future.
Schools must help homeless students. Here’s what you should know
This story was produced as part of a collaboration with the Center for Public Integrity, The Seattle Times, Street Sense Media and WAMU/DCist. The definition of homelessness among K-12 students is laid out in the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, a federal law that details the help public schools must give unstably housed children. That includes students living in the following conditions:
The Specialist Squeeze: How to Fix the Shortage of Doctors in the Rural North
This reporting is part of a collaboration with the Institute for Nonprofit News, Shasta Scout, The Daily Yonder, Carolina Public Press, and Honolulu Civil Beat. Support from The National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) Foundation made the project possible. Since the COVID pandemic began, the need for pulmonologists, the...
California Elders Say They’re Misled When Enrolling in Medicare Plans. Here Are Some Solutions
Bonnie Burns was shocked into action the first time she learned that seniors were being coerced into Medicare Advantage plans that either didn’t suit their needs, misled them about costs, or lured them with benefits they wouldn’t actually receive. A health care advocate for 40 years, Burns was...
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