California’s regional center system the system has struggled to provide services to Spanish-speaking families at the same rate it does to English-speaking ones.
Claudia Harty with Parents Helping Parents, a San Jose-based organization that works to connect families with services, shares ways to improve outreach to Latinx families of children with special health care needs.
Network directories — lists of providers contracted with health plans — form the heart of decision-making for health care consumers. They can help people decide which health plan to choose if they want to stay with a trusted doctor.
But health care providers say insurers have shifted the burden of updating directories onto them — a patchwork system that is still riddled with errors and leaves consumers paying the price.
While President Barack Obama’s 2010 health reform bill, the Affordable Care Act, greatly expanded insurance access, it excluded undocumented immigrants across the country. This likely contributed to COVID-19’s disproportionate impact on undocumented Californians. Health equity and immigrant rights advocates have been urging California leaders to broaden health coverage for nearly a decade.
Mike Duncan is founder of Native Dads Network, a Sacramento-based nonprofit that runs workshops on healthy parenting and relationships. The workshops draw on traditional Indigenous teachings about the value of life, the role of parents and the sacredness of women.
The network is one of a growing number of programs across the state that seek to address high rates of domestic violence in many Tribal communities by using Native American people’s own traditions and history as a guide.
Long-standing racist policies and practices have determined where and how Californians live, work, receive health care, attend schools and more. For Black Californians, Latinx Californians, and other Californians of color these racist policies block opportunities to be healthy.
When the pandemic started, it became abundantly clear that the virus was disproportionately harming communities of color, who are at increased risk of severe illness due to long-standing inequities.
Since the death of George Floyd nine months ago prompted America to re-examine entrenched racism in all its institutions – from police departments to corporations and colleges – the child welfare system too, has had to reckon with its troubled past and deeply flawed present.
Driven by evidence that child welfare decision-makers judge parents of color more harshly and are more likely to remove their children, calls for systemic change have grown more urgent among parent advocates, scholars and even agency leaders.
Native American seniors are much less likely than other racial and ethnic groups to receive hospice and palliative care, but a new partnership between a Capay Valley tribe in Yolo County and a local hospice provider seeks to change that.
Yolo Hospice is working with Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation to research the challenges that Native American communities face when trying to obtain and plan for end-of-life care.
Arts education has the power to emotionally and academically rebuild students — and the world around us.
I come from an immigrant community, where people routinely shift between English and Spanish in everyday conversation. As the student ambassador to a statewide organization, Create CA, I’m working to ensure every student has access to a full arts education, as promised by California’s Education Code.
We are going to need a “healing surge” that will match our vaccine surge — and health equity must guide how we allocate those resources.
We have learned the lesson in this crisis that public health is critical to our individual health — we all do better when we protect those who are most vulnerable. We also understand that mental health is not just an individual condition but a collective challenge in communities that were already stressed by racist policing, economic inequality and deportation threats.
With the ongoing closures of schools, playgrounds, sports and other extracurriculars, children are missing out on large pieces of their development.
I’m seeing a spike in children with anxiety, depression and suicidal ideations in my practice. The current state of children’s mental health is concerning not only for the near future, but also for the long-term effects it may have on this generation and society as a whole.