At the California Health Report, we want to make sure any voting problems in our state are investigated and made public. To do that, we’re partnering with the nonprofit, investigative news service ProPublica and newsrooms across the country to collect tips from readers about challenges they’ve experienced during the voting process.
The project, Electionland, includes a tip line that eligible voters can use to report issues that come up when casting absentee ballots or voting at the polls.
To get services for their children, parents often must navigate a dizzying array of health care providers, special education entities and insurance programs, often with little support or guidance.
By the time these children receive treatment — which is often contingent upon getting a diagnosis — they may have missed out on a critical window of time during which interventions can be most effective.
Even driven therapists face major hurdles navigating the fractured U.S. health care system. The end result is that they have less time to actually provide mental health care, at a time when therapists are needed more than ever.
Statewide statistics, as well as reports from providers and patients, suggest that insurance companies create hurdles to mental health care. Clients still struggle to get equal access to therapy. Therapists still struggle to get equal pay.
COVID-19 is exposing a hard truth about our communities: If the low-wage workers cannot obtain decent health care, everyone else is at risk.
That’s because many of the lowest-income Californians hold essential jobs in retail and other services where they regularly interact with the public. The UC Berkeley Labor Center estimates that up to half or more of California’s workers are considered essential. And California’s health care safety net that serves many of these workers will soon become more frayed.
We are physicians and leaders of the largest federally qualified community health center in the nation, located in East Los Angeles. The communities we serve are disproportionately experiencing the worst health outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic.
These deaths are unacceptable. We believe it is our duty as health care leaders to educate and inform our patients on the importance of registering to vote, more so in this election than ever.
California is close to revising a rule that excludes family caregivers from unemployment.
If signed into law, the bill is expected to extend unemployment eligibility to more than 119,000 family caregivers, who are primarily low-income women of color, according to a home care workers union. Supporters say that’s only fair, given that people employed as in-home caregivers who are not family members do receive unemployment benefits.
We examined health data from New York City and Los Angeles and found troubling patterns. In both cities, Latinx and Black residents were twice as likely to die from COVID-19 than white residents, and residents in high-poverty areas had the highest infections and death rates.
Economic recovery will not be possible without an infusion of support to help right the injustices that already vulnerable populations are grappling with under the devastation caused by COVID-19.
Disasters are stressful. Our warming world keeps adding fuel to the fires — and floods and hurricanes, among other calamities. What can be done about the trauma that follows?
The Center for Public Integrity, Columbia Journalism Investigations and our partners in newsrooms around the country, including the California Health Report, have been reporting on this for months.
We heard from more than 200 disaster survivors and people helping them. Here’s what we learned.
From climate-fueled wildfires to COVID-19, mounting catastrophes are sowing stress and trauma. The country’s one program to help reaches only a fraction of survivors.
California counties are required by state law to provide mental health services in the wake of a wildfire or other emergency event, but only to the extent their resources allow. Many poorer, rural counties – which are often those most impacted by wildfires – just don’t have the money or resources.
Disasters are stressful, and these events are worsening as the climate warms. But therapy isn’t an option for everyone. ‘Convivencias’ are an alternative in a fire-prone region.
Convivencia means “coexistence” — or colloquially, “gathering.” Formally speaking, they are therapeutic support groups. Except they aren’t marketed that way.