The city of El Monte sponsors a walking club and is working with local convenience stores to stock more healthy alternatives to junk food and alcohol. The efforts are part of the Healthy El Monte initiative, which seeks to combat high rates of obesity and diabetes in a city of 125,000 sandwiched between major freeways and industrial sites. Margaret Simpson has the story.
Democratic lawmakers and advocates for the poor harshly criticized Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger over the weekend after he vetoed nearly $1 billion from the state budget, much of it from programs intended to aid low-income families. Schwarzenegger sliced $962 million from the spending plan sent to him by the Legislature 100 days after the start of the fiscal year July 1.
Seven years after he first proposed it, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger this week finally achieved his goal of rolling back most state worker pensions to levels that existed before lawmakers, relying on the fruits of a booming 1990s stock market, boosted benefits with a bill they passed in 1999. The change has been one of Schwarzenegger’s goals since the day he took office.
California’s top air quality regulator and the head of a major construction industry trade group announced Thursday that they have reached agreement on a plan to reduce diesel emissions from construction equipment. The agreement, if approved by the full Air Resources Board in December, would end years of dispute between the board and the Associated General Contractors of America, which has fought California’s diesel emission regulations for construction equipment since they were adopted in 2007.
Parents across the country can put their 20-something kids back on their private health insurance thanks to health reform laws that rolled out last month But thousands of young adults will not have that opportunity: foster children who were raised in the care and custody of the state.
Health isn’t just about the doctor’s office. For all of us, but especially for a young person, health begins in our community. That truth was echoed throughout a two-day national town hall in Los Angeles to address the health disparities facing boys and young men of color. Community leaders and experts from across California and the nation convened because a growing body of research shows that the health of boys of color stems from their neighborhoods, their schools, their environments.
Williams Brotherhood Park in South Stockton was plagued with gangs and crime. Families stopped going there and parents told their children to stay away. But a group of area youth decided they wanted their park back. They started a campaign to reclaim the park and won the support of local community organizations and, ultimately, the city. Now the park is cleaner, the bathrooms are open and families and kids are returning. LeCresia Hawkins, special projects coordinator for Community Partnership for Families of San Joaquin, which has offices in the park, tells the story.
Money can’t buy you love, but it might buy better health. People who live in wealthy neighborhoods live on average ten years longer than people who live in concentrated poverty. That’s why some experts say that the best way to improve public health is not through technological advances and breakthrough drugs, or even through better access to primary care. Instead, they say, policy efforts may be better focused on reducing the wealth gap in the United States.
The controversy this week over several health insurance companies pulling out of the children’s market because of new provisions in the federal health bill shows how tricky it can be for legislators and regulators to try to find the sweet spot between market-driven conditions and total government control.
California’s unemployment rate is now nearly 3% higher than the national rate. In August 2010 California’s unemployment rate was 12.4% compared to the national 9.6% unemployment rate. The state’s unemployment was this much above the national rate once before in the early 1990s as a result of the large loss of aerospace jobs. The state’s job losses, then as now, were far larger than the national job losses and the state’s recovery took longer. Moreover, the aerospace job losses were permanent, not cyclical losses. Still by 2000 and for several years thereafter California’s unemployment rate was near the national average. What are the causes of the current high unemployment rates in California and what does that mean for the near and medium term economic future?