If there is any symbol of Labor Day 2010, it is the NUMMI plant closing and re-employment effort in Fremont, California. In March of this year the New United Motors Company (NUMMI) in Fremont closed. It was employing around 4700 workers in recent years. It was the last automobile plant in California.
The Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles is beginning a new kind of community health project—cleaning up the dirty and dangerous alleys that surround the apartment complexes throughout South East LA and turn them into safe, useable spaces for residents to exercise and grow gardens. The project is just one of many that is funded by a $16 million grant the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health won from the federal economic stimulus package to increase the quality of life and access to healthy food and exercise for Los Angeles County residents.
Almost half of California hospital workers did not get a flu shot during the 2008-09 flu season, according to records obtained by Consumers Union from the state Department of Public Health.
Going through a home foreclosure and its aftermath can be hazardous to your health, a California advocacy group for low-income residents said Thursday. Causa Justa/Just Cause, an Oakland-based nonprofit, and the Alameda County Public Health Department surveyed nearly 400 Oakland residents last summer and found that people experiencing foreclosure reported higher incidence of physical and mental health problems than residents living in stable situations.
The Tongan Community Service Center in Los Angeles is working with the city of Carson to develop anti-tobacco policies with federal stimulus money in an effort to reduce the incidence of asthma and other diseases related to smoking and poor air quality.
The California Air Resources Board acknowledged something Tuesday that critics have been saying for months: the state vastly over-estimated the amount of diesel pollution emitted by big off-road construction vehicles. The error, contained in an ARB computer model and compounded by a recession that idled far more trucks than expected, means that the construction industry would come close to meeting state-mandated targets for reducing pollution through 2025 even if regulations designed to force firms to retire or retrofit their dirtiest trucks are repealed.
After weeks of inaction, get ready for a flurry of activity Tuesday on the state budget. And then more inaction.
The Assembly on Monday approved legislation to toughen oversight of health insurance rate hikes but the Senate has rejected, at least for now, a measure to require state approval before companies can increase their premiums.
A state program that screens low-income women for breast cancer has been paying doctors and clinics $12 million a year to track women whose mammograms showed they were cancer-free. The program –- known as Every Woman Counts -– stopped accepting new patients Jan. 1 because of a self-described lack of funds. The $50 case management fees have been questioned by the Department of Finance, which says other big states don’t pay them, and the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst, which recommended eliminating them. The money saved could be used to once again offer mammograms to women who qualify for the program.
Legislation that would reverse major cuts to a program that provides free mammograms for low-income women passed unanimously through the Senate Thursday and was sent to an uncertain fate in the office of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.