Quitting smoking today is the number one thing that Californians can do to improve their health. Not a moment goes by without a citizen of our country and the State of California suffering from the hazards of tobacco use. Tobacco use has far reaching ramifications that encompass not only health issues, but widespread economic issues. But many people lack access to the programs that will help them quit. We can and should give them that access.
The violence between rival Sacramento gangs with Southeast Asian lineage veils a complex set of internal conflicts that circle a core problem: how to successfully integrate into American life. A network of ethnic organizations is working to improve understanding among Hmong, Mien and Laotian immigrants and their children.
Seven months after freezing new admissions to a program that screens low-income women for breast cancer, California’s Public Health Department is still spending money to educate those women about a service they can no longer receive. The department has contracts with nonprofit groups around the state to provide education and outreach about the program, known as Every Woman Counts. But while the state began blocking new admissions to the program on Jan. 1 to save money, it did not reduce spending or change the requirements in its contracts that inform women about the screenings and encourage them to get mammograms.
As a medical student and now family physician resident at UC Davis, I’ve attended numerous medical conferences over the past several years, and the same theme keeps coming up over and over again: “We need to find a way to market and sell Primary Care!” “We need to make Primary Care sexy!” Much like Grey’s Anatomy has made surgery sexy, I’ve even heard proposals for a Primary Care or Family Medicine-based reality show. There is a critical shortage of primary care doctors that adversely affects underserved populations. Here is what we can do about it.
Dismayed by a teen culture based on intolerance and stereotypes, directors of local nonprofit youth programs in Pasadena designed Culture Shock, a week-long summer workshop that teaches conflict resolution and leadership skills to teens ages 13-17 from the city’s public and private high schools. To hear the teens tell it, the results have been impressive.
California is preparing for a major expansion of support and funding for promotores – grass roots health workers who work within their own communities to reach out to rural, remote and otherwise underserved populations. Federal health reform includes $15 billion for prevention programs, including promotores, and California will be competing for a share of that money.
A doctor contemplates his role in helping to implement health reform and decides that his connection to the community will be as important as his knowledge of medicine.
A record number of US adults are now obese, with 2 million more people crossing that unhealthy weight threshold between 2007 and 2009, according to new numbers released by the US Centers for Disease Control. California’s obesity rate is 24.8 percent, which is below the US average but higher than 16 other states.
Farmers markets across California are reaching out to low-income residents with programs that allow food stamps and WIC vouchers to be exchanged for fresh produce.
The Elizabeth Center for Cancer Detection in Los Angeles — one of the oldest cancer screening clinics in California — plans to shut down today after treating its last patients. The center is a victim of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s decision to freeze enrollment in a cancer screening program for low-income women on Jan. 1 and pay for routine mammograms only for women after the age of 50. Those moves caused an abrupt drop in the Elizabeth Center’s patient load and revenues, which had already been strained as its costs exceeded what it was earning from the state.