Having been raised by immigrant grandparents, and being a farm worker myself, I found myself struggling as an undergraduate at Stanford University. Social and emotional support from two classmates, also from “low-performing” high schools and from immigrant families, helped pull me through. My dream was to return to the Central Valley as a physician to help smooth the way for others in similar circumstances to be successful in college and achieve their professional dreams.
If state revenues are climbing next year, why does California face an $18 billion budget shortfall? For a couple of reasons: mainly the need to retire this year’s deficit and cope with costs that are programmed to rise automatically in the year ahead.
The neighborhood kids who spend afternoons playing in Santa Ana’s Chepa’s Park may have heard tales of Josephina “Chepa” Andrade. The woman known as “La Reina de la Logan” united a generation of activists in a fight against city hall and helped to create the park that now bears her name. But they probably aren’t aware that her legacy is living on at the other side of the park’s handball court. One of Chepa’s four daughters recently moved with her extended family into a new, four-bedroom home after winning a city lottery to buy the house at below market rates.
An East Oakland center for young people is an oasis of hope in a community in crisis. It provides counseling, job training, recreation, health care and more. Soon it will host a series of meetings between Oakland police officers and local youth to try to reduce tension between law enforcement and the community.
Dr. Ronald Fong at UC Davis created a weight management clinic that asks patients to take the lead in fighting their own obesity. But Fong walks by their side — literally, in an initial meeting during which he takes them out of the office for a stroll and a conversation.
California advocates for women and children are making a major push for breastfeeding and laying the groundwork for proposals in the Legislature that could require hospitals that deliver babies to reduce the number of newborns fed with bottled formula.
It will be years before the new health insurance exchange at the heart of the federal health reform passed in March rolls out in California. But decisions being made now could shape how that exchange looks and works, the health benefits it makes available to consumers, how much Californians pay for their coverage and the roles played by the government and the private insurance industry.
Victims of domestic violence often fall through the cracks between police, social workers and health care providers. Contra Costa County is fighting that problem by preparing to centralize services for abused women in a one-stop center in Richmond.
In the music industry it’s all about who you know. And contrary to popular belief, not every kid in Orange County has Mickey Mouse on speed dial. An Anaheim program bridges that gap by helping at-risk kids learn music production skills.
The federal health care overhaul signed last month by President Obama will not prompt significant changes in the short term for Healthy San Francisco, the city program that provides medical care for more than 51,000 low-income residents. And even when most major provisions of the federal law take effect in 2014, city officials say, there will still be a need for Healthy San Francisco to serve an estimated 20,000 patients who will not have health insurance under the federal law, including many who are in the country illegally.