When it comes to dental care, California is not serving vulnerable kids and families well. As a state, we need to commit to enacting solutions that will provide all children with better access to high-quality dental care.
As a pediatrician and a father, I can tell you that children are able to sense fear among caregivers. I encourage parents to have age-appropriate conversations with their children to understand what they’ve heard, answer their questions and provide comfort.
We’re all in this together and solidarity will get us through this pandemic.
Even though children in general are less likely than adults to develop serious illness from the coronavirus, that may not be the case for kids with compromised immune systems and complex health care needs, medical experts said.
Still, families of children with complex health care needs are, in some ways, more prepared than others to handle the threat of coronavirus infection. Hand washing, disinfecting and caution about venturing outside are already a reality.
There are some steps counties and states can—and should—take now to mitigate the collateral damage of school closures. We must protect the social and emotional health of our children.
Counties run local safety nets, and if they do not act swiftly and agressively, children will suffer.
We predict that social isolation practices and fear will exacerbate mental health conditions and challenges.
As the coronavirus alters daily life for many Californians, state leaders are facing the confluence of two public health challenges: the virus and homelessness.
Service providers and health experts are gearing up to get supplies and quarantine rooms ready for the 150,000 people in California who live on the streets or in shelters.
As coronavirus spreads throughout the United States, acts of racism and xenophobia toward Asian Americans have also increased.
According to a new report prepared by faculty members at San Francisco State University’s Asian American Studies Department, there were more than 1,000 reported cases of xenophobia toward Chinese communities and Chinese Americans between January 28 and February 24—a rate of 37 known cases per day.
As public health officials call on Californians to help stop the spread of the virus, many low-wage workers are being forced to make potentially life-threatening choices: whether to heed the precautions and lose income they rely on, or to show up for work anyway in order to put food on their tables and pay their rent.
These choices could be critical because low-wage earners often have jobs involving interactions with the public, such as serving food, caring for the elderly or cleaning hotel rooms.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has outlined innovative reforms to curb drug prices, including CalRx, a California-owned, generic drug label.
But CalRx is not a magic bullet. Magic bullets and general solutions often overlook the impacts on communities of color.
If CalRx does not intentionally build a path of access for low-income folks and communities of color, it will just be creating cheaper, but still unattainable, prescription drugs.
California’s top health priority should be making sure that people who need mental health treatment can get it, over 90 percent of respondents said in a recent poll.
People of color often feel the lack of access more acutely, researchers found, with 75 percent of black and 57 percent of Latino respondents noting that their communities don’t have enough mental health providers, compared to 49 percent of white participants.
Reaching adulthood can be like “falling off a cliff” of services for young adults with special needs.
As parents and advocates, we still have a long way to go to ensure these students graduate at the same rates as their peers and exit college with the same skill sets. How well a person makes a transition is usually dependent upon the degree of support that is available.