Now is the time for California to finish the job of improving our health care system by ensuring communities have the opportunity to be healthy.
Supporters of California’s 60,000 foster youth want the legislature and governor to create a statewide hotline that foster parents and children can call to receive immediate help. The hotline would operate 24 hours a day and be staffed by professionals trained in resolving and de-escalating conflicts.
Advocates say a plan to turn a grassy lot in Oxnard into a port storage facility is part of a pattern of disregarding poor communities living near California’s ports. These neighborhoods are often saddled with disproportionate amounts of industrial pollution compared to more affluent locales further away from port facilities.
A coalition of 133 health-related groups in California are calling for $2 million from the governor and state legislature for a statewide task force to stamp out a mounting public health syndemic of HIV, hepatitis C and sexually transmitted diseases. The proposed task force would pool health resources from around the state to set target dates to end the HIV, hepatitis C and STD epidemics.
An estimated 20 percent of the state’s 2.1 million community college students have experienced homelessness or don’t have a stable place to live. A new bill aims to help these students by ensuring they have a secure place to stay in their cars at night.
Throughout California, low-income public-school students are guaranteed at least one free or low-cost healthy meal each school day. That same law doesn’t apply to public preschools or to child care programs operated by school districts or county offices of education that serve low-income children. But that could soon change.
Many teen victims do not tell their family or friends about the abuse, in part because they believe violence is “normal” in a relationship. Some fear not being believed or that their abusers will cause more harm to them or their loved ones.
Immigrant detainees in California are confined in prison-like conditions for up to 22 hours a day, while the counties and cities that contract with ICE exercise little or no oversight of local detention facilities, according to a pair of blistering state reports released Tuesday. The reports from state attorney general Xavier Becerra and state auditor Elaine Howle chronicle shoddy medical care and mental health treatment
More than 85,000 of California’s most vulnerable low-income residents, including those who are homeless and have been recently incarcerated, are now enrolled in a pilot project designed to link health care to social services.
Noting rising suicide rates and mental health problems among the state’s youth, a bill in the California Senate would require all new teachers to have mental health first-aid training.