Beginning in 2008, as the nation was in the throes of the economic recession, California’s top leaders made a series of cuts to safety-net programs that sent many low-income residents in a downward spiral toward homelessness. While California’s economy has largely recovered since then, and the state’s food stamps and health programs have mostly been restored, the state’s welfare program has yet to see a reinvestment to pre-recession levels.
Children living in high poverty neighborhoods—a disproportionate number of whom are children of color—are more likely to die from child abuse.
My patients in my clinic in South Los Angeles are children from high poverty areas. However, regardless of where they practice, pediatricians have a critical role in the recognition and prevention of child abuse.
As the termination of DACA is challenged in courts throughout the country, the fate of roughly 800,000 DACA recipients remains in limbo. This causes such anxiety for the more than 400 students enrolled with DACA at UC Berkeley that the school expanded its mental health services.
California’s county and local mental health agencies have failed to spend $2.5 billion in taxpayer money that is intended to help Californians with mental illness, according to a new state auditor’s report.
Instead, the agencies have sat on the money, accumulating $80 million in interest as of fiscal year 2015-16, according to the report, released Tuesday.
The March of Dimes Premature Birth Report Card found the preterm birth rate in California increased to 8.6 percent, reaching a six-year high. The report card also showed significant racial disparities in the state: black women, Latina and American Indian women in California had disproportionately higher rates of premature births.
Just beyond the reception desks at the two Clinica Romero health center sites in Los Angeles are signs in English and Spanish that say: “All Are Welcome,” as do buttons worn by staff members. That message aims to counter fears that health facilities are prime arrest sites for undocumented immigrants.
A retired Catholic school principal, Taylor isn’t your typical marijuana expert. But that works in her favor, she said, as she strives to remove the stigmatization surrounding medical marijuana.
The 70-year-old plans to open a medical marijuana dispensary in Berkeley in April. Her focus will be educating seniors and minorities on the medical benefits of cannabis.
More than 81,000 low-income students in California attend charter schools that do not offer free and reduced-price school meals.
Assemblyman Rob Bonta wants to remedy that.
Latinos are the ethnic group most likely to develop cancers linked to the human papillomavirus and also among the least likely to be immunized against the infection.
The second week after school starts, kids with respiratory illnesses—everything from simple colds to asthma attacks—fill my clinic. As a pediatrician I expect this.
But this year was different. Many of the kids had atypically high fevers and body aches with their coughs and congestion. They had influenza.