When Kendria McKnight of Elk Grove, Calif., first started walking for a minimum of 30 minutes a day, five days a week, she hoped to lower her blood pressure. She did that and much more. McKnight’s treks became part of a free national movement designed to improve the health of black women across the country one step at a time.
Author: Linda Childers
In 1992, when Holly Austin Gibbs was 14-years-old, she met a man at a New Jersey shopping mall who convinced her to run away from home. He told her she was pretty enough to be a model, and promised to help her find a glamorous job in Los Angeles.
The National Coalition Against Homelessness says violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons in homeless shelters is all too common. They report that members of the LGBT community typically have a greater difficulty finding shelters that accept and respect them, and are at a heightened risk of violence, abuse, and exploitation compared to their heterosexual peers.
Fifteen years ago, Laura Wilcox, a 19-year-old college student, was killed by a man with a history of mental illness while she was working at a mental health clinic in Nevada County. After her death, Wilcox’s parents pushed for legislation they believed would prevent similar tragedies and in 2002, the California State Legislature passed that legislation, known as Laura’s Law, giving county courts the right to order assisted outpatient treatment to severely mentally ill patients at the request of a family member or other concerned party.
Within the next two decades, the Alzheimer’s Association says the degenerative brain disease will not only pose an increased public health threat to the state, it will also disproportionately affect certain ethnic groups.
In the 20 years she’s worked as a hair stylist, Safiyyah Edley has seen many colleagues diagnosed with uterine fibroids and cancer. Yet it wasn’t until she began working at a salon next door to the Los Angeles-based health and wellness advocacy organization, Black Women for Wellness (BWW), that she learned the hair products she works with on a daily basis could pose serious health risks.
When Toody Maher first moved to Richmond, she was dismayed to see how many of the city’s parks were in shambles. Local residents described the parks as being “dirty, dull and dangerous,” and one in particular caught Maher’s eye – Elm Playlot, a half-acre park set in the middle of the Iron Triangle, one of Richmond’s toughest neighborhoods.
In the heart of Richmond, Calif. lies the Iron Triangle, named after the three railroad tracks that define and enclose the area. Today children can be seen playing at a renovated community park in the neighborhood, but this hasn’t always been the case. In this working-class neighborhood historically plagued by drive-by shootings, substance abuse and prostitution, parents haven’t always felt safe letting their children play outside.
Although it happened eight years ago, Carolyn Russell clearly remembers the tragic murder of a female parishioner at Acts Full Gospel Church in Oakland. The 40-year-old woman was in the midst of a bitter divorce, when her estranged husband approached her in the church parking lot and shot and killed her. Sadly, the woman had obtained a restraining order against her former husband only three days before the shooting.
For most Californians, the continuing drought means a crash course in learning how to conserve water and adjusting to warmer temperatures. But for some of the state’s residents, the drought has also brought about increased health challenges.