I recently introduced Senate Bill 387 to help teachers and school-based staff receive training on how to recognize the signs of a mental health crisis.
Although teachers and school-based staff are not trained mental health professionals, they are in a unique position to support youth who need help. By equipping teachers with the training needed to recognize the signs of someone experiencing a mental health or substance use challenge, we’ll help ensure students don’t slip through the cracks.
The legacy of redlining in Fresno isn’t just linked to housing access. It also has deadly effects on air quality and preterm birth.
People living in substandard housing, a problem tied to redlining, are more likely to be exposed to wildfire smoke. This exposure can hurt pregnant people and the children they carry.
I made the choice to continue a high-risk pregnancy, but I honor the choice of any pregnant person who opts to terminate given the same set of facts.
What I don’t like is seeing ableism — that is, prejudice against adults and children with disabilities — rolled into discussions about abortion, as has happened often since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
In 2013, my son Ram spontaneously developed a condition called selective mutism, a childhood anxiety disorder. After three months of searching, I finally found a therapist familiar with the condition. My husband and I felt so relieved — until we found out she doesn’t take insurance.
It turns out, this scenario is common. Health insurance — whether private or through California’s Medi-Cal program — doesn’t pay what many psychologists request for their services.
I’m a pediatric intern at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, a safety-net hospital in Los Angeles County. When I decided to go into pediatrics, I pictured helping children and their families with broken bones, asthma and ear infections, as well as some chronic diseases, such as diabetes.
I never imagined how often I would take care of children trying to heal from the physical and mental trauma of being shot.
AG is a 2-month-old, healthy chubby baby with “Michelin man” rolls and pinchable cheeks, and he’s my patient. I’m a pediatric intern at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, a safety-net hospital in Los Angeles. When AG missed his checkup in late December, I was worried.
My colleague told me that AG recently had been in our emergency room. He tested positive for COVID-19.
In California, a person under 18 can marry with the consent of one parent and a judge. The state is one of only nine in the nation that do not set a minimum age for marriage.
People married as children or teens are more likely to experience domestic violence, contract sexually transmitted infections, have early pregnancies, and end up divorced, research shows. Marriage under 18 also contradicts age of consent laws in many states.
We made the decision to send our son back to in-person school last year despite his vulnerability to infection because our district came up with a reasonable, safe plan to make it possible: Every student had to wear a mask.
Just as we were gearing up for a mostly safe year back at school, the Clovis Unified school board decided to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and create unnecessary confusion over which mask policies would be enforced, despite clear state guidance.
Due to systemic inequities, children and teens of color are affected more often when it comes to mental health crises, with Latinos ages 10 through 19 representing nearly 40 percent of the total deaths by suicide among Californians in this age range in 2017.
The simple truth is that California does not have a sustainable, long-term plan to support children and teenager’s mental well-being. We cannot continue to cobble together a broken system that perpetuates inequity. Here are some recommendations.
How can anyone think about taking away health coverage and critical consumer protections at all, let alone during a pandemic?
California fully embraced the Affordable Care Act, which allowed it to expand Medicaid and create Covered California, our state’s health insurance marketplace. As a result, our uninsured rate fell a whopping 53 percent between 2010 and 2015. Over the last 10 years, we have made tremendous gains in California and across the country. Now is not the time to go backward.