Month: November 2010

A Wellness Program with Something for Everyone

By Margaret T. Simpson

La Mesa, with a population of nearly 60,000, sits on a series of hills just east of San Diego. Its scenic character masks health statistics that are the worst in San Diego County, with 40 percent of the adult population overweight and an additional 23 percent considered obese. The area also has the highest rates of adult diabetes and heart disease. But now the city has written a strategic wellness plan that engages schools, health providers, businesses and faith communities in an ongoing effort to create the healthiest city in the region.

State doing little to track hospitals with severe seismic safety risks

By Christina Jewett

State authorities and hospital officials have discovered serious structural weaknesses at more than a dozen hospital buildings, but they have taken few steps to notify the public about the facilities or require a detailed inventory of hundreds of other potentially dangerous sites. More than a dozen hospital buildings in the Bay Area and Southern California face the highest-known chances of crumbling during an earthquake, based on a complex mash-up of each building’s structural strength, distance from a fault line and expected ground motion, California Watch has learned. While the problem of hospital safety has been widely debated, few people know how little California is doing to detect its riskiest hospital buildings. Regulators do not require hospital owners to determine a collapse risk for every building they own, making it impossible to know which should be fixed first.

Issuing a call not just for doctors, but leaders

By Ronald Fong. M.D.

We need to address our medical students as paladins, and not as squires. We must show them that their patients and circles will view them as leaders, regardless of their self-assessment. And, we must impart to them that leadership is not a burden, but a legacy to be forged. We will choose our students for this trek based not primarily on test scores or letters of recommendations. Rather, we will seek those who demand challenges, shatter comfort zones, and stoke their passions by the advancement and of others.

Big vote against Prop. 23 sends a statement about California’s commitment to environmental laws

By Daniel Weintraub

With 93 percent of the vote counted this morning, the biggest landslide on the California ballot was the vote against a measure to suspend the state’s landmark global warming law. On a day when Republicans won across the nation by calling for smaller government and even Californians voted against tax increases and made it harder for the Legislature to raise fees, voters here gave a huge endorsement to perhaps the most controversial environmental protection law ever enacted in the nation.

New governor, same old mess

By Daniel Weintraub

California is about to get a new governor, but the situation in the state Capitol is not likely to change much in the months ahead. If Jerry Brown becomes the state’s next chief executive, as Tuesday night’s returns suggest will be the case, he will inherit a budget shortfall that will probably be about $15 billion to $20 billion on a $90 billion general fund. And he will be trying to work with a deeply divided Legislature, with Democrats holding strong control but Republicans still able to block any tax increases, which require a two-thirds vote for passage.

Aging with dignity in California the governor’s imperative

By Bruce Chernof, M.D.

California’s next governor will have an opportunity to play a major role in the health and well being of the state’s growing senior population. Right now, the system is inadequate to support vulnerable older adults who find it increasingly more challenging to live independently as they age. Roughly 70 percent of individuals age 65 and above will have long-term care needs at some point in their lives. When learning of this real likelihood, people feel deeply worried and unprepared. Here are some steps the governor can take to make the state’s senior population more secure.

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