They’re called by different names: community health workers… promotoras… health advocates… pomoshniks… peer counselors. By any name, or in any language, these health workers reach into ethnic communities to help underserved Californians navigate the confusing maelstrom of healthcare delivery.
For decades, Americans have debated health care reform as if it was one issue. But, in reality, there are two different issues. The first is how to expand access to care for the 30 million most vulnerable Americans. The second is how to seize control of escalating health care expenses and insurance premiums.
A popular event gives bikes and walkers free access to Los Angeles streets. “People are starved for open space,” says event co-founder Bobby Gadda.
A cafe in this Los Angeles neighborhood turns into a hub for artistic expression and health education.
Now that the Obama Administration’s effort to offer government-sponsored, long-term health care insurance has crashed, it’s unclear whether any viable path exists to prod more Americans into recognizing the need for such coverage – and to buy it — as they grow older and more prone to debilitating illnesses.
Ceasefire programs to end youth violence started in Boston in the 1990s. The subsequent drop in youth homicide was called the “Boston Miracle.” Can a similar program work in Oakland? David Kennedy, creator of Ceasefire, considered that question at recent talk at Oakland’s First Unitarian Church.
Many Hmong, a “hill people” unassimilated in greater Southeast Asia and in the Asian American community, retain their Old World notions of health and healing. That means a reliance more on herbal remedies and shamanism than embracing basic Western medical care. The lack of health awareness in the immigrant community coincides with a higher than normal incidence of hepatitis B, a disease that can lead to liver cirrhosis and cancer.
A Stanislaus County medical education program that recruits and trains doctors to work with the underserved is funded by the federal health reform act. It is expected to help reduce the shortage of family physicians in the Central Valley.
More elders from minority groups are ending up in nursing homes in the Long Beach and Los Angeles areas, reflecting a national trend. And they aren’t there because it’s their preference, experts say, but because it’s a financial necessity.
Environmentalists and others have been saying for nearly a year that the state caved to industry pressure when it approved the use of the pesticide methyl iodide at levels more than 100 times higher than its own scientists recommended. Now a newly uncovered memo written by an official of the company that makes the pesticide shows that the firm gave managers in the Department of Pesticide Regulation calculations they could use to overturn the conclusions of state scientists and an advisory panel convened to review their work.