Month: April 2012

Creative Movement: Transportation and the Elderly

As California’s population ages, a growing fear among older adults is finding transportation to medical appointments. In a car-dominated society without adequate mass transit and many neighborhoods where it is unsafe to walk, medical transportation can be a real problem.

City harvesting benefits homeowners and the hungry

By Enrique Gili

Streets take on the look of an unruly Eden in the leafier parts of San Diego. Lawns, large lots, even sidewalk medians are interlaced with fruiting varieties of trees, palm trees and lush vegetation. Sometimes the abundance of common produce – lemons, oranges, avocados – can overwhelm homeowners. So locavores and food security advocates have teamed up with a growing number of volunteers, matching overburdened homeowners with pickers eager to help haul the excess produce to food pantries throughout San Diego County.

County Aims to Stop Mental Health Stigma

When the cops arrived at her house in Davis, they tackled her in her living room and tied up her arms and feet, saying it was for her own protection. “They were like, ‘Yeah, this f—ing girl is crazy,’” recalled Carr, 29. “I felt they hated me and looked at me with pure disgust.” Carr is one of 2.2 million Californians living with a mental illness, according to a 2011 report by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

Preschoolers’ poor oral health leads to severe tooth decay

By the time children in California reach kindergarten half of them already have cavities. More than a quarter of them have untreated tooth decay. Among poor children and children of color the numbers are even worse. Seventy-two percent of children on free and reduced lunch have cavities and a third have untreated tooth decay.

At a crossroads

The former site of the Bethune Library in South Los Angeles sits vacant. Secured by a chain-link fence, what was once home to a community resource is now a dirt field littered with pinecones and discarded trash. Patches of proud grass peek through the earth, and a few out-of-place trees stand like sentries guarding a memory. The land was slated for 55 affordable housing units and a grocery story. Now, after the dissolution of redevelopment agencies, it’s in limbo.

Holistic mental wellness center coming to Fresno

By Todd R. Brown

To some immigrants, the details of Western medicine lie in unfamiliar territory, so certain maladies wind up being treated by traditional healers rather than modern medical practitioners.

To remedy that dichotomy, Fresno County plans to open a holistic wellness center that will link Hmong, Latinos and other groups with spiritually fulfilling as well as evidence-based solutions to mental health worries.

Autism diagnoses increase, especially among Latinos

More children than ever before are being diagnosed with autism, a developmental disorder that impairs the brain’s ability to build communication and social skills, according to a report released last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Autism has been detected in about one in 88 children, a 23 percent increase from the CDC’s last count in 2006 and almost double the number of diagnoses found ten years ago.

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