California residents pay dearly to live in the Golden state. Nearly half of California residents experienced a “high housing cost burden” in 2012, which means that the cost of their housing — including mortgage, home insurance, utilities and property taxes for homeowners and rent and utilities for renters — consumed more than 30 percent of their income.
As the number of jail and prison inmates with mental illness increases, addressing the problem is becoming even more critical. In the 1980s, 8 percent of jail and prison inmates in the state had serious mental illness. Now, 20 percent do.
Jails and prisons are the largest “mental institutions” in California, holding far more people with severe psychiatric illnesses than state hospitals, according to a report released last Tuesday by the Treatment Advocacy Center and the National Sheriffs’ Association.
In the near future, successful care for older adults will depend on bold and creative collaborations.
That’s the message aging pioneer Ken Dychtwald gave last month’s Aging in America conference. Dychtwald, CEO of the consulting group Age Wave, might as well have been describing the “strange bedfellows” collaboration between two organizations often considered mortal enemies – a county aging services agency and a managed health care plan
St. James Health Center is ready for the onslaught. The community health clinic, one of the busiest in San Jose, sits on the corner of 2nd and Julian streets near downtown. Doctors, dentists, pharmacists and other health-care providers here treat some of the poorest patients in Santa Clara County — patients whom many expect to have newly-minted health insurance this year as the federal Affordable Care Act kicks in.
A new review of studies on breast cancer and elderly women by researchers at UCSF and the Harvard School of Medicine suggests that doctors should focus on how long a patient is likely to live when deciding whether to order mammograms for their oldest female patients rather than order them routinely. The researchers say their study shows that the harms of screening likely outweigh the benefits unless women are expected to live at least another decade.
Each school day, about a fifth of the children in California schools attend class without a nurse in the building.If emergency medication needs to be administered — an epinephrine shot for allergies, for example, or other kinds of medication injections — there may or may not be someone qualified or trained to provide the treatment.
The Rancho slaughterhouse was a critical piece of the supply chain for sustainable, local meat, leaving consumers with fewer alternatives to factory-farmed meats, despite the growing demand.
The number of babies born to mothers ages 15 to 17 years of age has declined but still represents over a quarter of teen births each year, according to the April issue of Vital Signs, a monthly health indicator publication of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC.) According to the CDC, that fact underscores the need for targeted interventions to prevent teen pregnancy.
As the deluge of applications for Medi-Cal through continues to flood into Covered California, local health advocacy groups and providers throughout Los Angeles County say the sizable enrollment backlog is delaying health care services for needy residents.