Shortly after she began participating in California’s Welfare-to-Work program, Michele Marino began to think she was going crazy. The single mother had just enrolled in a government cash-assistance program to help support herself and her two young sons, while she searched for a job and took classes at a community college. But daily tasks, school, parenting and the government requirements to stay in the welfare program felt overwhelming.
A new study finds that people who grew up in a household where a member was incarcerated have an 18 percent greater risk of experiencing poor health quality later in life than adults who did not have a family member sent to prison. The findings, which assessed other sources of adversity for children as well, suggest that the high rate of imprisonment in the U.S. may be a causal factor in long lasting physical and mental health difficulties for some families.
Twenty-one-year-old Albert is a self-described transient who picks up odd jobs whenever possible. On this day in mid-July, he’s waiting to be picked up for day labor in Santa Ana. Albert has a black spot on his foot that he knows could signal diabetes, an illness that runs in his family and forced his uncle to lose a leg.
In the first full year under the federal Affordable Care Act, California led the nation – embracing the new law eagerly, implementing it quickly, and providing relatively robust choice with low premiums through a web site that, most of the time, actually worked.
Inside a bureaucratic jungle, Laura Trejo always finds room to roar. When Trejo sat in the midst of a panel of experts during the recent launch of a new state senate committee on aging, she spoke plainly yet firmly. During her 10-minute lecture, simmering tension escalated into barely controlled fury.
In this inaugural episode of CHR TV, we bring you stories about people who are improving their own health and the health of their communities across California.