The National Coalition Against Homelessness says violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons in homeless shelters is all too common. They report that members of the LGBT community typically have a greater difficulty finding shelters that accept and respect them, and are at a heightened risk of violence, abuse, and exploitation compared to their heterosexual peers.
Month: May 2016
Californians who are terminally ill and have less than six months left to live will be able to ask their doctors to help them die beginning June 9, but many doctors in the state are confused about the new law, a new report finds.
Issac Rodriguez always dreamed of making movies, but the Watsonville High School junior didn’t think it was something he would ever actually do. His parents worked long hours in the strawberry fields just to make ends meet; the family couldn’t afford a computer—let alone a video camera and editing software.
Along Los Angeles’ coastline the affluent Palos Verdes peninsula is heavily populated with older adults. Nearly one in four citizens living there is over 65 — almost twice the state average.
Doctors can help prevent gun violence by asking their patients whether they own firearms and counseling them on safety, a new report states.
The public health official who oversees efforts to slow the rate of sexually transmitted disease in California, Heidi Bauer, M.D., has sounded an alarm about a serious shortage of the one antibiotic that effectively cures congenital syphilis.
Will Nebbitt suffers from seizures and painful blood clots in his legs that prevent him from walking very far. A former addict, he spent more than 25 of his 59 years in prison and almost the rest of his adult life homeless. Men like Nebbitt usually die young and on the street, yet he’s had a home for two years after help from a Los Angeles County program based on a radical new approach to health care.
What makes local residents meet up to take a walk together in several Sacramento parks each week? To hear them tell it, it’s the fun that comes from a shared activity with neighbors, and, for as long as supplies hold out, free fruit and vegetables at the end of the trek.
There’s no doubt in Veronica Morales’ mind that placement in a caring foster family is far superior than placement in a group home. The Turlock resident, who spent much of her childhood in family foster care, said her brothers seemed like “robots” after their stay in a heavily structured group home.
As our nation continues to see no activity on immigration reform, we also see the lives of countless families on hold. While we applaud the Obama administration’s executive actions, we also wait on a divided Supreme Court to determine the fate of the DACA expansion, a change to the current program that will offer protection to thousands more people living in the US who were brought here as children, and DAPA, a new program providing protection from deportation and work authorization for certain undocumented parents with US citizen or lawful permanent resident children.