Across California, organizations are working on anti-violence solutions to improve outcomes for parents and their babies. Efforts include working with physicians to better detect and help pregnant people who are experiencing abuse.
Women are more than twice as likely to die from homicide during pregnancy and the year following childbirth than from hypertensive disorders, hemorrhage and infection.
A coalition of Latinx parents is suing Harbor Regional Center, alleging discrimination against Latinx children and adults with disabilities and demanding more services.
The lawsuit accuses the center of routinely dismissing Latinx families’ requests for help, of providing less comprehensive services than needed, and of burdening families with unnecessary requirements as well as failing to adequately inform them when services are canceled or changed.
Although California has set high standards for controlling some chemicals in water, actual enforcement and removal of contaminants is generally slow, and frequently stymied by high treatment costs and antiquated water infrastructure.
Meanwhile, polluters rarely have to answer for the health impacts their actions may have caused. Low-income communities of color are particularly hard hit, due to decades of environmental racism.
Research shows children with chronic illnesses are at least twice as likely as healthy children to develop a mental health disorder. They’re at higher risk for neglect and abuse. Their caregivers and siblings are also at increased risk for mental distress.
Yet there are few mental health treatment programs that cater to the needs of these children and their families. The MEND program at Loma Linda University is an exception.
In California, a person under 18 can marry with the consent of one parent and a judge. The state is one of only nine in the nation that do not set a minimum age for marriage.
People married as children or teens are more likely to experience domestic violence, contract sexually transmitted infections, have early pregnancies, and end up divorced, research shows. Marriage under 18 also contradicts age of consent laws in many states.
Since the pandemic began, California organizations that serve domestic violence survivors report getting more requests for help than ever before and hearing more stories of extreme abuse.
Rather than diminish, this trend has persisted as society reopens and survivors feel better able to seek help because they’re no longer trapped at home or worried about getting the virus, advocates said.
Throughout the pandemic, medically fragile children in California’s pediatric long-term care facilities and their parents have endured drastic limits on their ability to see and interact with each other. Some locations barred parents and other caregivers from visiting their children in person for over a year, citing virus safety precautions.
Advocates and parents said they’re concerned that visitation policies at pediatric subacute units during the pandemic may have caused long-term harm to kids.
Hundreds of young people across California are sparking conversations in their schools and communities about what healthy relationships should look like and how to recognize abusive behaviors. The California Health Report spoke with six of these youths about their activism and the experiences that motivate them.
All the youths we interviewed saw an urgent need to help more young people recognize abusive behaviors in themselves and others.
Like more than 300 communities across California, the tiny town of El Adobe in Kern County lacks safe drinking water. Since 2008, the arsenic levels in one of its two wells have regularly exceeded the safety standards set by federal and state authorities, often by more than double.
A 2013 report recommended the community consolidate with the larger water system in nearby Lamont. Residents are still waiting for that to happen. Some are losing hope.
Mike Duncan is founder of Native Dads Network, a Sacramento-based nonprofit that runs workshops on healthy parenting and relationships. The workshops draw on traditional Indigenous teachings about the value of life, the role of parents and the sacredness of women.
The network is one of a growing number of programs across the state that seek to address high rates of domestic violence in many Tribal communities by using Native American people’s own traditions and history as a guide.