The 1.3 million California pregnant women and children covered by the Children’s Health Insurance Program don’t have to worry about losing their health care. Child health advocates expressed relief but said they were concerned about the length of time it took to get to this point.
Between 2001 and 2014, the number of California teens and preteens who had gone more than a year without a health exam decreased by nearly half.
About 32,000 pregnant women and children in California could lose health coverage in March if Congress doesn’t reauthorize the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program before then.
Nearly all of my clinic patients in South Los Angeles live at or below the poverty level and many struggle to put food on the table.
Recognizing that too many kids go hungry, the California legislature passed The Feed the Kids Act, Senate bill 138, which goes into effect on January 1. This program will provide school meals to some of the state’s poorest kids.
Last summer, 20-month-old Jasmine was nearly comatose when she was brought to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance. It turned out the toddler had eaten cannabis candies that looked like Tootsie Rolls at her grandparents’ house.
The United States has a dismal distinction in international health rankings: 9.6 percent of babies are born preterm, a higher rate than in Turkey, Afghanistan, Thailand and dozens of other third world countries.
The infant mortality rate has consistently decreased in California in the last two decades, but a handful of counties in the state have rates that remain higher than average.
Mendocino and Fresno counties had infant mortality rates that were nearly twice the statewide average in 2013-15, the latest years for which data is available.
Children of color who live in low-income neighborhoods are less likely to receive developmental services than white children with the same diagnosis living in a higher-income area, despite a law mandating state funding for comprehensive care for anyone who qualifies.
Children who have been homeless frequently have trouble falling asleep because they’ve moved around a lot, often sleeping in different beds each night and in environments they don’t feel safe in. This unpredictability affects them in other ways too: they may find it hard to trust adults, feel secure at school and manage emotions, and they are often developmentally behind other children of the same age.
Since at least 2009, disparities have existed in rates of sexually transmitted diseases across the California.
African American young people ages 10 to 19 had the highest rates of chlamydia between 2009 and 2015, according to data from the California Department of Public Health posted by Kidsdata.