Long considered the step before hospice, palliative care can actually be offered at any stage of a serious illness and focuses on humane treatment. It is sometimes called “comfort care.” It’s quickly becoming mainstream just as hospice – unknown before the 1970s – has now become standard medical procedure for those with fewer than six months to live.
To combat high absentee rates, a Fresno middle school has put a health clinic on campus. It’s a full-blown clinic, which features primary-care services, pediatric care and immunizations. The school district said during a board meeting last year that the free clinics would be paid for by health providers and federal subsidies.
For youths on probation, the club is an Evening Reporting Center, which provides an alternative to juvenile hall. Those assigned to the center by the Ventura County Probation Agency must attend the Boys & Girls Club’s Teen Center every day after school, usually for between 20 and 45 days.
Overwhelmed family caregivers feel lost and frustrated, unable to navigate a fragmented and confusing system of support that should integrate adult daycare, long-term care and respite care for exhausted caregivers, while educating families on complex topics like dementia.
Californians voted to legalize adult use of marijuana last November, but the change in law has introduced a quandary for health educators who teach teens about drug use.
At Florence Griffith Joyner, the teachers have been trained as part of a UCLA program called Calm Classroom. Kate Sheehan, the managing director of the UCLA Center for Child Anxiety Resilience Education and Support (CARES), said that parents and teachers have reported that the program is making a difference in student behavior. She said more empirical research is needed, but anecdotally she’s found many once skeptical teachers won over.
Whether it’s partner dancing, yoga, walking, riding motorcycles or climbing trees, older adults are sustaining good health and reducing chronic disease by getting off their butts in newly creative ways that emphasize flexibility rather than sweaty exercise or muscle-bound weightlifting.
In several neighborhoods across California, many children face an invisible health threat: lead poisoning. Found in paint dust from homes and apartments built before 1978, long-term exposure to lead has been shown by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to cause health problems ranging from anemia to learning disabilities.
Sonoma County resident Kami Reep was fired from two consecutive bookkeeping jobs in 2015—but not because she’d performed poorly or done anything wrong. In each case, she was fired because she had to take time off after her abusive ex-husband kidnapped two of their three children.
In November, The Dignity Fund supporters claimed victory when San Francisco voters overwhelmingly approved a unique cash infusion for aging and disability services inspired by similar efforts a quarter century ago to benefit kids: The Children’s Fund.