In California, we spend so much time considering the future of work, we often ignore a far more critical conversation: the future of workers.
Opinion
Now is the time for California to finish the job of improving our health care system by ensuring communities have the opportunity to be healthy.
Many teen victims do not tell their family or friends about the abuse, in part because they believe violence is “normal” in a relationship. Some fear not being believed or that their abusers will cause more harm to them or their loved ones.
In this country, we believe that our value and ability to contribute to society should not be based on how we look or how much money in our wallets. The Trump administration’s proposed public charge rule flouts these core values.
Despite California’s leadership in expanding health coverage to a record number of Californians, we have a crisis that hardly anyone is addressing: Our state still fails to provide the quality—and quantity—of care needed by our largest ethnic group.
Gavin Newsom kicked off his term as governor by unveiling several health care proposals on his first day in office. But to truly transform health and achieve health equity in our state, we need to address the community conditions that determine whether we will be healthy and safe in the first place, long before the medical system gets involved.
Both mother and infant can suffer when maternal depression or anxiety is not treated promptly. A National Institutes of Health study found that maternal depression puts a child at risk for numerous emotional and developmental issues.
The Trump administration’s Health and Human Services Department is poised to redefine gender as an immutable characteristic dependent on a person’s biological sex assigned at birth. Yet medical science knows that biologic sex cannot always be predicted by a quick inspection of a baby’s genitals in the delivery room (the basis of many birth certificates) or even a chromosome count.
Eleven-year-old Jaime was diagnosed with leukemia and is currently undergoing chemotherapy. He’s a U.S. citizen but his mother is an undocumented immigrant from Mexico. “His mother told me that when they get home after his chemo, Jaime closes all of the curtains and locks the doors,” explained Jacqueline Casillas, my colleague and director of Pediatric Oncology at Miller’s Children’s Hospital in Long Beach. He’s afraid that his mother will be deported because she takes him to the doctor.
This past weekend, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a law that mandates a new process for discharging homeless patients from California hospitals. Though well-intentioned, this new law misses the bigger and more urgent problem: assuring that sufficient beds and supportive care are actually available for homeless patients.