When it comes to dental care, California is not serving vulnerable kids and families well. As a state, we need to commit to enacting solutions that will provide all children with better access to high-quality dental care.
Op-Ed
There are some steps counties and states can—and should—take now to mitigate the collateral damage of school closures. We must protect the social and emotional health of our children.
Counties run local safety nets, and if they do not act swiftly and agressively, children will suffer.
We predict that social isolation practices and fear will exacerbate mental health conditions and challenges.
Gov. Gavin Newsom has outlined innovative reforms to curb drug prices, including CalRx, a California-owned, generic drug label.
But CalRx is not a magic bullet. Magic bullets and general solutions often overlook the impacts on communities of color.
If CalRx does not intentionally build a path of access for low-income folks and communities of color, it will just be creating cheaper, but still unattainable, prescription drugs.
Reaching adulthood can be like “falling off a cliff” of services for young adults with special needs.
As parents and advocates, we still have a long way to go to ensure these students graduate at the same rates as their peers and exit college with the same skill sets. How well a person makes a transition is usually dependent upon the degree of support that is available.
Governor Newsom’s budget proposals could make real progress in ending inequities and boosting health in California.
But national political leaders should also be asking: What forces shape health and well-being—today and in the future? What do Americans really need and want in terms of health? Can we design a healthier future for all of us, not just people with the most money and privilege?
When adults interact directly with babies—such as by talking, reading and singing to them—those children have larger vocabularies at age three, better learning levels as they enter kindergarten, and a much higher likelihood of being able to read well and do well as students in both grade school and high school regardless of income levels, cultural differences or race.
Children from every race, ethnicity, culture and economic level deserve to have the asset of early brain stimulation.
As our cities have grown, California has made little effort to provide for those who are at, near, or below the poverty level. Many of these residents are also service workers, the backbone of the state’s economy.
Although the lack of affordable housing is central to this increase in homelessness, we must recognize that the solution to ending homelessness is not in the provision of housing alone.
The ‘start at 50’ U.S. Task Force mammogram approach particularly cheats Asian, Hispanic and black women, whose diagnoses peak in the 40s, potentially creating the greatest suffering for people of color at a relatively younger age.
My journey highlights the need for racial justice in annual mammograms.
Domestic violence is a learned behavior, and intergenerational trauma has real impacts on youth. To truly stand in solidarity with survivors, we must never lose sight of the hope in preventing violence for generations to come.
In the 2018 Point In Time Count, an annual effort to count the number of people experiencing homelessness on one night in January, 10 percent of respondents reported that they were victims of domestic violence.
Californians need to hear these voices, know that there are solutions, and understand that this is not an intractable problem.