For the first time since 2020, millions of Californians are renewing their Medi-Cal benefits.
Since the health of approximately 40 percent of Californians depends on Medi-Cal coverage, the state and counties must look at everybody’s files — and find ways to contact them and evaluate them for ongoing coverage — before cutting off Medi-Cal.
My criminalization and incarceration has led me to a serious awakening of how corrupt and broken our justice system is.
The system incarcerates Black and brown people like me at a much higher rate than those who are white, and often hands us disproportionately longer punishments.
Domestic violence survivors often need mental health care. Like veterans of wars, these survivors have often been subjected to prolonged periods of extreme stress and fear for their safety.
Mental health care can be hard to access, but solutions exist.
When Christina Kaviani’s son, 6, doesn’t want to hug a grandparent or friend, Kaviani goes against some parenting methods and doesn’t make him.
To her, it’s a matter of consent.
As an educator on healthy relationships, consent is at the heart of what she teaches.
LA County’s DCFS removes between 4,000 and 6,000 kids from their homes every year and places them in foster care.
Of those removed, social workers disproportionately place children of color and those who live in the lowest-income communities in foster care at higher rates than their peers in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods.
Janna Espinoza shudders remembering the day she and her daughter Coraline, then 8, showed up for an appointment in Salinas with their trusted pediatrician and were turned away because the child no longer had the right health insurance.
Coraline, who has cerebral palsy, epilepsy and other serious conditions, relies on a safety-net health insurance program.
To experience a world free from violence, California must invest in the necessary funding and resources to prevent it.
However, with one-time funding for sexual and domestic violence prevention set to expire in April 2024, effective prevention programs will become more difficult to maintain.
For children with complex medical needs, many parents are told that institutionalization — care that is provided in a location other than home — is the only option.
While spending time in acute care hospitals may be unavoidable, more could be done to allow these children to stay at home, instead of forcing them to live in institutions.
For optometrists in California, the gap between the cost of providing care and what the state covers is growing wider each year.
While Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed improving Medi-Cal access by paying medical doctors, OB-GYNs and hospitals more this year, eye care is not included in this proposal.
When mothers experiencing domestic violence call the police for help, they find that responding law enforcement officers are quick to involve the child welfare system.
Once involved, social workers often remove children from their homes, even if the victim has left the partner who is abusing them.
Knowledge of this possibility often leaves victims of domestic violence afraid to call the police for help when they need it.