California’s top health priority should be making sure that people who need mental health treatment can get it, over 90 percent of respondents said in a recent poll.
People of color often feel the lack of access more acutely, researchers found, with 75 percent of black and 57 percent of Latino respondents noting that their communities don’t have enough mental health providers, compared to 49 percent of white participants.
Apple users are the only ones who can access their health records on their phones. CommonHealth, a new app for Android users, wants to change that and tackle health disparities in the process.
“Android users tend to earn lower incomes, so medical centers using the Apple app are cutting out (a large fraction of patients),” said Ida Sim, a professor of medicine at UC San Francisco, where she leads the team piloting the app.
Newly released data reveals that more than a quarter of California children in foster care don’t receive timely medical or dental exams, increasing their risk of having health problems that go unaddressed.
Despite health coverage gains under the Affordable Care Act, many low-income Californians are still struggling to afford medical care, with more than half reportedly delaying treatment because of cost, a recent survey found.
State lawmakers have approved a new budget for the 2019-20 fiscal year that seeks to make health care accessible and affordable to more people, including undocumented young adults.
Many counties already offered free rides, but they were rarely used. A new state law requiring free transportation is connecting many more low-income Californians to care.
A California law that went into effect in 2016 allows pharmacists to prescribe, not just dispense, many forms of birth control. But three years in, only fifteen percent of pharmacies offer the option and too few women know about it.