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Celinda Gonzales has a long list of worries: She worries about COVID-19, which recently spiked near the Yurok reservation where she lives in Humboldt County. She worries about the wildfires threatening her remote, forested town, Weitchpec. She worries about gill rot and algae blooms in the Klamath and Trinity rivers, which join together just over the hill from her trailer; she worries, too, about what the resulting small salmon runs mean for her financially struggling community. And she...

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday signed policing bills that ban chokeholds, allow the state Department of Justice to investigate police shootings and give counties more oversight of sheriff's departments. Impact: The signings represent a win for police reform advocates and Democrats who introduced a wave of bills after the May police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Still, the moment is bittersweet for these groups after some of the most aggressive proposals — including bills to...

By Carolyn Jones, September 29, 2020, Lake County Record Bee. Schools can serve as a hub for an entire community after a disaster, experts say For some students, the fire is only the beginning. The nightmares, the grief and an all-consuming dread can persist for months or even years. That’s what teachers and school employees have observed among students in California’s fire-ravaged areas, especially Sonoma and Butte counties, where deadly wildfires have struck repeatedly in recent years.

By Marisa Kendall, September 30, 2020, Mercury News. New study highlights racial inequity in police citations Black and Latinx residents in California are much more likely to be cited by police for minor offenses than White residents — a disparity that’s particularly egregious in Oakland, San Jose and San Francisco, according to a new report. Last year, police in California issued more than 250,000 citations for things like loitering, jaywalking and owning a dog without a license, according...

By Vanessa Grubbs, California Health Care Foundation, September 25, 2020 Black mothers die in hospitals at nearly four times the rate of White mothers — an appalling disparity that has persisted for decades despite state and national quality improvement initiatives, clinical safety innovations, and technological advances. This disparity persists regardless of patient income, insurance, education, comorbid conditions, or prenatal care. The fact that many clinicians, decisionmakers, and...

Emotional distress is common following natural disasters, and the psychological toll can linger for years, studies suggest. In California, where the state is in the midst of yet another highly destructive wildfire season, published research on the prevalence of mental health impacts among wildfire survivors in the state is scarce. However, a preliminary study by researchers at UC Davis found that around one in five people reported significant symptoms of anxiety and post-traumatic stress up...

REGISTER FOR TOMORROW'S WEBINAR "Assessing Readiness & Building Resilience in the Clinical Workforce: A Foundation for ACE Screening Integration" Wednesday, September 30, 2020 Noon – 1 p.m. Register for the Webinar This webinar offers strategies, promising practices, and resources to support health care providers and clinical leadership as they assess organizational readiness and build workforce resilience to successfully integrate Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) screening into their...

By Lindsay Broyhill, Acend The Aspen Institute, September 29, 2020 Infant and parent brains and bodies undergo rapid growth and transformation during the transition to parenting, presenting a unique opportunity to positively impact two generations. In the 2015 report Two Open Windows: Infant and Parent Biologic Change , Drs. Pilyoung Kim and Sarah Watamura (also an Ascend Fellow) of the University of Denver highlighted research supporting the transition to parenting as a co-occurring...

By Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News, September 28, 2020 At a time when the suicide rate among firefighters increasingly concerns officials, fire crews and their families have a new center in a former firehouse where they can go for behavioral health treatment. United Firefighters of Los Angeles City and Los Angeles Fire Department officially opened the Center for Health & Wellness in Arleta at Old LAFD Fire Station 7 on Monday, Sept. 28, during National Suicide Prevention...

SAN DIEGO – The American Academy of Pediatrics, California Chapter 3 (AAP-CA3 ) together with YMCA of San Diego County , San Diego State University Social Policy Institute and San Diego Accountable Community for Health (SDACH) are joining forces as ACEs Aware grantees to assist San Diego Medi-Cal providers screen and treat Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and toxic stress. The ACEs Aware initiative is a first-of-its-kind effort led by the Office of the California Surgeon General and the...

Join us 9/29/20 @ 11:00 am PST to hear trauma informed policy experts discuss the state and federal legislative/budget context, and provide actionable information for California advocates who are working to advance policy on children’s resilience/adversity in 2021.

Growing up in the Central Valley town of Kerman, population 15,000, wasn’t easy for Michael Piña, who self-identified as queer. Piña, who prefers the pronoun “she,” suffered abuse from family, local youth and a Catholic priest who, at a church retreat, “threw holy water at me, trying to get the devil out of me,” she said. “It caused a lot of emotional trauma.” But in Fresno County, where less than 20% of all residents and less than 10% of Latinx residents have a bachelor’s degree,...