Tagged With "Health"
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San Francisco Hopes to Improve Care for People with Mental Illness Living on Streets [californiahealthline.org]
By Brian Krans, California Healthline, December 12, 2019 San Francisco Mayor London Breed has promised to tackle her city’s homelessness crisis, a vexing situation involving drug abuse and mental illness that is compounded by the city’s high housing costs. Breed has asked Dr. Anton Nigusse Bland, most recently the medical director for psychiatric emergency services at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, to help solve the problem. In March, she appointed him to the newly created...
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Screening for Adverse Childhood Experiences and Trauma
This new technical assistance tool from the Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS) offers a variety of approaches for screening adults and children for adverse childhood experiences and trauma, including examples of screening protocols used at several provider practices that have embraced trauma-informed care.
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Senate Budget Subcommittee on Health & Human Services Hearing and Discussion of the Office of the Surgeon General’s Request for $10 Million to Develop a Cross-Sector Training Program and Public Awareness Campaign for Adverse Childhood Experiences.
Budget committees in the California Legislature are currently considering the proposals in the Governor’s January budget and receiving input from advocates and stakeholders. TOMORROW, March 12, the Senate Budget Subcommittee on Health & Human Services will hold a hearing starting at 9:30am (or upon adjournment of the floor session) in room 4203 of the State Capitol. The agenda can be found here . Starting on page 8 of the agenda, you’ll see discussion of the Office of the Surgeon...
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Telehealth Is Grabbing the Pandemic Spotlight. Can California Do More to Help It Grow [chcf.org]
By Rob Waters, California Health Care Foundation, April 16, 2020 In a decade at the Sacramento-based Center for Connected Health Policy , Mei Wa Kwong has had to answer a basic question more times than she can count: “What, exactly, is telehealth?” And until recently, she doesn’t recall the word being used so frequently by a president of the United States. Telehealth, previously known as telemedicine, generally refers to the use of interactive video and audio to diagnose, treat, or...
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Tell California's Leaders to Make Critical Mental Health Services Available for Kids in Foster Care
Kids in foster care have experienced significant trauma from abuse and neglect and, as a result, often need mental health services. Yet too often, kids in foster care and their caregivers are left to navigate triggering events and conflicts on their own, even though immediate professional support is critical in times of crisis. Tell our state’s leaders to support a common sense solution – a toll-free hotline, available 24/7, so caregivers and kids in foster care, who are experiencing...
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The Department of Health Services is tracking racial / ethnic demographic data for COVID-19 positive cases in County
Susan Gorin @susangorin1st Impacts on the Latinx Community There are long-standing injustices that have led to this, and this moment offers the opportunity to take concerted action to overcome inequalities and transform our thinking and actions towards a "stronger for all" Sonoma county. The health differences between the racial and ethnic groups are rooted in unequal economic and social conditions, as well as in past and current structural inequalities and discrimination that marginalize...
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Their Kids Died on the Psych Ward. They Were Far From Alone, a Times Investigation Found [latimes.com]
By Soumya Karlamangla, Los Angeles Times, December 1, 2019 Mia St. John’s cellphone lit up with a message from the psychiatrist treating her son. The voicemail shimmered with hope, the first she had felt in months. The doctor said Julian, admitted to a psychiatric facility with schizophrenia, seemed more cheerful, was talking more with other patients and would soon begin a new art project. “Very happy to see he’s coming around a bit,” the doctor said. It was November 2014, and Julian, 24,...
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To Help Children Get Mental Health Care, Researchers Call for Overhaul of Medi-Cal [calhealthreport.org]
By Claudia Boyd-Barrett, California Health Report, October 10, 2019 Should health plans do more to support parents in raising stable families? That’s the recommendation from a coalition of child health researchers who are calling for an overhaul of part of the state’s Medi-Cal program. Medi-Cal is California’s low-income health program that covers 40 percent of children in the state. The recommendations are included in a report, from the First 5 Center for Children’s Policy and a group of...
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Trauma and Resilience-Informed Health Care: Overview and Resources [acesaware.org]
From ACEs Aware, March 3, 2020 The webinar will provide an overview of trauma-informed care principles that can facilitate integrating screening and response for ACEs and enhance connections between patients and providers. Key elements of “ Fostering Resilience and Recovery: A Change Package for Advancing Trauma-Informed Primary Care ” will be presented. This is the second in a series of educational webinars that will offer practical information to help providers integrate ACE screening and...
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Twenty Years in the Making: CHCF's Funding of Health Care Journalism [chcf.org]
By Steven Birenbaum and Sally Mudd, California Health Care Foundation, February 21, 2020 For-profit journalism has undergone seismic changes to its business model during the last 15 years. The steady stream of advertising revenue that made the industry profitable for so long is now gone. As a direct result, the infrastructure of local and beat journalism has suffered dramatic losses of capacity and quality. This is one of the prime reasons it is essential for philanthropies, for the...
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UCSF sets up coronavirus hotline [sfchronicle.com]
From San Francisco Chronicle, March 25, 2020 UC San Francisco is using a hotline to deal with patients with suspected coronavirus. Health care navigators have been taking about 250 calls a week — 466 on March 17 alone- since the virus outbreak. Navigators screen and classify patients as negative or positive and have escalated up to 100 positive cases in a single day. More advanced practice nursing students will soon join the six current navigators to deal with the demand. [ Please click here...
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Uninsured Native Americans Often Lack Needed Prenatal Care [ocregister.com]
By Yesenia Amaro and Deepa Bharath, Center for Health Journalism News Collaborative, October 4, 2019 For almost two years, Sylvia Valenzuela relied on the federal Indian Health Service system to get the primary care she needed. But when she had to see an OB-GYN for her prenatal care, she was on her own. What followed, she said, was a nightmare in which she struggled to obtain and keep Medi-Cal coverage, leaving her uninsured for a critical stretch of her pregnancy. Valenzuela says she would...
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Farmworkers Face Daunting Health Risks In California's Wildfires [californiahealthline.org]
By Anna Maria Barry-Jester, California Healthline, October 28, 2019 Farm laborers in yellow safety vests walked through neatly arranged rows of grapes Friday, harvesting the last of the deep purple bundles that hung from the vines, even as the sky behind them was dark with soot. Over the hill just behind them, firetrucks and first responders raced back and forth from a California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection staging area, working to contain a wildfire raging through the rugged...
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Finding the Right Words About COVID-19 [chcf.org]
By Kate Meyers, California Health Care Foundation, March 26, 2020 Health care organizations in California and around the US are working incredibly hard to prepare for or respond to a surge of patients suffering from symptoms related to COVID-19. Appropriately, preparation has focused on trying to ensure adequate numbers of health care professionals and sufficient supplies and equipment in the right places at the right times as the demand grows. That focus on numbers and logistics is...
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First health-related cost of ACEs study shows $113 billion price tag for California; just one ACE costs $28 billion
Researchers who have been looking for a way to quantify the health toll of ACEs in dollar terms, now have an example in a newly-released study of California. ACEs exacted a toll costing an estimated $113 billion annually, according to the study in the journal PLOS One that was commissioned by the Center for Youth Wellness. ACEs-associated cardiovascular disease was the condition that lead author Ted Miller dubbed “the giant in the room.” It accounted for $29.6 billion in spending, more than...
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For Community Health Centers, a Hands-On Guide to Building Partnerships [chcf.org]
By Carlina Hansen, California Health Care Foundation, October 15, 2019 Before joining CHCF, I spent almost 20 years as executive director of the Women’s Community Clinic in San Francisco. In my time there, we forged some valuable partnerships to serve our clients and community, including our merger with another community health center, HealthRIGHT 360. It was during the merger process that I learned first-hand one of the biggest challenges to forging such partnerships — and it wasn’t what I...
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From Awareness to Action, with Voices of Lived Experience: Wisconsin’s Collective Impact Initiative
Perhaps it wasn’t the optimum time to update the network’s vision and values statements: a virtual meeting held in the midst of a global pandemic. But a record number of people—51, compared to the typical 30—tuned in for the May 1 Wisconsin Office of Children’s Mental Health (OCMH) Collective Impact Council, and they gave the new values statement, which highlights inclusivity and collaboration, an enthusiastic thumbs-up. At the virtual table were members from key state departments—Children...
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From Clinic to Courtroom, Fighting for Immigrant Health Care [californiahealthline.org]
By Ana B. Ibarra, California Healthline, December 18, 2019 Jane Garcia started as an intern at La Clínica de La Raza in the late 1970s, attracted by its mission to provide health care to all — especially immigrants, regardless of their legal status or ability to pay. Forty years later, Garcia, 66, is the chief executive officer of the organization, which now operates more than 30 clinics in Alameda, Contra Costa and Solano counties and serves about 90,000 patients a year. About 65% of its...
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Kaiser Permanente Awards Grants in Napa & Solano Counties [patch.com]
By Chyresse Hill, Patch, October 24, 2019 Kaiser Permanente has awarded $1 million in grants to 42 local nonprofit organizations providing services and programs that improve the health of under-served communities throughout the Napa Solano area, including several serving the residents of Napa. Kaiser Permanente Community Benefit grants are awarded every year to local organizations working on specific programs and projects that align with Kaiser Permanente's mission and goals. Funding...
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Latina Mothers Experienced Jump in Preterm Births After 2016 Election [publichealth.berkeley.edu]
By Public Affairs UC Berkeley, July 23, 2019 Latina mothers living in the United States experienced a significant jump in preterm births in the nine months following the Nov. 8, 2016, election, according to a study by researchers at UC Berkeley and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The analysis, based on U.S. government data on more than 33 million live births in the country, found an excess of 2,337 preterm births to U.S. Latina mothers, compared to projections about...
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Launching a Revolution [hsph.harvard.edu]
By Madeline Drexler, Harvard Public Health, Winter 2020 In 2007, pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris, MPH ’02, set out on an idealistic mission: to deliver quality medical care to one of San Francisco’s poorest and most underserved neighborhoods—Bayview-Hunters Point, in the isolated southeastern corner of the city. Before Burke Harris arrived on the scene, only one pediatrician was serving the neighborhood’s 10,000 children. The community’s plight was starkly apparent in its ZIP code. In 17 of...
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Lawmaker Pushing Mental Health Reform: It's 'More Needed Than Ever' [khn.org]
By Samantha Young, Kaiser Health News, April 28, 2020 During the first week of school closures in San Jose, state Sen. Jim Beall’s office received more than a dozen phone calls from distressed parents and caregivers. The problem: They couldn’t get free lunches because school district rules required children be present to receive a meal. A grandmother caring for at least seven children couldn’t fit them all in her car. One parent had a sick child who needed to stay at home, and another was...
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Lawmakers Must do More to Fund Mental Health Care at the University of California [calmatters.org]
By Emily Estus, Special to CalMatters, October 28, 2019 This summer, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the California Legislature passed a $214 billion budget that includes $5.3 million earmarked for improving mental health services in the University of California system. Students returning to campus this fall might cheer that a long-underfunded issue is finally getting state attention and, more importantly, an injection of cash. Sadly, that’s not the whole story. Here’s why: This is only a stopgap, a...
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Long Lives Cut Short [sfchronicle.com]
By Lizzie Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle, May 15, 2020 He shuffled out of the house on Innes Avenue, shoulders hunched and legs trembling. The early spring day was clear and breezy. Sunshine baked the driveway. But Wilbur Morris didn’t notice. He settled into the front seat of his daughter’s gray Mercury Mirage, too weak to buckle the seat belt or shut the door, so she did it for him. Wilbur had been a healthy 80-year-old. His preferred drink was nonalcoholic beer. He jogged 3 miles every...
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Los Angeles County Sheriff Beefs Up Mental Health Evaluation Teams [nbclosangeles.com]
By Lolita Lopez, NBC Los Angeles, September 9, 2019 More than a dozen more Los Angeles County Sheriff Department Mental Evaluation teams, or MET teams, hit the streets of the county this week. MET teams, which partner a Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health clinician with a sheriff's deputy, are requested by other deputies or other law enforcement who arrive at a scene and find a person dealing with a mental health crisis. The department says these types of calls that have resulted...
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Love in the TIme of Coronavirus: Inequities and Supporting Children
This blog is re-posted from positiveexperience.org/blog/ Link there for associated resources, and for the other blogs in the series. Having safe, stable, and equitable environments to live, learn and play forms the second of the 4 Building Blocks of HOPE. Children need homes where they feel safe and secure and have their basic needs met. Children thrive in an environment that encourages curiosity and provides opportunities for learning to play and interact with other children. Today’s blog...
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Making Mental Health Needs a Priority [smdailyjournal.com]
By Anna Schussler, The Daily Journal, December 26, 2019 When San Carlos resident Suzanne Hughes formed a nonprofit offering mental health services four years ago, she started out with just three interns and a mission to make them affordable and accessible to anyone who might need them. Trained as a marriage and family therapist, Hughes drew from more than 20 years of mental health experience to identify what she saw as the most pressing mental health needs and build programs to address them.
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Martha's Village and Kitchen Partners with Borrego Health to Provide Health Care to Homeless [desertsun.com]
By Nicole Hayden, Desert Sun, December 10, 2019 Borrego Health, the largest community health center network in California, announced on Tuesday that it has partnered with Martha's Village and Kitchen, a shelter and resource center for homeless individuals in Indio, to provide expanded health care services. The Federally Qualified Health Center will provide primary care, pediatric services, vaccinations and laboratory services to Martha's clients. Eventually, a pharmacy will operate onsite.
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Mental Health Care Could Get Easier for New Moms Under New California Rules [capradio.org]
By Sammy Caiola, Capital Public Radio, December 18, 2019 When Susan Yee Kearns brought her son home from the hospital a year and a half ago, she started worrying about him almost immediately. She woke up thinking he might have died. She was afraid to be away from him. “There was a lot of anxiety,” the Sacramento mom said. So she sought mental health help through her Medi-Cal insurance. But Yee Kearns' provider told her that Medi-Cal would only cover 60 days of treatment. When it was over,...
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Mental Health Focus of New Youth Program in Torrance and Long Beach [presstelegram.com]
By Nick Green, Press-Telegram, October 7, 2019 A fast- emerging youth mental health crisis linked to excessive screen time, loneliness and social media addiction has prompted a Torrance and Long Beach nonprofit group to create a program aimed at countering escalating rates of anxiety and depression caused by the pursuit of an Instagram-like culture of online perfection. Indeed, The Volunteer Center South Bay-Harbor-Long Beach realized when angst-riven youth reach adulthood, they may not be...
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Millions Unclaimed: Behind California's Troubled Mental Health Care Funding System [chronicleofsocialchange.org]
By Claudia Boyd-Barrett, The Chronicle of Social Change, October 9, 2019 Alex Briscoe didn’t know much about how local governments pay for mental health care when he joined Alameda County’s Health Care Services Agency in 2004. But he knew there was a problem. Briscoe had come from a job at Children’s Hospital Oakland where he saw kids routinely turn up in the emergency room in serious psychological distress. These children had nowhere else to go. There was no support system to help kids...
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More Adolescents Seek Medical Care for Mental Health Issues [californiahealthline.org]
By Phillip Reese, California Healthline, November 11, 2019 Less than a decade ago, the emergency department at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego would see maybe one or two young psychiatric patients per day, said Dr. Benjamin Maxwell, the hospital’s interim director of child and adolescent psychiatry. Now, it’s not unusual for the emergency room to see 10 psychiatric patients in a day, and sometimes even 20, said Maxwell. “What a lot of times is happening now is kids aren’t getting the...
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Networking Breakfast: Addressing Adverse Childhood Experiences and Building Resiliency
On Wednesday, March 22, I had the opportunity to attend a community gathering in Marin County that was convened by their Health and Human Services Department. The event was a “Learning Lab” where ideas and innovation are explored to see if there might be a better way of caring for and working with vulnerable members of the community. The gathering — Networking Breakfast: Addressing Adverse Childhood Experiences and Building Resiliency — was located at the Marin County Office of Education and...
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New Approach to Treat Those in Mental Health Crisis Comes to Stanislaus County [modbee.com]
By Ken Carlson, The Modesto Bee, November 14, 2019 Paramedic Dennis Flannery is one of eight medics in a Stanislaus County pilot program that is ensuring people in a mental health crisis are taken promptly to the care they need. “Our goal is to help people in a behavioral health crisis to avoid extensive emergency room stays, if the (mental health) crisis is their only emergency at that time,” Flannery said. The community paramedicine program — a first in California — was launched in fall...
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New Laws set to Help Focus on Mental Health and Post-Traumatic Stress for First Responders [abc30.com]
By Vanessa Vasconcelos, ABC 30, February 5, 2020 "I don't think when you sign up for this job that you realize the things that you're going to see," says Cal Fire Fresno Co. Battalion Chief Josh Campbell. Campbell has spent the last 23 years putting service above self and has been on the front lines of seven of the 10 most destructive wildfires in state history. "I always thought the Cedar fire would be the biggest fire in my career that I'd ever go on," Campbell said. "I wasn't even close."...
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New Screenings for Childhood Trauma Raise Hopes, Questions [calhealthreport.org]
By Claudia Boyd-Barrett, California Health Report, December 20, 2019 California health officials are gearing up for the launch of a statewide screening effort that aims to help doctors measure children’s exposure to trauma and their risk of related health problems. Starting Jan. 1, California will become the first state in the nation to reimburse health care providers who screen patients enrolled in the Medi-Cal program for “adverse childhood experiences” or ACEs. The $40 million effort has...
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Nominate a Trauma-Informed Care Champion: #TICchampion
Becoming a trauma-informed organization requires clear communication about the transformation process, and support from staff at all levels of an organization. Often these efforts are spearheaded by “trauma-informed care champions”— individuals committed to raising awareness regarding the health effects of trauma and toxic stress and improving care for people who have experienced trauma. This week, the Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS) invites you to recognize people around you who...
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Not 'Just in Your Head': California Rolls Out Mental Health Guides for Coping With Coronavirus [kqed.org]
By Marisa Lagos Apr 7 Gov. Gavin Newsom opened his daily briefing Tuesday on the status of the coronavirus pandemic in California a bit differently than normal: With a mantra he says his mother used to repeat. "She said, 'Stand guard at the door of your mind,'" Newsom said. "Honestly, it took me a decade-plus to figure out what she was ultimately saying. But she was focused on, more than anything else, our capacity to be resilient and to meet challenges head-on, our capacity as human beings...
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Opinion: All Doctors Should Practice Trauma-Informed Care [calhealthreport.org]
By Bob Erlenbusch and Drew Factor, California Health Report, November 21, 2019 “Adverse childhood experiences are the single greatest unaddressed public health threat facing our nation today,” Dr. Robert Block, former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, has been widely quoted as saying. According to the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, conducted in the 1990’s by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and Kaiser Permanente, adverse childhood experiences are common,...
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Opinion: Screenings Alone Won’t Prevent Adverse Childhood Experiences—We Must Address Community Trauma [calhealthreport.org]
By Rachel A. Davis and Howard Pinderhughes, California Health Report, December 19, 2019 Earlier this month, California’s Surgeon General Nadine Burke Harris launched an ambitious campaign to reduce adverse childhood experiences, which can cause lifelong health problems. With more than 60 percent of Californians saying they were exposed to a traumatic childhood event, adverse childhood experiences are at crisis levels in the state. The ACEs Aware campaign will train and pay health care...
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Over half of California Children with a Special Health Care Need has one or more ACEs
More than one million children in California have a special health care need. These children have chronic physical, developmental, behavioral or emotional conditions that require more than routine health and related services. Sixty-one percent of children with special health care needs (CSHCN) have had one more adverse experience. Understanding the factors that impact these children and their families is crucial to lifelong health and wellness. Kidsdata.org , a program of the Lucile Packard...
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Overturn of ACA Would Wreak Havoc in Time of Pandemic [chcf.org]
By Xenia Shih Bion, California Health Care Foundation, May 18, 2020 In April, the US unemployment rate rose to 14.7% , surpassing the previous monthly peak of 10% during the Great Recession in 2009. At least 36 million Americans are now jobless — many of them are suddenly without employer-sponsored health insurance. Some may need to obtain health coverage in the individual marketplace or from Medicaid, whose eligibility requirements were greatly expanded under the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
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Police Shootings of Unarmed Black People Linked to Health Problems for Black Infants [latimes.com]
By Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times, December 5, 2019 A study of nearly 1,900 fatal police encounters and millions of birth records in California suggests that police killings of unarmed black people may affect the health of black infants before they are even born. Pregnant black women who lived near the site of such officer-involved fatalities had their babies sooner than mothers who weren’t exposed to such incidents during their pregnancies, researchers found. What’s more, those infants had...
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Primary Care & Telehealth Strategies for Addressing the Secondary Health Impacts of COVID-19 [acesaware.org]
From ACEs Aware, May 13, 2020 This webinar will focus on building understanding and identifying primary care and telehealth strategies and tools to address the secondary health effects of the COVID-19 emergency. Widespread stress and anxiety regarding COVID-19, compounded by the economic distress due to lost wages, employment and financial assets; mass school closures; and necessary physical distancing measures can result in an increase of stress-related health conditions. These secondary...
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Program offers hundreds of young men, boys safe space to heal from ACEs
Dennis McCollins recounts some of the experiences that caused him to harden against the world as a teenager. “There were times I went to more funerals than birthdays,” says McCollins, who is the clinical director of the School Based Health Center at Greenwood Academy in Richmond, Calif. And it took its toll: “I spent time homeless. I got expelled [from school]. I was so angry and upset and mad,” he says. Dennis McCollins Then a man that he met when he was sent to Job Corps as a teen turned...