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A patient came into the Goleta location of the Santa Barbara Neighborhood Clinics pleading with people at the front desk to speak to Mayra Garcia, a wellness navigator at the clinic, despite not having an appointment. The clinic is part of a network of four clinics in the Santa Barbara region of California that serve mainly patients on Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program, or patients who are uninsured. Mayra Garcia “She was crying. Her husband had been deported. She couldn’t pay the rent,...

By Phillip Reese, Kaiser Health News, August 26, 2020 It’s official, California: COVID-19 has left us sick with worry and increasingly despondent. And our youngest adults — ages 18 to 29 — are feeling it worst. Weekly surveys conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau from late April through late July offer a grim view of the toll the pandemic has taken on the nation’s mental health. By late July, more than 44% of California adult respondents reported levels of anxiety and gloom typically...

By Jill Tucker, San Francisco Chronicle, August 25, 2020 Students in the Bonny Doon school district had been back in class — virtually — for two days before the wildfires forced them to evacuate, many fleeing for their lives in the middle of the night Wednesday. Teachers and students lost homes to the powerful wildfires raging through the charming, wooded town in the Santa Cruz Mountains. School had just started, but now Superintendent Mike Heffner, who is also the principal of the...

By Tatiana Sanchez, San Francisco Chronicle, August 24, 2020 Elaine Shelly has lived with multiple sclerosis for 30 years. But she said she still panics whenever she has to see a new neurologist because of racial discrimination she’s experienced in the past. Even getting a proper diagnosis for her illness was a battle. “I’d go to these neurologists who would tell me that Black people don’t get M.S. and that I must be mentally ill,” said Shelly, 63, of San Leandro. A former print journalist,...

The Census Bureau has recently updated their Census operations timeline , which now shortens the timeframe to return your completed 2020 Census form by one month. The new deadline is September 30. Congress did not include extensions for critical timelines related to the 2020 Census, so the Bureau has cut back operations to "accelerate the completion of data collection and apportionment counts by our statutory deadline of December 31, 2020, as required by law and directed by the Secretary of...

SAVE THE DATE - AUGUST WEBINAR "Regulating the Stress Response for Kids: Practical Tips for Primary Care Providers" Wednesday, August 26, 2020 Noon – 1 p.m. Register for the Webinar This webinar will offer practical tips and examples on how providers can incorporate stress regulation strategies into their treatment planning for pediatric patients. Presenters will: Share definitions, research, and the clinical response to address toxic stress through stress regulation strategies. Review the...

The California Campaign to Counter Childhood Adversity (4CA) invites your participation in an upcoming 1.5 hour interactive webinar entitled “ The Impacts of COVID-19 on California’s Children, Families, and Communities ” on August 27, 2020, from 1:30 PM – 3:00 PST that will explore the economic impacts of COVID-19 and how it has affected, and continues to affect, California communities. Featuring a panel of experts, Dr. Flojaune Cofer, Public Health Advocates, All Children Thrive, California...

Did you know that paid family leave (PFL) policies provide essential job protection and income replacement for parents and caregivers who take time away from work to care for a new child or family member? Research also shows that PFL positively impacts the health and well-being of both babies and the adults who care for them. And paid family leave is all the more critical now, as families struggle to navigate this new normal with limited access to child care and the added responsibilities of...

Fire has always been part of California's landscape. But long before the vast blazes of recent years, Native American tribes held annual controlled burns that cleared out underbrush and encouraged new plant growth. Now, with wildfires raging across Northern California, joining other record-breaking fires from recent years, government officials say tackling the fire problem will mean bringing back "good fire," much like California's tribes once did. "We don't put fire on the ground and not...

It is happening. The grand experiment of full school distance learning is on for teachers and families of California. Educators have been asked to source some sort of magic to heal the disease of a broken educational system as it crumbles under the pressures of inconsistent and insufficient funding, tremendous variance in school community capacity for distance learning, and countless organizational structures being taxed to their limits. The pandemic continues, job losses increase, and fires...

Thursday, September 3, 2020 12:00pm - 1:00pm PDT | presented by Dr. Vincent J. Felitti *Priority will be given to Medi-Cal providers* The ACE Study reveals how typically unrecognized adverse childhood experiences are not only common, but causally underlie a number of the most common causes of adult social malfunction, biomedical disease, and premature death. Moreover, it enables one to see that the Public Health Problem is often an individual’s attempted Solution to childhood experiences...