Blog

Staff report, July 14, 2020, Palm Springs Life. We like to think of ourselves as the picture of perfect health — at least until someone actually shows us a picture of our health. That’s what HARC — short for Health Assessment and Research for Communities — did by publishing the results of its fifth Coachella Valley Community Heath Survey. Throughout 2019, the locally based nonprofit research and evaluation firm conducted the survey via random-digit-dialing of valley residents to obtain a...

Staff report, July 14, 2020, Pasadena Now. Hillsides has received $100,000 in grant funds from the Office of the California Surgeon General (CA-OSG) and the Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) to participate in the state’s ACEs Aware initiative. Hillsides will be conducting peer-to-peer learning to promote the ACEs Aware initiative among the Medi-Cal provider community in the Los Angeles region. A total of $14.3 million was awarded to 100 organizations throughout the state to extend...

https://www.mdedge.com/fedprac/article/225184/coronavirus-updates/trauma-informed-telehealth-covid-19-era-and-beyond Background: The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) entered the COVID-19 pandemic crisis with an existing and robust telehealth program, but it still faces a fundamental paradigm shift as most routine outpatient in-person care was converted to telehealth visits. Veterans are a highly trauma-exposed population, and VHA has long offered effective telemental health services.

By Marc Philpart, Center for Health Journalism, July 1, 2020 The United States spends twice as much on policing and prisons as on social services. There’s a better way to keep communities healthy and safe, and people closest to the pain of police brutality are showing the way. In Oakland, California, with leadership from the Black Organizing Project, the school board passed the George Floyd Resolution to Eliminate the School Polic e Department . In Minneapolis, the majority of the city...

As the summer ticks on, the confounding questions around meeting the needs of our workforce in these challenging times remain unresolved for many organizations. In conversations this week I heard the angst: “It’s time to get back to the office. We are following all the guidelines. We have worked to support staff and don’t know what else to do. How can we help staff come along?” As organizations adapt to their new normal, the challenge of choosing from a vast array of resources and...

By Diana Pastora Carson, Cal Matters, July 8, 2020 Recently, my family had a scare. We had a fire threaten our property, our home in the mountains of Jamul, an unincorporated town in San Diego County. Contrary to most assumptions, potentially losing our houses on the property was not the actual scare. The scare was that my brother, Joaquin, who experiences severe autism and epilepsy, had no place to go. With people with disabilities moving out of institutions and Gov. Gavin Newsom...

By Jason Fagone, Megan Cassidy, and Alexei Koseff, San Francisco Chronicle, July 10, 2020 Gov. Gavin Newsom will release approximately 8,000 people incarcerated inside California’s prison system by August, in a move that comes amid devastating coronavirus outbreaks at several facilities and pressure from lawmakers and advocates. The releases, which were announced just before noon Friday, will come on a rolling basis, and they’ll include both people who were scheduled to be freed soon as well...

From California Children's Trust, July 10, 2020 California Children’s Trust, and its partners, are making the case for policies and practices acknowledging the “Persistent Traumatic Stress Environment” (framing provided by Dr. Shawn Ginwright ) our children and youth are experiencing. We invite you to listen to these recordings, and hear from behavioral health, education and social justice leaders with both inspirational messages and concrete proposals that reimagine our children’s...

By Monica Vaughan, The Sacramento Bee, July 8, 2020 Residents in Earlimart, California, lost water service when a 50-year-old well on Mary Ann Avenue failed in late May. When it came back on, the main source of drinking water for more than 8,000 residents became a well contaminated with a chemical from banned pesticides. And most residents didn’t know. The Tulare County town’s water system is failing, in a lot of ways. [ Please click here to read more .]

By Meryl Schulman and Emma Opthof, Center for Health Care Strategies, Inc., July 7, 2020 COVID-19 and the stressors it is placing on individuals’ physical, emotional, and financial wellbeing create a new imperative for health care systems to look to trauma-informed care to support both patients and frontline workers. To learn more about how health care providers are using trauma-informed approaches to care in the current environment, the Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS) recently...

By Abby Sears, OCHIN, July 1, 202, CHCF. While COVID-19 has not yet created the overwhelming surge of cases feared by leaders of California’s health care delivery system, the pandemic is having unprecedented effects. Patients continue to put off routine and nonemergency care, primary care doctors are increasingly worried about the survival of their practices, and hospitals are experiencing a dramatic decline in emergency and inpatient visits.

By Staff Report, July 6, 2020, SB Sun. San Bernardino-based Arrowhead United Way is one of 30 California United Ways that will benefit from an anonymous $15 million donation. [ Please click here to read more. ]