Tagged With "California Policy Lab"

By Ryan White, Center for Health Journalism, March 18, 2020 Think of the brain, honed by millennia of evolution, as a powerful predictive machine, constantly scanning the horizon for signs of what’s to come. Like an eager young scout, the brain relishes the state of readiness. But what happens when that future is shrouded in a thick fog of uncertainty? Or worse, when that veil conceals real threats to our safety and well-being that exceed our control? That’s essentially the situation we all...

By Chuck Ingoglia (Guest), Cal Matters, February 2, 2020 It’s time to change the conversation in health care. Rather than asking, “What is wrong with this person?” medical professionals might ask, “What happened to this person?” California Surgeon General Nadine Burke Harris and an increasing number of practitioners are changing the conversation because they recognize that trauma early in life—child separation, racism, neglect, abuse or poverty, for instance—can manifest itself years later...

By Xenia Shi Bion, California Health Care Foundation, August 19, 2019 The camera pans to the therapist as she finishes scribbling a note and sets down her pen. “You’re a perfect candidate for buprenorphine,” she says to her patient. “Let’s get you to a doctor who can prescribe it.” As far as we know, this is not a scene in a real TV show or movie, but it’s one that freelance journalist Zachary Siegel would like to see. Siegel, a journalism fellow at Northeastern University’s Health in...

By Natalie Hanson, Chico Enterprise-Record, January 16, 2020 At least 70% of Oroville’s high school students are considered socioeconomically-disadvantaged. In Chico, Between 400 and 500 children are categorized as housing insecure at any time during the Chico Unified School district’s school year. Across the county, thousands of students often rely on each district for help just to get to school and to get a meal. In these statistics a tragic side is seen in the Butte County homelessness...

By Sean Coffey, UCLA Newsroom, October 7, 2019 A report released today finds that physical and mental health care needs as well as abuse and traumatic experiences are major contributing factors to a loss of housing for unsheltered people, especially unsheltered women. A research team at the California Policy Lab analyzed survey responses from more than 64,000 single adults ages 25 and older who were experiencing sheltered or unsheltered homelessness in 15 states across the U.S. from 2015...

By Larry Gordon, Ed Source, August 31, 2020 With surveys showing that the pandemic is worsening anxiety and depression among college students, campus counseling centers across California are bracing for an expected sharp rise in the numbers of students seeking mental health services. Like most college and university classes, psychological therapy sessions switched to online — or on telephone — in March. The campuses say they will try their best to advertise, expand and improve those virtual...

Can universal ACEs screening be equitable? A conversation about concerns and solutions. When: Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2-3:30 pm PDT/5-6:30 pm EDT This webinar explores what it takes to ensure that equity is built into the process of screening and providing support for families who have experienced trauma and want help. REGISTER HERE Background At the beginning of this year, California, through the ACEs Aware initiative began rolling out universal screening for adverse childhood experiences (ACEs),...

By Benedict Carey, The New York Times, April 1, 2021 When I joined the Science staff in 2004, reporters in the department had a saying, a reassuring mantra of sorts: “People will always come to the science section, if only to read about progress.” I think about that a lot as I say goodbye to my job, covering psychiatry, psychology, brain biology and big-data social science, as if they were all somehow related. The behavior beat, as it’s known, allowed tremendous freedom: I wrote about the...