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California PACEs Action

June 2017

A Smarter System: Addressing Social Determinants of Health as a Cost-Saving Measure

by Edward Schor, MD, Senior Vice President at the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s Health The importance of social factors in determining individuals’ health status and their use of health care services has been receiving increasing attention. A recent report from the Bipartisan Policy Center suggests that opportunities to control health care costs reside primarily in addressing patients’ social and behavioral care needs. The report lays out the arguments for integrating social and...

Kaiser Permanente Cited — Again — For Mental Health Access Problems [KHN.org]

Despite three warnings and a multimillion-dollar fine a few years ago, Kaiser Permanente still fails to provide members with appropriate access to mental health care, according to a recent survey of the HMO by the state of California. The routine survey, released by the state Department of Managed Health Care, found that Kaiser Foundation Health Plan did not provide enrollees with “timely access” to behavioral health treatment , in violation of state law. (Kaiser Health News, which produces...

Black youth experience highest felony arrest rate in California [Kidsdata.org]

The felony arrest rate among African American/black youth in 2015 was substantially higher than other racial and ethnic groups in California. At 24 arrests per 1,000 youth, the rate among this group is about 8 times higher than the felony arrest rate among white youth. Encouragingly, nearly all of the 21 counties with data have seen improvements in felony arrest rates for African American/black youth over the past 17 years. Since 1998, San Francisco County saw a particularly sharp, though...

California’s Children and Youths’ System of Care: An Agenda to Transform Promises Into Practice

GK note: Check out a new report from Patrick Gardner, Founder of Young Minds Advocacy. See a critique of the report from Scott Bryant-Comstock of the Children's Mental Health Network (which is a good weekly blog if want to stay current on these issues: http://cmhnetwork.org) Patrick Gardner, Founder of Young Minds Advocacy. has written an excellent report on the state of the child mental health delivery system in California. If there ever was a blueprint for a systems of care approach, this...

Raising the Minimum Wage to $15 [NationSwell.com]

Seattle and San Francisco began raising their hourly minimum wage to $15 in 2015. Now Washington, D.C. , and New York City are following their lead, and Democratic leaders in Congress have endorsed a bill to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 by 2024. [For more of this story, written by Joseph Darius Jaafari, go to http://nationswell.com/raising-minimum-wage-15/] Read more: http://nationswell.com/raising-minimum-wage-15/#ixzz4kb1baCGa

Schools would get funding to hire mental health specialists [CabinetReport.com]

As part of the Legislature’s ongoing effort to improve mental health services to K-12 students, lawmakers are considering setting aside $15 million a year to fund a pilot program to help schools hire their own specialists. AB 254 by Assemblyman Tony Thurmond, D-Richmond, is intended to close gaps in the ‘whole child’ approach to education. “Given the inextricable relationship between education and health, if the State of California seeks to lead in education we must also focus on the...

4CA Policymaker Education Day on Childhood Adversity, July 11 in Sacramento - REGISTRATION CONFIRMED

If you registered for 4CA's Policymaker Education Day, you should have received a confirmation (looks like what is included below). If you did NOT receive confirmation please email Sara at smarques@centerforyouthwellness.org> And if you are interested in attending, there is still space. You can register at: http://www.4cakids.org/education-day/ Thank you for registering for the 4CA Policymaker Education Day on Childhood Adversity on July 11, 2017. Your registration has been confirmed! As...

Yoga helping inmates transcend jail cells [KEYT - Santa Barbara]

An ancient spiritual practice is helping rehabilitate men and women at the Santa Barbara County Jail. Prison Yoga Santa Barbara (PYSB) invites inmates to practice yoga, meditation and mindfulness during incarceration at no cost to taxpayers. Ginny Kuhn is the force behind the non-profit staffed by volunteers. The program is modeled after The Prison Yoga Project which was started yogi James Fox at California’s San Quentin State Prison 15 years ago. Kuhn's motto for PYSB is 'Working Freedom...

Demand for UC immigrant student legal services soars as Trump policies sow uncertainty [LA Times]

Maria Blanco did a double take when the Google alert popped up in her inbox late last week: President Trump had reversed his campaign pledge and decided to continue a federal program temporarily suspending deportations of young people who are in the country illegally. The news thrilled Blanco, an attorney who heads the University of California Immigrant Legal Services Center — the nation’s first and only university system to provide free legal aid to students without legal status and their...

Teen courts help to keep kids out of juvenile court system [CabinetReport.com]

In mock courtrooms supervised by a local judge, first-time teen offenders face a jury of their peers and receive sentences that often keep them in school and out of the juvenile justice system for minor crimes. Combined with other statewide efforts such as promoting restorative justice techniques in schools and eliminating zero tolerance policies, youth courts are helping to reduce the number of incarcerated teens in California charged with minor crimes. “We catch these kids early, and it’s...

On Death Row, but Is He Innocent? [NYTimes.com]

One June day in 1983, a California professor drove over to a neighbor’s house to pick up his 11-year-old son from a sleepover. Nobody answered the door, so the professor peered through a window — and saw a ghastly panorama of blood. The professor found his son stabbed to death, along with the bodies of Peggy and Doug Ryen, the homeowners. The Ryens’ 10-year-old daughter was also dead, with 46 wounds, but their 8-year-old son was still breathing. This quadruple murder began a travesty that is...

Black Youth Experience Highest Felony Arrest Rate in California

Kidsdata.org recently shared their interactive online platform for data related to felony arrests for children and youth under age 18. Youth who have contact with the juvenile justice system are at increased risk for a number of negative long-term outcomes when compared with the general youth population. For example, an estimated 30 percent of the youth who enter California's juvenile justice system have mental health issues and those who have been held in detention have higher rates of...

Santa Cruz Trauma Consortium 2017 Annual Fall Trauma Conference

The 5th Annual Fall Trauma Conference Trauma, Food and the Body with featured speaker Stephanie Covington Armstrong and afternoon workshop speakers from Leah's Pantry and more Conference speakers and workshops will provide professionals, students and interested people a day-long learning experience to better understand how trauma affects a person's relationship with their food and their body. Somatic processes will be explored and effective treatments will be discussed. Join us for this...

California urged to improve college access for young men of color

Too many black, Latino, Native American and Pacific Islander young men in California face difficult barriers in trying to complete high school and enroll in and finish college, according to a new report by the Education Trust-West. In addition to grappling with cultural and ethnic biases, young men of color disproportionately attend high schools without enough science labs, counselors and college preparatory classes and are more likely to be expelled or suspended than white students, the...

Medi-Cal Patients Flocking to ERs More Than Before ACA [KQED.org]

Medi-Cal patients are swamping California emergency rooms in greater numbers than they did before the Affordable Care Act took effect, despite predictions that the health law would ease the burden on ERs. Emergency room visits by people on Medi-Cal rose 75 percent over five years, from 800,000 in the first quarter of 2012 to 1.4 million in the last quarter of 2016, according to data recently released by the state’s Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. The most dramatic...

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