August 2020

Going out to buy groceries, going out for a walk, driving your kid back home from school. For most people these activities are normal, everyday things with little to no excitement, as they should be. Unfortunately, getting food, exercising, and supporting my son’s education have been a little more out of the ordinary for me. You see, I am a Mexican Indigenous man, brown skin, shaved head. My ethnicity and physical appearance are by no means unusual, especially in the part of the country...

By Ali Tadayon, EdSource, August 5, 2020 West Contra Costa Unified is rethinking what it means to keep students safe after its school board voted in June to end contracts for campus police officers starting next school year. It’s a re-evaluation other California districts are making as well, following protests over the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in May as well as students saying armed police officers make them feel less safe at school. Instead of relying as much on police,...

By Nada Atieh, Redding Record Searchlight, August 4, 2020 When Kaiser Permanente and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched the study to measure Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) levels in Shasta County in 2012, the results they found were striking. The ACE study examined categories of childhood physical and emotional abuse and neglect. It measured household dysfunction — including domestic violence, mental illness and substance abuse — that create toxic stress...

Coping with Stress During the COVID-19 Pandemic: One-Pager

By Nadine Burke Harris, STAT, August 4, 2020 The world is learning more about the uncommon but puzzling ways Covid-19 can show up in kids, keeping worried parents on the lookout for symptoms of the disease. We should also be concerned about how toxic stress brought on by the pandemic, or made worse by it, will affect children’s developing brains and bodies and their future health. In millions of households, kids are experiencing an incredible amount of stress and anxiety. They’ve lost the...

By Rhema Vaithianathan, Emily Putnam-Hornstein, Alexandra Chouldechove, et al., JAMA Pediatrics, August 3, 2020 Key Points Question Do children reported as having experienced alleged maltreatment and classified by a predictive risk model to be at high risk of foster care placement show an increased risk of emergency department and inpatient hospitalizations for injuries? Findings In this cohort study, children who scored in the highest 5% risk group by the predictive risk model were more...

By John Cox, The Bakersfield Californian, August 3, 2020 One of the Central Valley's largest agricultural companies has responded to the many needs that have arisen during the pandemic by again focusing its considerable largesse on the communities where its employees live and work. The Wonderful Co. was planning today to unveil a $1 million relief fund it hopes will prompt nonprofits to propose various initiatives to help local farmworkers, health-care providers and others who continue to...

By Claudia Boyd-Barrett, California Health Care Foundation, July 28, 2020 For San Francisco public health officials, it was a potential nightmare scenario. On May 7, a man experiencing homelessness tested positive for COVID-19. He had just visited the city’s Sobering Center, a facility in the South of Market district where intoxicated people can recover safely without being transported to overcrowded hospital emergency rooms. Before anyone realized the man had COVID-19, he had exposed 17...

We are excited to announce our new brief jointly released by BARHII and the Public Health Alliance of Southern California titled “ Embedding Equity into Emergency Operations: Strategies for Local Health Departments During COVID-19 & Beyond. ” The brief outlines case studies, resources, and priority recommendations that counties and cities can take to explicitly and intentionally embed equity staff and practices into their emergency operations structures and throughout the public health...

By John Fensterwald, EdSource, August 1, 2020 The California Department of Education released a more readable and tempered draft of an “ethnic studies model curriculum” on Friday, 11 months after intense criticism of the first draft forced state officials to order a rewrite. Its release will start eight months of review and revision, beginning with an Aug. 13 meeting of a curriculum commission reporting to the State Board of Education, then a one-month public comment period and more review.

By Samantha Young, California Healthline, July 29, 2020 When Will Lightbourne looked at the statistics behind California’s coronavirus cases, the disparities were “blindingly clear”: Blacks and Latinos are dying at higher rates than most other Californians. As of Monday, Latinos account for 45.6% of coronavirus deaths in a state where they make up 38.9% of the population, according to data collected by the California Department of Public Health. Blacks account for 8.5% of the deaths but make...

By Jacob Pierce, July 31, 2020, Goodtimes. A volunteer group known for doing needle distributions in Santa Cruz County has landed grant funding to support new staff positions and stipends. Kate Garrett, managing member for the Harm Reduction Coalition of Santa Cruz County (HRCSCC) announced Thursday that the group secured a portion of a new $12.2 million chunk for harm reduction programs awarded via the statewide California Harm Reduction Initiative. [ Please click here to read more. ]