Hasan Dudar

Healthy Steps: A hospital administrator’s struggle to save Doctors Medical Center

Dawn Gideon remembers walking down the steep stadium steps of the Ashland Regional Medical Center auditorium, staring at the backs of the heads of 100 hospital workers, each step taking her closer to the front of a crowd filled with people she had known for only a month. It would be her first attempt at saving a hospital. “Oh my God, I have to save these people’s jobs, and I haven’t even looked in their eyes yet,” Gideon remembers thinking….

Voters pass parcel tax for Doctors Medical Center

Voters in West Contra Costa County passed a ballot measure Tuesday that Doctors Medical Center administrators said will keep the struggling hospital from closing. Measure J, which won with nearly 74 percent of voters casting “yes” ballots, will allow the county to put in place a $47 parcel tax increase per household in West County, bringing the hospital about $5 million in tax revenue that will help it close an anticipated $18 million budget gap. The Yes on J campaign…

Childhood obesity in Contra Costa on the rise

Sugar-sweetened drinks and street violence have contributed to a rise in childhood obesity across low-income areas of Contra Costa County, according to county health officials who worked closely on a statewide study released Wednesday.

Marine flies in from NJ to take part in Occupy Oakland protest

As protesters trickled out of the Port of Oakland Wednesday night, after Occupy Oakland demonstrations shut down business at the port, scores of them filed into a retrofitted, former AC Transit bus that was giving free rides back to the encampments in downtown Oakland.

“Free rides for the 99 percent … Say hi to your bus driver, John, on your way in,” a man shouted from a megaphone, as he directed protesters to the bus.

Richmond bioscience company makes strides in HIV research

The cure for HIV could be as simple – well, almost — as a shot in the arm. The full process, which researchers started testing in 2009, would look something like this: extract patient’s blood, eliminate HIV receptive gene on white blood cells, multiply those new cells, infuse billions of the cells into patient’s blood stream. And voila, the virus roams veins and arteries, lonely, with no receptors to bond with. That process has a group of scientists hoping they…

Contra Costa homeless shelters unsure about effects of realignment

As the state starts to release prisoners into the supervision of the counties, Contra Costa County’s homeless shelters – where former prisoners often end up because they don’t have family or their identity reestablished upon their release – aren’t sure what to expect. Cynthia Belon, the Contra Costa Director of Behavioral Health Services, said it’s been difficult for her to determine whether the estimated $895,000 in state funding awarded to the county for health services will be enough to cover…

Richmond research firm to announce HIV/AIDS clinical trial findings at national conference Saturday

Richmond-based Sangamo BioSciences, Inc. said Wednesday it is ready to take its HIV and AIDS research – which has the potential to someday provide a functional cure for HIV – to a national conference and announce the results of a clinical trial this weekend. The research firm, located in Point Richmond, will attend the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Chicago on Saturday, where it will present findings on the application of gene modification as a treatment for…

Native American Health Center looks for new primary and dental care facility near Richmond BART

The director of a Native American mental health clinic in Richmond said on Thursday that the organization has been looking to expand its presence in the area to include primary and dental care near the city’s BART station. The Native American Health Center, which serves residents across Contra Costa County, has been working for the past four months to locate property to open a clinical care center because transportation has proved a barrier to access. “I think transportation is a…