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 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…
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.
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.
Contra Costa County health officials unveiled plans Tuesday to speed up response times for stroke victims in an effort to reduce brain damage and fatalities.
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…
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…
After two cross-town rivals battled it out in a lopsided first half of football Friday night, the Richmond community took time to remember two former instructors by naming two annual game trophies in their honor.
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…
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…