Health
A senate bill allocating $3 million to Doctor’s Medical Center in San Pablo is intended to keep the hospital in operation but will likely not last beyond March, 2015. Uninsured and low-income patients may be forced elsewhere while officials struggle to find solutions to keep the DMC’s life support running.
Many times a day, in Bay Area operating rooms like those at Kaiser Permanente Oakland, nurses lay out a set of surgical tools from which doctors can choose. Surgeons often pick one or two instruments from the bunch, leaving the rest to be discarded. Rather than clog local landfills, those unused surgical tools now can make their way to Roots Community Health Center in Oakland or Brighter Beginnings Family Health Clinic in Richmond — thanks to MedShare, a nonprofit with…
On Wednesday, Covered California, the state’s public health exchange, plans to end coverage for thousands of Bay Area residents who didn’t submit timely documents proving that they’re legal residents of the state. More than a quarter of the termination notices—or roughly 27,000 letters about the impending cutoff—went to Bay Area families out of the 98,000 notices sent statewide in early September. But in the East Bay, immigration specialists say language barriers and email glitches may complicate this week’s deadline, and…
Two years after Richmond voters overwhelmingly rejected a soda tax, health advocates in Berkeley and San Francisco are drawing lessons from Richmond’s Measure N defeat to try to pass similar taxes on sugary drinks on Nov. 4.
JoAnn Ford is a Richmond native and has raised seven children in the Iron Triangle. After battling several health issues herself, she has become an advocate for improving health outcomes in Richmond. Through her work with Building Blocks for Kids, JoAnn raises awareness in the community around issues like access to healthy foods and increasing recreational activities. Here, JoAnn shares her story. Jake Nicol, U.C. Berkeley graduate student, produced and edited this film.
In Richmond, a new model for adult-youth conversation is starting to emerge. On Saturday, more than 100 people gathered at City Hall for a Youth Summit sponsored by Mayor Gayle McLaughlin.
About 250,000 West Contra Costa County residents may soon be in the midst of a health care crisis. Doctors Medical Center San Pablo has lost millions of dollars for years by treating the uninsured and underinsured. The hospital has stayed afloat with the help of two parcel taxes and previous funding from the state and area providers including John Muir and Kaiser. But it still faces a sixteen million dollar shortfall for this year. A third parcel tax measure will…
Currently there are hundreds of young people in Richmond who need to be provided with effective youth development opportunities and purposeful engagement with healthy adults on a consistent basis.
The U.S. Chemical Safety Board on Tuesday voted to postpone a decision on its staff’s recommendation that California adopt a new regulatory framework for refineries.