Latest California Healthline Stories
Health Care on California Ballots, Directly and Indirectly
California voters will deal directly and indirectly with health care issues in next week’s elections. On city and county ballots, voters will decide issues ranging from soda taxes to medical marijuana laws. Statewide propositions have potential for indirect but significant repercussions for health care.
Children Going Hungry ‘A Call to Action’
About 125 community leaders gathered in Yolo County last week to launch a new effort to end hunger in that county. The Yolo Food Summit brought together advocates, government workers and other stakeholders to brainstorm answers to the thorny problem of how to make healthy food accessible to people throughout the county.
It’s ironic that Yolo County is primarily an agricultural county and yet more than 17% of its citizens are food insecure. But that’s not the scariest statistic in Yolo County, according to Don Saylor, a Yolo County Supervisor who helped convene the food summit.
“The thing that is quite troubling to me is that 25% of children in Yolo County are food insecure,” Saylor said. “To me, that’s a call to action. When one in four children don’t have access to food in an area where … our economy is based on ag, that’s really troubling. This is a wonderful agricultural community, yet there’s this irony of hunger amidst abundance.”
Could Reform Initiative Affect Health Care?
Proposition 31 on California’s November ballot has some health advocates alarmed. They say it could hinder development of health programs, especially senior care options, and make existing programs more vulnerable to large cuts.
One of the big concerns about the measure, according to Steve Maviglio, a political consultant in Sacramento and former press secretary for Democratic Gov. Gray Davis, is that most people don’t know much about it.
“We haven’t heard a lot about Prop. 31,” Maviglio said. He said there is a lot of uncertainty about the measure, even among many who have studied it.
California Cities Gear Up To Vote on Ballot Initiatives To Tax Sugar-Sweetened Beverages
El Monte Planning Commissioner Art Barrios, Chuck Finnie of the Community Coalition Against Beverage Taxes, El Monte Mayor Andre Quintero and Richmond City Council member Jeff Ritterman spoke with California Healthline about local ballot measures that tax sugar-sweetened beverages.
Tuberculosis Added to Screening List
Legislators have worked on a number of bills this session related to immunizations. On Friday, Gov. Jerry Brown (D) signed one of them into law.
SB 659 by state Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod (D-Chino) requires tuberculosis screening to be included on the state’s immunization registry. That will help health officials coordinate TB immunization efforts, Negrete McLeod said, because parents now won’t need to prove immunization with their yellow-card record.
“By allowing these results to be included in the state registry,” she said, “parents will have an easier time demonstrating compliance with the requirements of local school districts.”
Essential Benefits, Medical Review Change Passed
The countdown has begun. Only three more voting days till the end of California’s legislative year. The Legislature’s 2012 session ends on Friday, making this a busy week.
A number of health-related bills are among the hundreds of laws passed so far and headed to the governor’s desk (some of them are pending technical concurrence in the house of origin):
Health for Sale as Retail Clinics Expand in California
The retail clinic sector is experiencing healthy growth in Los Angeles and could grow throughout the state as health care reform comes into play, according to a new study from the RAND Corporation.
Task Force Tackles Access, Coverage, Workforce Issues
The state’s health care task force met yesterday with an ambitious end goal and a complex agenda that broached access and coverage issues, as well as health workforce concerns.
The end goal, according to Diana Dooley, HHS Secretary and a co-chair of the task force, is embodied in a single question: “What will it take for California to be the healthiest state in the nation?”
Getting to that simple question is a complex, multi-layered, 10-year effort. Yesterday’s meeting was the third of four opening workshops of the Let’s Get Healthy California Task Force, formed by executive order of Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown.
University of California Campuses Gear Up To Implement, Enforce Upcoming Smoking Ban
UC-Berkeley student Irene Cheng, Kevin Confetti of the University of California, Colleen Stevens of the California Department of Public Health, Kim Homer Vagadori of the California Youth Advocacy Network and a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory spoke with California Healthline about the upcoming smoking ban at UC campuses.
Ombudsman, Immunization Bills Up for Floor Vote
Dozens of health-related bills passed through committee last week, setting up pending floor votes starting this week.
The last hurdle for many bills is the appropriations committee of each house. Those committees ran at high speed last week, churning out approvals for hundreds of bills.
The Legislature has until the end of August to vote on all bills.
Some of the health-related bills that cleared committee last week: