This week, the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) released a report on its 2020 Forces of Change survey, which focused on effects to local health department infrastructure caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. More than half of local health departments reported their leaders and staff were targets of harassment in response to…
Read More »The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Center for Health Policy Research (CHPR) recently issued a research report examining the state of modern health and health care in California, the historical policy decisions and societal shifts that created the current situation, and trends influencing change in the existing health care environment. The CHPR report examines…
Read More »The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is releasing data publicly for the first time on mergers, acquisitions, consolidations, and changes of ownership from 2016-2022 for hospitals and nursing homes enrolled in Medicare. According to HHS, the data will allow researchers, state and federal enforcement agencies,…
Read More »The Healthy California for All Commission, established as part of the 2019 Budget Act, this week issued its final report on unified health system financing. The report details the concept of unified financing as a statewide system to arrange, pay for, and assure health care in which all residents are entitled to receive a standard…
Read More »A recent poll from the University of California, Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS) found that a two-thirds majority describes both extreme heat (64 percent) and air pollution (63 percent) as serious threats to their own and their family’s health and safety. Relative to extreme heat, wide partisan differences in opinions about the seriousness of…
Read More »Two new reports included in this week’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explored death rates in the U.S., finding persistent disparities between certain racial and ethnic minority groups. The first report provides an overview of provisional U.S. mortality data for 2021, including a comparison…
Read More »On Thursday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released data in its latest edition of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) indicating vaccination coverage for kindergarteners dropped by one percentage point across the country in the 2020-21 school year for three state-required vaccines (MMR, DTaP, and chicken pox) for public and…
Read More »President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. this week sent his Administration’s inaugural National Drug Control Strategy to Congress, delineating his Administration’s approach to address the country’s overdose epidemic. According to the Biden Administration, the Strategy focuses on primary two drivers of the epidemic – untreated addiction and drug trafficking – and instructs federal agencies to prioritize…
Read More »This week, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) issued a report and brief on the Digital Divide impacts on California Children and Families. The report notes that access to high-speed internet, and digital literacy skills has become a key aspect for children and family wellbeing. The…
Read More »The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Center for Health Policy Research (CHPR) recently published a policy paper entitled, “Opening Doors for All: Improving Health in Housing and Homelessness.” The policy paper follows a 2021 virtual event convened by UCLA CHPR focused on the intersection of health and homelessness, emphasizing lessons learned to inform California…
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