Insights

A pilot project in California gives specially trained dental hygienists and assistants expanded powers to use portable dental chair, laptops, digital cameras and handheld x-ray machines to see patients at a school or community center.

Last year, I started looking for a compelling story about children’s mental health in California that was grounded in solid numbers. I made lots of phone calls and had lots of meetings. Sources were sympathetic. They, too, would love to quantify problems with mental health services.

Heroin addiction grabbed the national spotlight recently after famed actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died on Super Bowl Sunday. He was almost certainly not alone that day — about 100 Americans die every day from drug overdoses. Can anything be done to stop this?

The most recent employment report from the U.S. Labor Department showed the job market remained tough in January. If it’s difficult for healthy individuals to get a job, what is it like for cancer survivors?

Imagine if Caltrans became the California Department of Healthy and Equitable Transportation – if its mission were transformed to responsibility not only for getting people from place to place, but doing so in a way that promoted their health and well-being.

A recent report by a federal agency found that prison workers who live in the community are suffering from valley fever in large numbers. In their case, the prisons themselves cannot easily be blamed.

The Resilience of Refugee Children After War report put together by the American Psychological Association offers a a comprehensive assessment of decades of research into the psychological effects of the refugee experience.

The data on the much-lauded Patient Centered Medical Home approach, a cornerstone of ACA, shows that it is expensive, onerously bureaucratic, a drain on health care resources, especially for primary care providers, and a distraction from health care delivery.

Everybody knows that smoking causes cancer, and that obesity causes heart disease, but even most doctors and scientists I speak to have no idea about the very large effect obesity has on cancer.

An opportunity to work as a senior editor for the California Sunday; a new, independent media company based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles. Also, make sure to look at the Food and Farming Journalism Fellowships provided by UC Berkeley.