Each year, asthma attacks send tens of thousands of California children to the emergency room. Some are admitted to the hospital for days. In 2010, the state had more than 11,000 such admissions, costing an average of $19,000 apiece. Pollution plays a role.
A study last week by researchers at UCLA published in the journal Academic Pediatrics garnered surprisingly few headlines. What makes this study unique is that it is the first to examine and discover that obesity parallels a long list of other health conditions in children.
Carmina Ramos' 2-year-old son was suffering an asthma attack and gasping for air as her boyfriend barreled 80 miles an hour on a two-lane, country road to Children's Hospital of Central California, about 45 miles away. Police stopped the car, and drew their guns as they shouted instructions...
Journalist Elaine Korry embarks on a new reporting project: how will states and insurers decide who gets what health benefits - and for what cost - under the Affordable Care Act?
I’m an education writer. My job at the Oakland Tribune is, mostly, to report on the local public school systems and the people in them. But the context in which children live -- and in the case of this project, breathe -- often comes into my reporting, too. It has to. Asthma is one of those realities.
When I left for a week of reporting in rural California in late February, I didn't know I would come back with two stories about the devastating health consequences of isolation.
I'm not just talking about the geographic isolation one finds in a remote area. From the hilly evergreen landscape of eastern Shasta County, to the agricultural flatlands of Tulare County in the South Central Valley, I witnessed how isolation can leave people in the dark about keeping healthy, lead to emotional despair, and pose real barriers to quality of life.
A coalition of local and global health groups have banded together to bring the lessons they've learned in developing countries to south King County, where the health index is as bad as Nairobi.
Radio journalist Farida Jhabvala examines how one facet of health reform might help uninsured families in Fresno, California's poorest county - but political leaders there don't want to participate.
A blockbuster drug's approval revoked, rising STD rates, and a politician's surprising views on asthma, plus more from our Daily Briefing.
Just two hours east from my home in urban San Diego, the Anza-Borrego mountains give way to open skies and desert, followed by miles upon miles of bright green crop land. The semi-rural Imperial County is home to almost 200,000 people, most of them Latino, spread out over 4,000 square miles into small but tight-knit communities. Life here is strikingly different from the bustle of the coastal cities; one of the reasons why I love reporting in this part of Southern California.
