Even if the county ever gets a medical school, it is a long-term goal years away and many low-income patients need solutions now.
For years Merced County has struggled to convince doctors to come live and work in the rural, impoverished Central Valley community, resulting in a ratio of about 45 doctors for every 100,000 residents.
Horisons Unlimited Health Care filed for bankruptcy and closed all eight of its clinics, including five in Merced County. About 80 percent of Horisons patients were on Medi-Cal.
Christin Farmer knew she wanted to help women have babies at 16, when she watched an episode of TLC's "A Baby Story" and saw a midwife with a birthing center delivering babies.
Birth attendants can positively affect outcomes for mothers and infants. But access to them is often out of reach for low-income and minority women, who have the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality.
Research shows that working in retirement presents both financial and health advantages. What keeps some people from reaping these benefits and can companies do more to retain older workers?
In Southern California’s Eastern Coachella Valley, "promotoras" are part of a growing effort to address environmental hazards and survey residents about their other health and housing needs.
The growth of Los Angeles’ safety net has been dramatic since the Affordable Care Act took effect. Now clinics are anxiously wondering if the many changes they've made can be sustained if the ACA is repealed.
“A lot of people think that these were poor African Americans moving out, but they were actually middle-class people, because the poor people had nowhere to go," one Georgetown researchers says of the city's rising number of displaced residents.
While many policymakers still think of concentrated poverty as an issue afflicting the nation’s big urban centers, smaller cities are increasingly home to those Americans with the greatest needs and the least resources. Take East St. Louis, for example.
