Lori McComas Chaffins spent a decade battling an addiction to alcohol and prescription drugs before she decided to change her life.
It might be roof-top green space. Perhaps a reconfiguration of streets that permits walkable medians and wide bike lanes. Or it could be a supercharging of current joint-use plans between cities and school districts.
The most likely scenario would be a combination of these solutions and many more as community leaders in North Orange County try to overcome a dearth of city parkland.
Santa Ana's childhood obesity rates are among the highest in Orange County. Neighborhood advocates have complained bitterly about what they say is a lack of official effort to create adequate places for the city's children to play, and an entrenched deference to developers.
Do you want to better report on drug addiction and treatment? Avoid having Slate’s Jack Shafer feature your work in his Stupid Drug Story of the Week feature? Then follow these 15 tips from veteran journalist Maia Szalavitz.
Some local entrepreneurs have been stunned because they failed to meet all the rules for the small-business tax credits in last year's highly vaunted federal health care law to help cover their health care costs.
Despite their disappointment, they're hopeful that another part of the law, which kicks in three years from now, is well worth waiting for.
Journalist Yesenia Amaro examines how some small businesses will cope with health reform as their health costs for workers continue to soar.
Janna Rodriguez, one of the owners of J&R Tacos in Merced, wants to learn more about the specific provisions in the federal health care law designed to help small businesses such as hers. Her restaurant, which opened almost five years ago, employs eight part-time employees — and none of them receive health care benefits.
Del Norte County has a serious problem with tooth decay. In fact, the problem is spread across California — a recent study found that two-thirds of the state’s children have some form of tooth decay. Kelley Atherton finds out why.
Who will be the winners and losers amid health reform's planned expansion of Medicaid? In her reporting, Danielle Ivory finds shifting power dynamics and unexpected financial risks for insurers.
Administrators of a hot line that helps West Virginians find treatment for prescription drug abuse are worried the program will be forced to close. The Mountain State has the nation's highest rate of fatal drug overdoses, and most of those deaths involve prescription drugs. But officials with the West Virginia Prescription Drug Abuse Quitline say state leaders have not shown concern for their funding problems. The hot line launched in September 2008 with the help of $1 million from a lawsuit against Purdue Pharma, maker of the painkiller OxyContin. That money will run out next year, said Laura Lander, the program's clinical supervisor.
