Healthcare Regulation and Reform

On April 11, Dena Garcia was told that her mother was running a fever. Three days later, she was sent to the ER, where she was unresponsive.

California has the highest rate of unmet mental health treatment needs in the country.

Why did the Occupational Health Safety Network meet with such an abrupt demise?

One facility was hit hard – 50-plus COVID cases and more than a dozen deaths. Another endured only 3 cases and just one patient died. Many factors likely figure in the difference.

Many factors can contribute to how severely the virus strikes a home, including its location and size. But having enough staff is vital, especially during a pandemic, experts say. New research backs that up.

This story was produced by Rubén Tapia with support from USC Center for Health Journalism's 2020 Impact Fund. His reporting looks at how delays in the cleanup of neighborhoods contaminated by emissions from the now-shuttered Exide battery recycling plant in LA is affecting the health of residents.

Through my reporting and listening to young sexually active LGBTQ people, I learned there would still be big hurdles to obtaining preventive medication at a pharmacy.

Annual hospital financial reports highlight one big-picture health care trend across California: Hospitals are making increasingly higher profits on commercially insured patients, while they’re suffering steeper losses on Medicare patients.
 

In the U.S., Cambodians and Vietnamese continue to struggle with access to culturally sensitive health care.

"How is it supposed to work?" Answer that question and you're better prepared to spot when things go wrong.