This story is part of a series produced for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2021 California Fellowship.
Environment & Climate
Roads in rural Fresno County are often neglected and underdeveloped. Potholes, flooding and basic safety measures go unfixed. There are no streetlights, sidewalks, bike lanes, crosswalks, center lines or even speed limit signs on many roads in rural towns, and public transit service is limited.
Thousands of Indigenous migrants toil on California farms, cut off from health care by language and cultural barriers.
Unhoused people who use drugs are reversing overdoses and saving hundreds of lives each year.
Imagine taking your kids on a trolley to visit the neighborhood park. Now, picture an electric transit system that’s fast and cheap and can take you to work right from your doorstep. What if Fresno could do all that, and reduce the local rate of childhood asthma?
The number of patients with “unsalvageable” disease has ticked up. So too has the rate of amputations.
"If everybody in this community were vaccinated, we would have one person in the ICU. One," Marian Regional pulmonologist Zacharia Reagle said.
Birthing parents report isolation during the pandemic and stress after the closure of the labor and delivery center in Fort Bragg last year, revealing strains on maternal healthcare in Mendocino County.
This article was produced as a project for the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2021 California Fellowship.
Dana Ullman is reporting on health-related stories for The Mendocino Voice with support from the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism. This article was produced as a series for the 2021 Center for Health Journalism California Fellowship.