In quick-hit coverage of health policy, it’s easy to skip the tough task of tracking down real families struggling to afford insurance and find health care. But their stories are essential.
Health Equity & Social Justice
One in four county residents — including children, seniors and disabled individuals — will see their monthly government food assistance benefits wiped out early this year now that a new federal rule to alter work requirements for food stamp recipients goes into effect.
Thousands of Los Angeles residents have received word that their medical debt has been paid by benefactors, highlighting an ongoing crisis.
As a child growing up in Arvin, California, Gabriel Duarte played with his brothers in an orchard 15 feet from his family’s front door. Today he plays in a prison yard. Duarte believes these two points on his 20-year timeline are related.
Legal scholar Andrea Freeman views the fraught history of breastfeeding disparities through the astonishing story of America’s first surviving identical quadruplets.
Federal law guarantees public school students experiencing homelessness a host of rights, to bring them educational stability. But a recent state audit found poor compliance and oversight across California.
The series has received support from the Fund for Journalism on Child Well-Being, a program of USC's Center for Health Journalism....
"I ultimately found a handful of good sources who were willing to share their personal housing struggles. But it took a lot more work than I expected to get there."
Earlier this month marked the end of a public comment period for what would be the third rule change for SNAP, a proposal that stands to cut the nutrition benefits for at least a few million people.
Faced with an order to reduce dust from the Oceano Dunes State Vehicular Recreation Area, the State Department of Parks and Recreation is spending $437,506 to study whether ocean algae is to blame for air pollution downwind of the park.