“What do you actually need? How can I actually help?” These are the questions Nai Pharn, a Community Health Worker (CHW) at UCSF Benioff’s Children’s Hospital Oakland, found herself asking while meeting for the first time with an overwhelmed mother about renewing her CalFresh benefits. When the mother began getting teary-eyed, Pharn paused and asked
For over 10 years, beginning in 2010, The California Endowment (TCE) invested $1.75 billion and partnered with 14 communities across California as well as many state-level organizations and alliances, on Building Healthy Communities (BHC), an innovative initiative to achieve more equitable health outcomes. During that period, BHC deployed communication and narrative change strategies more proactively
The central goal of a child allowance is to promote the health and well-being of children and families. By providing consistent and adequate income support, it can help families pay for immediate essentials, reduce the stress associated with struggling to make ends meet, and create a foundation for families to pursue their goals and aspirations.
Over the ten years of the Building Healthy Communities initiative (BHC), The California Endowment (TCE) cycled through multiple outcome frameworks as the terrain of the BHC work became more complex.
Photo courtesy of The California Endowment’s Building Healthy Communities Initiative archive CSSP has a long history of designing, implementing, and evaluating community and system change efforts. One of the most significant challenges in such an undertaking is sustaining the investments and interest of funders over the long term that is needed to achieve tangible results
For decades, field leaders and funders have focused on developmental screening and kindergarten readiness as markers of child and family well-being. While those efforts have advanced a policy and community emphasis on Head Start, Universal Pre-K, and other efforts in early education, public officials have placed much less emphasis on the critical importance of foundational
Today, the Census Bureau released its annual statistics on income, poverty, and health insurance. The data offer striking evidence that policy can effectively reduce poverty and address racial inequities, even in the context of the most devastating health and economic crisis of our lifetimes. The data released today, along with other analyses of hardship over the last year, underscore the particular value of providing cash to families to combat poverty and economic insecurity. Cash assistance, whether in the form of a stimulus check, enhanced unemployment benefits, or the Child Tax Credit, allows families to meet a wide range of needs in ways that make the most sense for them. When made inclusive and accessible, cash assistance can also effectively advance racial equity.
As Pride 2021 winds down, I find myself think about and being thankful to Carl Nassib, the defensive end for the Las Vegas Raiders NFL team for not only coming out as gay but also doing so and supporting the Trevor Project. Suicide and suicidal ideation are already common with young people, but even more so among LGBTQ+ youth who suffer the prospects of living in a world where they feel they will be hated and punished in so many ways.
Recognition is growing that health inequities in the United States are oceanic and that health justice matters. From COVID-19 crisis standards of care to vaccine equity to the eviction epidemic to the Flint, Michigan water crisis, widespread health injustices now are robustly, and appropriately, animating mainstream health policy dialogue. Health justice is a critical concept
“Nothing about us, without us,” is a rallying cry that originated in the disability rights movement, but it has been widely adopted by young people who have been in foster care. The stakes are high. “One person frames your life before a court, and a couple of people decide where you live,” says Sixto Cancel