health

Wildfires have caused record-breaking stretches of bad air quality in the Bay Area these last few years. In this interview, Dr. Gina Solomon from UCSF and the Public Health Institute speaks about the long term health effects of breathing in all this smoke.

I visit the bottom floor of the Alisal Health Center in East Salinas in February. It’s home to the Comprehensive Perinatal Services Program, where new parents on Medi-Cal can get prenatal or postpartum care. 

This summer, farmworkers in California have been working with extreme heat, wildfire smoke, and, in Monterey County, high rates of COVID-19 as they harvest and pick the food we eat every day. Then, there’s another health concern, and it’s been around for much longer — pesticide exposure.

In Salinas, if you make a run to the grocery store to pick up a bag of kale, you’ll probably pass rows and rows of the leafy green.

Berkeley is trying to become the nation’s first city to ban junk food from supermarket checkout aisles.

COVID-19 is disproportionately impacting Black and Latinx California residents. And it’s not just the coronavirus. Across the board, CDC data shows that Black Americans have lower life expectancies than white people in the U.S. — and research suggests that racism is one reason why.

San Francisco is pioneering a new program that aims to reduce racial health disparities among expecting parents.

Like many people, back in April, Christin New needed something to look forward to. Not only was a pandemic spreading around the word, she’d just had a miscarriage. So when she and her husband found out they were expecting, they were overjoyed. 

California appears to be flying somewhat blind as it battles rising rates of COVID-19.

By now, over four months into the shelter-in-place ordinance, you’ve probably swapped testing stories — or been on a Zoom call featuring questions such as: How did you get an appointment? Did it hurt? How long to get the test results?

Hundreds of healthcare workers are striking today at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. The planned five-day strike is being led by the National Union of Healthcare Workers, which represents about 740 staff at the hospital.

Dr. Louise Aronson is a bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist for the book "Elderhood." Through her own stories of being a geriatrician she shares why the healthcare system needs to improve in treating older adults and why we should embrace aging.

COVID has cancelled many people’s vacation plans, so more Bay Areans might be turning to camping. But can we go? Is it safe? And how can we do it responsibly?

EDITOR'S NOTE: A previous version of this interview contained errors that have been corrected, below:

* When Dr. Noha Aboelata said the virus is "almost controlled within the white population" we didn't mention she was referring to HIV/AIDS, not COVID-19. We apologize for any confusion our error may have caused.

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The weather is warmer and many people are out protesting. But the coronavirus is still here and East Oakland remains a hot spot for COVID-19. Dr. Noha Aboelata of Roots Community Health Center is concerned that people are relaxing too fast.

While many organizers have told protesters to socially distance and wear masks, public health experts fear the Bay Area’s demonstrations could still fuel a rise in COVID-19 infections. That could be particularly devastating to the same black and brown communities most impacted by police brutality.

Since shelter in place began, health officials around the Bay Area have struggled to deal with packed parks and beaches. And then there are the crowds at Lake Merritt.

Gov. Newsom announced in-store shopping can resume. County health officials in parts of the Bay Area haven’t approved this yet. We visit Oakland’s Fruitvale District to hear non-essential small business owners’ concerns and how they’re surviving.

For many teens, body image is a big issue. It’s not a new one, but every generation faces new challenges. At one time, it was getting messages about body image from TV, movies or magazines. For today’s teenage girls, social media and the internet dominate the message of what it means to be pretty, and what size is ‘cute’.

The standoff between local lawmakers and San Francisco’s mayor around housing the homeless continued Tuesday as a group of city supervisors held a press conference to denounce the mayor’s efforts.

The novel coronavirus will not slow down the opioid epidemic that’s gripped the United States for decades. As the Bay Area shelters-in-place, a mobile health team in Contra Costa County continues to bring prescriptions for addiction medication directly to people who are homeless and even more isolated from services. 

Recently, Governor Gavin Newsom unveiled the six criteria that must be met before we can all return to life as we knew it before shelter-in-place. That includes things like closely monitoring communities for the coronavirus, tracking down cases and isolating people who have it, and building capacity in local hospitals to handle sudden surges.

COVID-19 has hit black communities hard — in many places, harder than the general population. Here in California, as of April 17, black residents were dying at twice the rate of white residents. In New York City, black people are dying more than any other racial group. 

The California Department of Public Health published a statewide report this weekend breaking down the number of Covid-19 cases at skilled nursing facilities. 

The coronavirus is on all of our minds, and for some, it brings back memories of another public health crisis, when the federal government was slow to respond and communities had to take care of each other: the AIDS epidemic.

Bay Area shelters and dog rescues are currently closed to the public. So, what’s happening with all the unhoused dogs? Turns out, shelters are getting creative. 

San Francisco plans to spend about $35 million to house first responders and homeless individuals in hotel rooms during the coronavirus crisis.

This week we’re publishing a series of interviews to learn more about the effect coronavirus has had on people globally. Each day, we'll check in with a reporter who works abroad, but is or has been affiliated with KALW.

The Bay Area has been applauded for its response to the coronavirus. Early shelter-in-place guidelines were put into place and experts say the curve is beginning to flatten. But there are big hurdles ahead.