The number of registered nurses entering the workforce has more than doubled in the past decade, according to a national study released today. California is seeing a similar trend, with some regions experiencing a surplus.
From the 1980s to the 2000s, the number of young people going into nursing schools plummeted — both nationally and in California. To reverse the trend, the government launched recruitment efforts to to spur more people to go into nursing.
It looks like they did a pretty good job. The number of registered nurses nationwide skyrocketed in the past decade, according to a study released in today’s Health Affairs. Recent grads aged 23-26 increased by 62 percent. There hasn’t been a spike in nursing grads like this in the U.S. since the 1970s.
More than two million adults in California say they need mental health care, but about half of them aren’t getting it, according to a report released Wednesday by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.
California mandates health insurance companies provide equal care for mental and physical health problems. But mental health services are often inadequate–or they don’t exist at all, says lead author David Grant.
Health care workers want the state to investigate Kaiser Permanente’s mental health services. The National Union of Health Workers says it found Kaiser violates state rules for timely access to mental health care
Calls for the chancellor of UC Davis to resign are growing louder amid the controversy over campus police pepper-spraying peaceful demonstrators. One student’s online petition now has more than 76,000 signers.
Pepper spray is legal for use in most states by anyone over age eighteen who is not a convicted felon. It is frequently being used during Occupy protests nationwide. We’re told it hurts (it look likes it hurts), but what exactly are the health effects? And what’s the best way to treat it?
Health advocates heaved a sign of relief this month over a new report showing that the obesity epidemic may be leveling off. In the past five years, the percentage of overweight and obese kids in California dropped by one percent. Not a screaming success, but a lot better than the gains seen since the 80s … or even in the past decade. The rate of overweight kids in California increased by six percent between 2001 to 2004 alone.
A local researcher has found that veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are twice as likely as other vets to stop taking their medication for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Thirty-eight percent of California children are overweight — a slight decline from about five years ago. But the numbers aren’t dropping in the Bay Area.
California is setting up an insurance exchange as part of the federal health care overhaul. Millions of Californians will be eligible for government subsidies to buy coverage in the online marketplace. The authors of a report out today want to make sure African-Americans, Latinos and other minorities don’t get left out.