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 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.
Oakland police say both criminal and internal affairs investigators are looking into the injury to Scott Olsen, an Iraq War veteran allegedly hit in the head with a police projectile during last night’s clash between officers and protesters. Olsen is currently listed in critical condition.
Apple founder Steve Jobs died at the age of 56 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer.
Pregnant women who eat more fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and eat fewer foods high in things like saturated fats and sugar, have a lower risk of giving birth to babies with specific birth defects.
That’s the takeaway from a study released today by Stanford University School of Medicine Department of Pediatrics. The study showed pregnant women with healthy eating habits are less likely to have babies with neural tube defects (malformations of the brain or spine) and orofacial clefts (such as cleft lip or cleft palate).