Center in the News

There's a lot of encouraging news these days in the study and treatment of lung cancer ... But there's bad news, too.

"According to the 2022 results of the California Health Interview Survey, 33.1% of Kern County adult residents who have ever smoked, reported that they smoke every day," said Jasmine Ochoa, health equity officer at the Kern County Department of Public Health.

That's more than twice the rate in the state as a whole, she said.

"I am a 100% believer in strong gun control,” Berkeley-based photographer Judy Dater told me in September shortly before the opening of The Gun Next Door, her latest exhibition at Oakland Photo Workshop ... "We really need to understand why so many people in this country feel they need to have one or two or several hundred.”

Millions of Californians live with guns in their homes: 5.2 million, to be exact, or 17.6% of all adults in the state, according to a 2021 survey conducted by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research. 

New information from UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research shows that among California adults who tested positive for COVID, those with the lowest incomes were more than twice as likely as those with the highest incomes to have experienced long COVID — in this case, symptoms of the virus that last for two months or more. The long COVID figure for those at the lowest income levels was a staggering 50%, versus a 29% average for all adults and 22% for those at the highest income levels.

According to recent reports, there's an increasing number of baby boomers giving marijuana a whirl. There's a pretty even split of older marijuana consumers (52.3% female and 47.7% male) according to the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS).

Gen Z teens and young adults are having less sex than past generations and want less sexually explicit content shown in the media they watch, according to a study by the Center for Scholars & Storytellers at UCLA ... UCLA has been tracking youth behavioral trends for nearly a decade through its annual California Health Interview Survey, the most extensive state health report in the country.

Dozens of area residents recently participated in a one-day walk-in vaccine clinic in Pacoima offering free basic health screenings, flu shots and the newest COVID-19 vaccine. Getting vaccinated may also help reduce the prevalence of “long COVID,” which is described as lingering or long-term symptoms of COVID following an infection. According to data from the 2022 California Health Interview Survey, nearly 1 in 3 adults in California who have had COVID-19 experienced symptoms of long COVID. 

Although racism has been declared a public health emergency by many areas across the U.S., eliminating it is another, much more complex matter, according to experts at Health Affairs. 1 in 4 low-income Asian Americans in California experienced food insecurity, according to a study that analyzed data from the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS). It included data for low-income AAPIs, including Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, South Asian, and Vietnamese, from 2011 to 2020.

An increasing number of low-income, working-age Californians are facing challenges accessing nutritious and affordable food, as per a study released by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced restrictions and shutdowns, health care providers turned to telehealth. The result was a surge in the use of telehealth by Californians to access care, according to a new study by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

An increasing number of low-income, working-age Californians say they're struggling to access nutritious and affordable food, according to a study released Wednesday by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.