- Food Access
Food Banks Struggling to Meet Demand Amid Financial Pressure: The Agriculture Department has halted millions of dollars worth of deliveries to food banks without explanation, according to food bank leaders in six states. For the Central California Food Bank, that means a loss of 500,000 pounds of expected food deliveries worth $850,000 just for April through July. Read more from Politico and The New York Times.
Stat: California Bill Aims to Limit Ultra-Processed Foods in School Lunches
A new bill from California would seek to remove ultra-processed foods deemed “particularly harmful” to physical and mental health from school lunches by 2032, creating the first legal definition of ultra-processed foods in the U.S. and tasking state scientists and University of California experts with determining which additives pose the most risk in the process. (Todd, 3/19)
- Medicaid
LAist: How Medi-Cal Works and How Potential Cuts Could Impact California: What You Need to Know
A budget proposal from House Republicans, if implemented, could mean cuts to Medicaid, according to analysts. California's Medicaid program is called Medi-Cal, and it provides healthcare for more than one third of Californians, according to the California Budget & Policy Center. With Medicaid and Medi-Cal in the news, LAist put together a Q&A about the program, how it's funded and who it serves. (Rainey, 3/20)
KFF Health News: Fact-Checking Medicaid Use Among Latinos
Spending cuts, immigration, and Medicaid are at the top of the Washington agenda. That climate provides fertile ground for misinformation and myths to multiply on social networks. Some of the most common are those surrounding immigrants, Latinos, and Medicaid. These claims include assertions that Latinos who use Medicaid, the federal-state program for low-income people and those with disabilities, “do not work” and exaggerations of the percentage of people with Medicaid who are Latinos. (Andalo and Rubio, 3/17)
Los Angeles Times: After Shutdown Rift, California Democrats Shift Budget Focus to Medicaid
After a bruising Washington battle that averted a government shutdown but broke their party in two last week, leading California Democrats are trying to project a unified front on a central issue in the next big budget fight: Medicaid. Republicans have already signaled their intention to cut hundreds of billions of dollars from the healthcare program for low-income residents, people with disabilities and other vulnerable groups in order to pay for tax cuts for the rich, the Democrats said — and must be stopped. (Rector, 3/19)
KFF Health News: Tribal Health Leaders Warn Medicaid Cuts Could Devastate Health Programs
As Congress mulls potentially massive cuts to federal Medicaid funding, health centers that serve Native American communities, such as the Oneida Community Health Center near Green Bay, Wisconsin, are bracing for catastrophe. That’s because more than 40% of the about 15,000 patients the center serves are enrolled in Medicaid. Cuts to the program would be detrimental to those patients and the facility, said Debra Danforth, the director of the Oneida Comprehensive Health Division and a citizen of the Oneida Nation. (Orozco Rodriguez, 3/19)
Newsom Requests Billions in Additional Funding to Close Medicaid Shortfall: Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration is asking for an extra $2.8 billion immediately for the state’s Medicaid program, Medi-Cal, on top of a recently proposed $3.44 billion loan. Read more from Politico and the Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times: California Office for Civil Rights Set to Close Due to Education Budget Cuts
When the Trump administration announced last week that about half the staff of the U.S. Department of Education were to be laid off, the slashing closed down the San Francisco regional branch of the Office for Civil Rights responsible for providing the state’s students protection from discrimination. The California office handled a bulging caseload of students, families and school staff: alleged unequal academic instruction for disabled students; allegations of campus sexual assault; claims of unfair discipline meted out to students of color; alleged bullying of LGBTQ+ students. (Kaleem and Blume, 3/17)
- Measles
Los Angeles Times: California School Vaccination Rates Decline, Leaving Some Students Vulnerable to Measles
Despite having some of the nation’s strictest school vaccination laws, California reported a decline last year in the share of kindergarten students who were immunized against measles, including in 16 counties where students no longer have herd immunity against one of the most contagious diseases. New data from the California Department of Public Health show that last year, 96.2% of California students in transitional kindergarten and kindergarten were vaccinated against measles, mumps and rubella in the 2023-24 school year, down from 96.5% the year before. And 93.7% of kindergarten students were up to date on all their immunizations, down from 94.1% in the same period the previous year. (Wiley, Nelson and Nakajima, 3/19)
CNN: Multistate Measles Outbreak Reaches 321 Cases
Three hundred and twenty-one cases have been reported in the ongoing measles outbreak in Texas, New Mexico and Oklahoma, the states said Tuesday. This is an increase of 25 cases since an update on Friday. (Mukherjee, 3/18)
- COVID
California’s Struggle Post-COVID: Chronic Absenteeism, Student Mental Health, and the Limits of Financial Investment
In March 2020, the Covid pandemic shut down schools, creating havoc, particularly among California’s most vulnerable children. Five years later, despite unprecedented funding from the state and federal governments, most districts continue to struggle to recover the ground they lost amid multiple challenges: more disgruntled parents and emotionally fragile students, a decline in enrollment, and uncertain finances. (Fensterwald, 3/20)
- Education Department
President Signs Executive Order Targeting the Closure of the Education Department
President Trump on Thursday instructed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin shutting down her agency, a task that cannot be completed without congressional approval and sets the stage for a seismic political and legal battle over the federal government’s role in the nation’s schools. Mr. Trump said Thursday that the department would continue to provide critical functions that are required by law, such as the administration of federal student aid, including loans and grants, as well as funding for special education and districts with high levels of student poverty. The department would also continue civil rights enforcement, White House officials said. Mr. Trump called those programs “useful functions,” and said they’re going to be “preserved in full.” Higher education leaders and advocacy groups immediately condemned the executive order. “See you in court,” said Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the trade union for educators. (Bender, Green and Blinder, 3/20)
How Cuts to the Education Department Could Impact Low-Income and Rural Schools
The administration has promised that "formula funding" for schools, which is protected by law, would be preserved. That includes flagship programs like Title I for high-poverty schools, and the Rural Education Achievement Program (REAP), which sends money to rural and low-income schools. But nearly all the statisticians and data experts who work in the office responsible for determining whether schools qualify for that money will soon be out of jobs, making it unclear how such grants would remain intact. (Mehta, 3/21)
Life Before IDEA: How School Was for Students with Disabilities
Equity in education was not the norm before the Department of Education. Jim Crow laws enforced segregation in public schooling, so white children and children of color couldn’t go to school together. Native American students were often sent to federally run boarding schools to assimilate the students into white culture. Girls were often taught different curriculums with fewer opportunities for higher education. Another key group was left out of education: students with disabilities. “Students with disabilities weren't educated in most cases,” explains Jack Schneider, professor on education policy and director of the Center for Education Policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “They were turned away, and their families were told that the school didn't have the facilities, didn't have the resources to serve their kids.” (Walker, 3/19)
What the Dismantling of the Education Department Means for Children with Disabilities
Amid the upheaval, one thing is clear: Any plan to shut down the Education Department — and, indeed, the cuts and layoffs that have already happened — will disproportionately hurt students with disabilities. That includes kids who receive special education, but also those in general education classrooms who get supports or accommodations to learn, from speech therapy to sign language interpreters to counseling. Any kid who has an Individualized Education Program (IEP) or 504 plan through their school could be affected by what’s going on at the Education Department. That’s a huge group of kids. As of 2022–2023, 7.5 million students — 15 percent of all those enrolled in public school — received special education or related services (like speech therapy) under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. The most common reasons were specific learning disabilities like dyslexia. (North, 3/13)
- Health Disparity
Trump Administration Purges Websites Across Federal Health Agencies
Dr. Fola May studies diseases of the digestive tract, and runs a lab at the University of California Los Angeles looking for ways to detect disease earlier in various groups. For that work, she says her lab is "very dependent" on federal funds from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Veterans Affairs. So as those agencies began canceling grants and programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion, or "DEI," May worried: Would work like hers, looking at health disparities also get swept in? (Noguchi, 3/21)
- AHRQ
HHS Faces Major Reorganization Amidst Workforce Cuts
A small government agency responsible for putting medical products and services to practical use and making health care safe is feared to be the latest target for mass layoffs by the Trump administration. The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, has about 300 employees and a budget of $369 million, which is about 0.02% of what the government spends on health care. But AHRQ hasn’t escaped the notice of the DOGE Service, which has been slashing agency payrolls and budgets across the government. (Wilkerson, 3/20)
- Birth Rates
US Births Increased Last Year, But Experts Don’t Expect It to Become a Trend
U.S. births rose slightly last year, but experts don’t see it as evidence of reversing a long-term decline. A little over 3.6 million births were reported for 2024, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention preliminary data. That’s 22,250 more than the final tally of 2023 U.S. births, which was released Tuesday. The 2024 total is likely to grow at least a little when the numbers are finalized, but another set of preliminary data shows overall birth rates rose only for one group of people: Hispanic women. (Stobbe, 3/18)
Rising Numbers of Older Women Having Their First Child as U.S. Fertility Rates Decline
Amid growing evidence of slowing fertility rates in the United States, a new report contained a pair of surprising details from two divergent age groups: A growing number of women older than 40 are having children and a record low number of teenagers are giving birth. The report, released earlier this month by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), showed that the U.S. fertility rate ... continued its decadeslong slide through 2023, with American women having an average of 1.62 children, compared to 1.66 in 2021 and 2022. (Varney, 3/18)
- LGBTQ+ Health
Study Finds Gender-Affirming Care May Reduce Depression Risk, but Access is Dwindling
Transgender adults who received gender-affirming hormone therapy had a significantly lower risk of moderate-to-severe depression over four years compared to those who did not receive such care, according to a new study published in the journal JAMA Network Open. ... The findings "support the mental health-promoting role of hormones" and their status as "a medically necessary treatment,” said Sari Reisner, an associate professor of epidemiology at University of Michigan School of Public Health and one of the study’s authors. (Gao, 3/17)