Claudia Angulo stands with her four children outside their home in Orange Cove, California. Angulo says her son Isaac was exposed to toxic levels of the pesticide chlorpyrifos while she was pregnant with him. Ali Budner / Capital Public Radio
Link: http://www.capradio.org/articles/2017/08/14/continued-battle-over-pesticide-raises-questions-about-role-of-science-in-regulation/
Photo: Andrew Nixon
Link: http://www.capradio.org/articles/2017/07/11/ditching-diesel-sacramento-schools-test-drive-electric-buses/
Photo: Andrew Nixon
Link: http://www.capradio.org/articles/2017/06/15/plumas-schools-weigh-response-to-opioid-epidemic/
And here's live program, Insight, where Ali talks to Beth Ruyak about her reporting along with guest James Wilson: http://www.capradio.org/news/insight/2017/06/15/insight-061517a/
Corrie Ordway and her daughter, Ellie. Photo: Ali Budner
Managing depression with medicine during pregnancy puts women in a bind, but experts say some risks are better than others.
Story link: http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/thepulse
Link to full 1 hour show on WHYY's The Pulse about making tough decisions: http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/thepulse/item/100804-rock-and-a-hard-place
Corrie Ordway and her daughter Eleanor. Photo by Andrew Nixon / Capital Public Radio
A pregnant mother has a lot of choices to make. Hospital, birthing center, or home birth? natural birth or epidural? Breastfeed or formula? Co-sleeper, sidecar, or separate crib? But a pregnant woman with depression has one more huge decision to make for her health and the health of the fetus.
More and more women of childbearing age in the United States are being diagnosed with and treated for depression. And pregnancy itself can come with an increased risk for serious mood disorders. At this point little is known about the effects of antidepressants on an unborn fetus. But many healthcare providers agree - the consequences of going off medication can be disastrous.
Photo source: https://www.sfdph.org/dph/comupg/oservices/medSvs/SFGH/pediatricAsthmaClin/facesAsthma.asp
With President Obama's support, precision medicine is gaining ground. A new $215 million initiative plans to study a million patients nationwide to advance understanding of how to target specific treatments to specific individuals based on their type of disease, lifestyle, environment, and DNA. But there are questions about who will benefit and who may be left out. People of color have historically been left out of clinical research. So can precision medicine bring them into the fold? For some diseases, like asthma, it may be critical to do so. This is a story I reported for The Pulse at WHYY in Philadelphia.
Photo: Denisse Rojas
Getting in to medical school is hard enough. If you're undocumented, it's even harder. But recipients of Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) are pushing open the doors of med school. This piece first aired on NPR's Latino USA.
Darwin Velasquez at Skyline Community College in San Bruno, CA. Photo: Ali Budner
In a California Healthline report by Ali Budner, experts discussed the possible pitfalls and promise of SB 4, a recently introduced legislative bill that would provide health coverage to the uninsured. The effort comes on the heels of two major shifts in low-income programs -- the expansion of Medi-Cal to include millions more Californians, and the recent federal executive action that extends temporary work status and other benefits to millions of the undocumented immigrants in America, including the roughly 1.5 million undocumented in California.
Photo: Ali Budner
Since the nuclear disaster in 2011, Fukushimans have been grappling with the question: Is our food safe to eat? Fear and Eating in Fukushima examines how Fukushima residents answer this basic question by walking the line between trust and fear.
Lesley Philips and Sharena Thomas of The People's Community Medics. Photo: Sara LaFleur-Vetter.
The Race To An Emergency traces the path of a 911 call in Oakland, California. As we explore the inner-workings of this vital public service, we also aim to answer a bigger question about the emergency response system: does it serve all Oaklanders equally? The Race To An Emergency was honored with the 2014 National Edward R. Murrow award for best radio news documentary in a large market. It also won several other national and local awards.
This story has it's own website home, with photos, data maps, backstory, awards, and other great resources: www.theracetoanemergency.org
Itavili Lopez works with Food Commons Fresno
This is a piece I reported over several months and produced with support from the UC Berkeley 11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship. Thanks to my fellowship colleagues and editors for all their support and insight along the way. Thanks to all the people I interviewed for this story. And thanks to Valley Public Radio for airing it. Hunger and food access disparities in the middle of our nation's most productive agricultural land have to be addressed.
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Hundreds of different food crops are raised in and around Fresno County. But many of those who live and work nearby have little access to the fruits of their own landscape. In fact, more people go hungry here in the Fresno metropolitan area than almost anywhere else in the entire nation. It’s this not-so-modest problem that Food Commons Fresno wants to solve — starting with their Community Supported Agriculture (or CSA) brand, OOOOBY, or Out Of Our Own Backyards. Their vision is to support smaller farmers, and get more fresh produce into the area’s food deserts. And nine months in, they’re making some progress. But their goals are ambitious. And the basic cost of food for those who need it most, may still be too high. Listen to hear more.
Image: Kip Piper / www.piperreport.com
Several leaders in the field of health IT make predictions for 2016 in this New Year's report for iHealthBeat.
After reporting this audio story for California Healthline on California's precision medicine initiative, I can say this:
Precision medicine seems to be about using our rapidly developing knowledge of genomics (DNA) to improve and personalize health care delivery. If we know a patient's exact DNA landscape - what genes are turned on or turned off - and we know the genetic specifics of their disease or pathogen, then we can tailor both diagnoses and treatment for that individual person and their condition.
There's a national initiative to study precision medicine and a statewide one. For this report, I focused on what's happening in California. I talked to some interesting doctors, researchers, and one mother whose teenage son survived a rare form of encephalitis thanks to a new DNA-based diagnostic test.
An old family friend who is a physician recently told me he wonders if precision medicine is too pie-in-the-sky right now. Just another set of lofty promises for hi-tech health fixes? On the other hand, he told me, if the catch-all diagnostic test that saved that teenager's life could really be developed for use on a large scale... that would be a game-changer. I guess we'll have to watch and see.
I just finished a short report for iHealthBeat about the challenges medical schools face in introducing students to electronic health record systems.
And then there's this news!!
I've been doing some interesting reporting for the California Healthcare Foundation. This one is an audio story up on the website, iHealthBeat. It's about all those apps folks are using now to monitor their own health, fitness, and medical data. And what privacy questions arise when we voluntarily enter so much personal information into our smart phones.