Category: Health

LWV hosts forum on California health-care reform

Join the League of Women Voters Davis Area on Wednesday, Nov. 18 from 7:00 to 8:30 p.m. for a free virtual voter-education health-care forum, “The Future of State-Based Health Reform in California.”

With health-care reform back in the news, the event will consider what California can implement a state-based financing approach to a system that provides universal care, controls costs and improves outcomes.

Dr. William Hsiao, an internationally known health economist at the Harvard T. H. Chan School Public Health, will give a 25-minute presentation on the health, economic and political background for reform and his views of how to move ahead with a single-payer plan in California.

Cindy Young, a leader in the California single-payer movement with more than 30 years of experience as a policy analyst for organized labor, will comment on Dr. Hsiao’s views and offer her own perspective.

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November 13, 2020
Leaf blower ban – contact City Council today

By Todd Edelman

City of Davis people… why has there not been a ban on use of leaf blowers in the nearly month-long wildfire fallout event?

Why do feel the need to remove every leaf and bit of dirt from our landscapes?

Why do we allow ourselves to send dust clouds and noise to our neighbors when we might not even know their names?

Why do some falsely portray a ban as an assault on a largely Latino workforce?

WRITE the City Council NOW!

Agenda – September 15, 2020

Item 6 (8:15)
Natural Resources Commission Recommendation on Updating/Strengthening Leaf Blower Ordinance and Request for City Council Direction (Public Works Utilities & Operations Director Stan Gryczko/Management Analyst Adrienne Heinig)

Recommendation:

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September 15, 2020
League of Women Voters offers look at health-care reform options

Uncertain about the difference between a single-payer system and a public option linked to the Affordable Care Act?

The League of Women Voters Davis Area will offer an educational program on Zoom from 7 to 8 p.m. Oct. 1 to help voters understand and compare the two choices. “Health-care Reform: Demystifying Future Health-care Options” aims to help voters better understand candidate positions in upcoming presidential debates and election forums.

The online event will feature two speakers: Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, a statewide health-care consumer advocacy coalition, and Jodi Reid, executive director at California Alliance for Retired Americans, a statewide senior advocacy organization working to improve quality of life for seniors.

Speakers also will discuss the challenges Yolo County residents and providers have faced before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To help speakers address questions from the public, please submit them in advance to komalh@lwvdavisarea.org. Audience members will be able to submit questions at the forum as well.

Use the following link to register for the event: https://bit.ly/351CSuc. A Zoom link will be sent two days before the event.

The League of Women Voters Davis Area is a non-partisan organization committed to voter education and voter registration. To learn more, go to www.lwvdavisarea.org.

September 13, 2020
Ongoing safety problems with Pacifico
The following email was sent to the City Council on late Tuesday evening and is reprinted here with the permission of the author.

Hello Mayor Partida, Council Members Lee, Frerichs, Carson, and Arnold, City Manager Webb and Assistant City Manager Feeney,

My comment to the City Council regarding Pacifico didn't make it through tonight. Nevertheless, I briefly want to remind all of you of the situation in our South Davis neighborhood.

The acts of crime and intimidation are continuous and not getting better. In fact, random hostile acts of intimidation have increased in number and the act of crime itself has increased in severity.

The most recent incidents that have compromise safety and well-being include:
- attempted rape
- prostitution in the parking lot
- theft and intimidation to Pacifico residents by Pacifico residents
- loitering combined with heavy consumption of alcohol on the bike path and near homes
- drug deals and coercion in the parking lot
- bb rifle shooting on the green belt by a known violent and dangerous criminal who frequents Pacifico
- a dumpster fire that was suffocating and threatened my family and home.
Those who currently have their safety and well being compromised due to the Use at Pacifico include:
- my family and visiting family and friends
- neighbors, families, and friends in homes (Oakshade West Neighborhood Association and beyond)
- neighbors, families, and students in apartments/duplexes (Octave and Sharp and Flats, Avalon, Brisa)
- neighbors and Pacifico residents, including disadvantaged women, children and elders – some of our most vulnerable.
These dangers affect everyone in this neighborhood. Many horrible things have happened and continue to happen.

I respectfully request that a plan for Pacifico be of top priority and the subject be put on the long range calendar. Thank you.

Gratefully yours,

Tracy De Wit
August 27, 2020
Valley Clean Energy donates face masks to RISE Inc.

Angel Barajas, a member of the Valley Clean Energy board of directors, left; and Tessa Tobar, center, program and community engagement specialist for VCE; present some of the 500 washable face masks to Tico Zendejas, executive director of RISE Inc.

(From press release) Valley Clean Energy (VCE), the local electricity provider for Yolo County and the cities of Woodland and Davis, is doing its part to keep local residents safe and healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

VCE purchased 500 high-quality, washable and U.S.-made face masks and donated them to RISE Inc., a nonprofit organization that serves the Latinx community and has organized the delivery of social services to western Yolo County for more than 30 years.

Woodland City Councilman Angel Barajas, a member of the VCE board of directors, said RISE was chosen to receive the gift because it “does an incredible job servicing residents in the rural Yolo County region.”

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August 11, 2020
Sutter Davis Hospital Farmers Market celebrates the big 1-0

(From press release) Call it a decade of deliciousness or a tradition of nutrition. The Sutter Davis Hospital Farmers Market celebrates 10 years of bringing farm-fresh produce and local foods to employees and visitors on Thursday, Aug. 6, as the nation celebrates National Farmers Market Week.

“Fruit and vegetables are foundational to healthy living – and when they’re farm-fresh and locally grown? That’s good for everyone,” said Rachael McKinney, CEO of Sutter Davis Hospital. “In our simplest form, Sutter Health is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to health and wellbeing – both inside and outside the walls of our hospitals. The weekly market at Sutter Davis has easily become one of my favorite days of the week, where I can stock up on fresh produce and local items for my family, as well as interact with the community, our employees and patients. We are proud of this partnership and the benefit to the community it provides.”

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August 5, 2020
Looking for leadership to do the right thing this time around

COVID-19 is all about concentration

By Roberta Millstein

We were flattening the curve. We were staying at home. We were doing the right thing. Then our leaders – county, state, and federal – blinked. They caved to pressure from the business community to “open up.” And they opened up even where it made no sense to open up: bars, restaurants, churches, movie theaters. Now the prevalence of COVID-19 is far worse in our region than it ever was.

Here is what our leaders should have said to the business community: “If we open up, cases will spike and we will have to shut down again. Not only will it be costly to ramp up only to have to close down again (especially for restaurants), but also, it will delay an economic recovery even further.” In other words, they should have led.

Instead, they somehow expected that families and friends from different households wouldn’t get together even though people were getting together in bars. And now they blame citizens instead of blaming themselves for putting out a mixed and inconsistent message.

There are some sensible ways to open up, but they require paying attention to “The Six C’s” (Note: I have modified this from others):

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July 16, 2020
Responsibility in the age of Covid-19

County's decision shifts the responsibility from government to individuals

By Robin Rainwater

I've been contemplating the rapidly shifting landscape in Yolo County heavily this week. Not just Yolo County, but in California as a whole. Over the last several months, the Covid-19 pandemic brings me to my data roots and plagues my change management heart. I've spent time using data to influence healthcare policy and over the last few months, I have immersed myself in the data on many levels. I have been helping people in my community understand the data and data trends so that they can make informed decisions for themselves, their families, and communities. I've felt an increasing need to inform more people as I've watched things beginning to unravel because of the balance between economy and preservation of life. A balance that is precariously tipping in a direction that frightens me.

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May 27, 2020
Missing my DAM workouts and my DAM teammates

Taking a break between sets. That's me with the water bottle.

By Roberta Millstein

I started swimming with Davis Aquatic Masters, better known as DAM, shortly after I moved to Davis in 2007. I was thrilled to have coach-led sets and a group of people to train with – so much more fun, and ultimately much more productive, than trying to swim on one’s own.

I quickly fell into a routine and decided that, rather than constantly reciting to myself all the many physical and psychological benefits of swimming, I would just understand that swimming three times a week was A Thing That I Would Do. Period. Only the most serious of reasons would cause me to miss a workout. And I stuck with that. Travel, serious illness, a grad student’s exam that couldn’t be scheduled at any other time – those were about the only things that would cause me to miss a workout.

Until, of course, we finally started to realize the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic. On March 16, DAM strongly recommended that seniors stop going to workouts. I watched several people leave sadly. It was an eerie, surreal practice. I remember I went home and said to my partner sadly, “I think that might have been my last DAM workout for a while.”[1] And indeed, by the end of the day, DAM had sent out an email cancelling workouts for everyone. Even though the County and State official stay-at-home orders wouldn’t come for a few more days, that was really the beginning for me.

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May 20, 2020
Why the Bakersfield Doctors Should Not Be Believed

By Robert Canning

Two physician-entrepreneurs who own a string of urgent care clinics in Bakersfield claim the data they have collected from testing for coronavirus proves that the current “stay-at-home” and physical distancing orders need to end and that COVID-19 is “just like the flu.” Their YouTube video interview from last week has been viewed more than five million times. It has garnered attention from the likes of Elon Musk who tweeted “Docs make good points” and Fox News host Laura Ingraham who played excerpts Monday night. But their claims have sparked wide controversy from experts in academia who say their assumptions are flawed, their sample biased, and their extrapolations “implausible.” The Kern County health office has stated it does not agree with their claims. And yesterday their original video was removed for what YouTube says are violations of its “community guidelines.”

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April 28, 2020