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Amid Wildfire Trauma, L.A. County Dispatches Mental Health Workers to Evacuees

KFF Health News

. “I could see people standing on the roof, watering it, trying to protect it from the fire, and they just looked so hopeless,” said Ramirez, a community outreach worker with the Pasadena Public Health Department. However, with each extreme weather event, the county has improved its support for evacuees, she said.

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The Colorado Psychedelic Mushroom Experiment Has Arrived

KFF Health News

The National Institute on Drug Abuse , part of the National Institutes of Health, says the risk of mental health problems caused by ingesting mushrooms in a supervised clinical setting is low, but may be higher outside of a clinical setting. Kennedy Jr. said in a social media post last year, before his nomination as U.S.

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How the ACA changed health insurance for the better

Association of Health Care Journalists

health insurance system. Fifteen years ago, when Congress passed the ACA (officially the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ), journalists and consumers recognized that the law provided Americans with health insurance choices that were previously nonexistent. Cut the number of Americans without health insurance.

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Unraveling an oral health mystery leads to rare autoimmune diagnosis

NC Health News

. “My mouth burst into blisters everywhere,” Letsky-Anderson told NC Health News in a recent phone interview. ” Letsky-Anderson’s journey is illustrative of a growing refrain in the oral health and broader medical community: the mouth is a window into overall health. Even drinking water was painful.”

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Crackdown on Homeless Encampments Raises Public Health Questions

KFF Health News

As states turn to the health-care system to help address homelessness, experiments with housing and other social services aimed at getting people healthier and off the streets are running up against new, aggressive crackdowns — with some cities ratcheting up enforcement of existing anticamping laws and others passing new restrictions.

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California Falling Short of Enrollment Goal as Mental Health Courts Roll Out Statewide

KFF Health News

California’s new initiative to compel treatment for some of the state’s most severely mentally ill residents — many of whom are living on the streets — is falling short of its initial objectives. Local health representatives say they’re juggling the governor’s initiatives as he demands results to reduce homelessness.

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Listen: NPR and KFF Health News Explore How Racism and Violence Hurt Health

KFF Health News

KFF Health News Midwest correspondent Cara Anthony and Emily Kwong, host of NPR’s podcast “ Shortwave ,” talk about Black families living in the aftermath of lynchings and police killings in their communities. Hear the full podcast episodes Anthony and Kwong reference from “Silence in Sikeston” here.