Public Health Institute

As the West’s wildfire season worsens, a new Human Rights Watch report looks at the toll it's taking on pregnancy and birth outcomes—and finds that wildfire smoke is becoming a mental health stressor for pregnant people. Authors also found that for low-income residents, information about smoke hazards—and solutions for how to protect themselves—are often out of reach:

PHI's Together Toward Equity Fellowship has opened applications for a second 2024-25 cohort. Join an informational session tomorrow 8/28 at 2:00 pm PT to learn more about this opportunity for emerging leaders at community-based organizations to grow in their professional development through coaching, capacity building, project-based leadership, peer networking, and access to subject matter experts. https://lnkd.in/gdFFn_xU

Tomorrow at 11 am PT, join PHI's Center for Connected Health Policy for a discussion on the potential impact of recent court cases on the development of telehealth policy and telehealth utilization. Panelists will discuss a recent court case where the Supreme Court decided in favor of the plaintiffs in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, overturning what was known as the “Chevron Doctrine” named for the 1984 Supreme Court Case Chevron USA, Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. Register: https://lnkd.in/dQbZcACH

PHI's Generation Next Humanitarian Fellowship Program builds a pathway for recent graduates of minority-serving institutions through firsthand placement at global humanitarian organizations, ultimately helping new leaders gain critical skills while increasing the diversity of professionals in the humanitarian sector. Read how the inaugural 2023 cohort engaged with hands-on and transformative experiences across the globe:

“For the unhoused, housing is medicine,” said Karthik Murali, head of public health at Akido Labs, which runs healthcare clinics in Southern and Central California and recently partnered to cover about 10% of the cost to build a new 16-unit affordable housing project in Bakersfield. “Providing stable housing can alleviate more health conditions than taking them to the ICU and the hospital and providing street medicine.”

A new interactive report from New America connects the dots between systemic racism and health disparities in maternal mortality, and highlights the stark inequities experienced by Black American women. Researchers point to the lack of competent care for Black mothers and their children, the racism present in American medical establishments—which causes their care needs to be dismissed or ignored by clinicians—gender inequity, economic disenfranchisement, and other structural and social determinants of health: https://lnkd.in/guTjDgH5

Since April 2023 — when protections that had blocked states from disenrolling Medicaid beneficiaries during the pandemic expired — states have disenrolled more than 24 million people whom they said no longer qualified or had failed to renew coverage. This Medicaid “unwinding” led to fears that the number of people without insurance would spike. But it also coincided with moves in more than a dozen states to expand health coverage for lower-income people, including children, pregnant women, and the incarcerated:

PHI’s Getting it Right from the Start releases annual scorecards to evaluate the policies passed by California cities and counties that allow cannabis sales, rating them on a 100-point scale. Santa Cruz County—which scored 42 out of 100 in 2023—is working to improve their local policies to better protect youth, public health and equity, and using the scorecards as a guiding tool in their collective process: https://lnkd.in/gAzw5Rhg

Earlier this month marked one year since the deadliest U.S. wildfires displaced over ten thousand residents of Lahaina, many of whom are still without stable or permanent housing. While disaster housing experts say the effort has been unprecedented in its cooperation among federal, state, county and philanthropic organizations toward keeping the community together, local leaders have long worried the islands are losing their culture as housing costs fuel an exodus of Native Hawaiian and other local-born residents, now exacerbated by the fires.“You start to change the fabric of Hawaii,” said Kuhio Lewis, chief executive of the nonprofit Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, which is involved in housing survivors. “That’s what’s at stake, is the future of who Hawaii is.” https://lnkd.in/gWGSFJqr

Disinvested neighborhoods across the U.S. are experiencing severe impacts from climate change, but new federal funding for sustainability and resilience offers a significant collaboration opportunity for health and community development organizations to work alongside community members to take action. Learn more in the latest Crosswalk Essay from PHI's Build Healthy Places Network, exploring how innovative partnerships are transforming communities: https://lnkd.in/gDvjsdjA