A new bill introduced in the California Senate by Senator Melissa Hurtado would grow the medical provider pool in rural regions where people have less access to health insurance by formalizing a pre-med pathway from the California Community Colleges system to medical schools. Reporter Cassidy Taylor has the details…
SB-40 would establish four “Regional Hubs of Health Care Opportunity” that would provide regional students of color with support such as internships, scholarships and opportunities to shadow medical professionals – all within poorer, rural regions where medical help is needed the most. The bill would create the California Medicine Scholars Program, a 5-year pilot program commencing January 1, 2023, as well as require the pilot program to establish a regional pipeline program for community college students to pursue premedical training and enter medical school. The bill is an effort to address the shortage of primary care physicians in California and the widening
December 30, 2020
Merriam-Webster’s word of the year is pandemic, with malarkey a distant runner-up. What else could it be? Like a strangler fig, Covid-19 enveloped all aspects of life and education in California. It uprooted families, turned bedrooms into classrooms, put friendships on ice. The comforting, daily rhythms of school interrupted are now measured in learning loss and screen time. There was other big news, too monumental protests, election defeats, new college leaders. But most of 2020, we concentrated on and tried to make sense of a virus that disrupted and transformed California schools and colleges. Here are the highlights of what we wrote.
After last month’s defeat of a California ballot measure to revive affirmative action in higher education admissions and hiring, other ways to increase diversity among faculty and students at the state’s colleges and universities are moving front and center.
Disappointed supporters of Proposition 16 are adjusting to the reality that they failed to overturn the state’s 24-year-old ban on affirmative action. But they, along with some opponents of Prop 16, also advocate for alternatives that could bolster the enrollment and graduation rates of Black, Latino and Native American students at the state’s higher education campuses without violating the law that forbids any racial preferences. Proposition 16’s loss should propel expansion of efforts long underway and the start of new ones, focusing especially on low-income students and those who are in the first generation of their families to attend college, they say.
California may have reached its breaking point when it comes to the amount of money it has had to spend in fighting wildfires.
Especially when it comes to the lack of funding to prevent those wildfires â leading to that much costlier scenario of fighting the wildfires in the long run.
The state realized its worst wildfire year ever in 2020 with estimates that as much as $3 billion was spent to fight wildfires in the state. It s also estimated the negative economic impact on the state when it comes to the wildfires will be as much as $10 billion.
So it s expected when the State Legislature begins the new year on January 11 it and Governor Gavin Newsom will finally take serious action when it comes to wildfire prevention and mitigation. A coalition representing numerous organizations recently took action to make sure that happens.
Five west coast student organizations joined the UC Student Association in sending a letter to the Biden-Harris administration’s higher education team.