News of the Month — November 2023
NUHW members Karen Eshelman and Claire Eustace from Hospice East Bay and Jessica Williams from Providence Hospice Sonoma County are quoted in a Los Angeles Times column about the growing unionization efforts at hospices. NUHW President Sal Rosselli said the corporatization of what had been primarily a faith-based, community-oriented, charitable industry has led to “an increasing drive to focus on the bottom line as opposed to providing adequate care or taking care of healthcare workers.”
Our recent joint-effort with nurses to save the birthing center at Petaluma Valley Hospital was highlighted in a CalMatters story about the sharp decrease in maternity wards throughout the state. Twelve counties, most of them rural, do not have any hospitals delivering babies. Latino and low-income communities have been hit hardest by the closures.
NUHW member Wesley Moore Jr., a patient care support specialist, was quoted in a Sacramento Bee story about an info picket earlier this month at the Sutter Center for Psychiatry in Sacramento. Fox-40 also covered the picket.
Capital &Main featured Hospice East Bay in its recent story about hospice workers increasingly choosing to unionize and then wrote a follow-up story when Hospice East Bay workers voted overwhelmingly to join NUHW.
Hazel Hawkins Memorial Hospital announced a new two-year contract extension with Anthem Blue Cross. The contract, TV station KION546 reported, will go into effect on January 1, 2024. The hospital is still searching for a partner or a buyer for the hospital. Most recently, San Benito County sent a letter of intent in October to manage the hospital.
It’s long been known that Black children are underdiagnosed for ADHD compared with white peers. A Penn State report published in Psychiatry Research in September studied the extent of the gap by following more than 10,000 elementary students nationwide from kindergarten to fifth grade through student assessments and parent and teacher surveys. The researchers estimated the odds that Black students got diagnosed with the neurological condition were 40 percent lower than for white students, with all else being equal — including controlling for economic status, student achievement, behavior, and executive functioning, reported California Healthline.