MORE ON: children

Under a budget-paring plan crafted by Gov. Jerry Brown and approved by lawmakers, 870,000 children who were covered by the Healthy Families program will be moved to Medi-Cal in phases starting Jan. 1. But it remains unclear whether a health plan serving Sacramento, Fresno, San Diego and Los Angeles... + read more

It was recess in the Tenderloin, and students from San Francisco City Academy swarmed the playground at Father Alfred E. Boeddeker Park.  They slid down the rusting slide and hung from monkey bars held aloft by old beams that shed slivers of wood and green paint chips. After... + read more

Obese children face risks to their emotional and social well-being that can harm their academic performance, new research suggests. The study, published today in the journal Child Development, found obese elementary school children performed worse on math tests than their peers... + read more

Fresno Unified School District Superintendent Michael Hanson said he never told a special education student's parent that he would have the district pay his legal fees if he fired his attorney. Hanson spoke to California Watch on May 4 – the day it published a story ... + read more

Tobacco marketing is targeting California's low-income and African American youth, according to researchers who examined advertising throughout the state. Academic researchers funded by the state’s Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program found that there was greater... + read more

Obesity is still on the rise among California students, but after years of prevention measures in schools, the rate is slowing, new research shows. More than 35 percent of students were overweight or obese in 2008, up from one-third in 2003. That's an average annual increase of 0.33... + read more

According to a recent analysis of medical costs in the research journal Obesity, California spends an estimated $15.2 billion on obesity-related health problems each year – the most in the country. The California Department of Public Health’s Obesity Prevention Plan seeks to... + read more