San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/category/health/)
On average in the U.S., more than 1 in 3 women, and 1 in 4 men, will experience physical violence, rape or stalking by an intimate partner, according to the National Domestic Violence Hotline. Nevertheless, when victims turn to family court for protection from their abusers, they often face skeptical judges. And that’s especially true when the abuse doesn’t leave a mark.
The AIDS Memorial Quilt was unfurled recently in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park for its largest display in a decade, marking the start of a campaign to educate the public about a disease that, since 1981, has infected 1.2 million people nationwide.
While new HIV infections in the United States have been in decline, the disease continues to take a disproportionate toll on racial and ethnic minorities, men who identify as gay or bisexual, and other men who have sex with men. The highest rates of new infections and numbers of untreated people are found in the South.
Organizers estimated that 20,000 people visited the San Francisco quilt display June 11 and 12. This fall, sections of the quilt will be taken on a tour of the South for “large displays in city centers, as well as smaller displays in rural, non-metro areas,” said Dafina Ward, executive director of the Southern AIDS Coalition. New names will be added to the 35-year-old quilt during the tour, she said.
After two years of focusing on COVID-19 pandemic response, the Biden Administration is renewing attention to other ongoing public health challenges, including HIV and AIDS. The response is led by Harold Phillips, director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy. The San Francisco Public Press spoke with Phillips this month when he came to San Francisco to participate in events tied to the display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in Golden Gate Park.
Over the past several months, health care providers have been warning San Francisco officials that while the city was focused on fighting COVID-19, rates of HIV infection and related illnesses were creeping in the wrong direction.
From the very beginning, and throughout the HIV epidemic, which began in 1981, San Francisco led the way in prevention, care and treatment that came to be recognized around the world.
The key to addressing San Francisco’s overdose crisis, say community activists and medical experts in the city, is harm reduction. That’s an approach that acknowledges not all drug users will achieve abstinence, and that focuses on keeping them safe and alive if they’re not ready or able to quit. Drug overdoses killed more people in San Francisco than did COVID-19 in the first two years of the pandemic — 711 deaths in 2020, and 645 in 2021.
In San Francisco, drug overdoses killed more people than did COVID-19 in the first two years of the pandemic — 711 deaths in 2020, and 645 in 2021. These figures are troubling, even without counting nonfatal overdoses and other suffering associated with this crisis. While fentanyl is often cited for the rapid increase, many factors contribute to this trend both in San Francisco and nationally.
A bill introduced Thursday in the California Assembly would extend eviction protections by three months for tenants who have applied for emergency rent relief related to the coronavirus pandemic. The catch: To qualify, tenants who haven’t yet asked for help would need to submit applications by the end of March, giving them less than a week to get their requests in the queue.
Dr. Kim Rhoads, who has been working on community-led responses to the pandemic, says what should drive decision making and risk mitigation is simply how much virus is in the community.
Residents of San Francisco’s Treasure Island suffered half a dozen power outages in the three months after electrical upgrades were completed this July. That’s just the latest episode in what’s been an ongoing problem for the island.
As a judge in Los Angeles was deciding to end pop singer Britney Spears’ conservatorship, a small group of mental health activists staged a demonstration in front of Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital. Many said they want to the practice of conservatorship to be abolished.
Thousands of San Franciscans who borrowed money to pay rent during the pandemic are stuck with that debt, making them worse off than those who let the bills lapse.
Federal relief funds cover only unpaid housing expenses. That leaves tenants vulnerable if they made good-faith efforts to pay those costs by taking on thousands of dollars of debt to credit card companies, payday lenders, relatives or friends — especially if they later seek different housing.
