(November 7, 2012)

Widely used chemical pesticides that boost agricultural production and assist in landscape maintenance, may also have serious harmful impacts on developing children.

Emily Marquez, Ph.D.For obvious reasons, it's not possible to conduct studies on these questions with human subjects. But biologist Emily Marquez says the animal-based studies that have been done have a strong track record as accurate predictors of the effects the chemicals have on both children and adults.

 You can download the full report, A Generation in Jeopardy, How pesticides are undermining our children's health and intelligence, here.

(Setember 3, 2012)

California's new Health Insurance Exchange, a key part of the federal health care reform act, is preparing to rebrand itself.

(July 3, 2012)

Companies that have more than 100 employees, and smaller businesses with 50 or less, will feel the effects of ObamaCare differently. But both groups stand to benefit, and most are looking forward to those changes.

Even before the Supreme Court's decision was rendered, health officials in California were hard at work developing the health insurance marketplace currently known as the California Exchange. Bud Martin, Senior Vice President with Well Fargo Insurance Services in Petaluma, says there are still a lot of details to be finalized, but the concept should work.

One of the biggest obstacles to implementing the Affordable Care Act in California, Martin adds, will be getting all of the participants to be able to efficiently share information with each other.

Echoing what business leaders across the country have said, Cynthia Murray of the North Bay Leadership Council says her members are relieved to have a greater measure of certainty regarding how they deal with providing health insurance for their workforces. For many, she adds, the lingering unknowns were proving to be a real hardship.

(March 14, 2012)

Electronic Health Records are a new technology that will soon be nearly universal in the United States. But a watchdog group says they need some fine tuning first.

Electronic Health Records are being strongly promoted as something every patient should have within the next few years. But as this new technology becomes widespread, there are some important ideas and functions it needs to incorporate. Some of these have been enumerated in the nine principles for electronic health information exchange that have been developed by Consumers Union and a host of other organizations concerned with patients rights, consumers rights and civil rights. Mark Savage, a senior attorney with Consumers Union, explains that one of those principles is "universal design."

Even with the shortcomings that the principles have been designed to address, Savage says that electronic medical records already represent a big advance over the analog version—paper.