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Turner on Challenges of Regulating Urban Heat

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Assistant Professor of Urban Planning V. Kelly Turner joined the Talking Headways podcast to discuss different ways to regulate urban heat. The regional urban heat island effect is a climate phenomenon affecting urban areas with buildings and pavement that absorb and radiate heat, making these regions hotter than surrounding areas. However, Turner noted that thermal images that show land surface temperature can be misleading because they don’t illustrate how people are actually exposed to heat. “When I see interventions being proposed like tree-planting programs, I think we need to be careful and say, yeah, we might be providing shade that will be good for pedestrian thermal comfort — shade’s super important — but we’re not addressing the urban heat island,” Turner said. “What we’re doing is just a drop in the bucket, shifting from one climate zone to a fundamentally different arrangement of trees and buildings that would actually be cooler.” 

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U.S. Sick and Medical Leave Policies Widen Racial Inequalities, Study Finds

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Paid sick and medical leave is a powerful tool for preventing the spread of COVID-19 and other diseases and ensuring all workers have access to treatment, yet tens of millions of American workers lack coverage. The U.S. is one of just 11 countries in the world without a national, permanent paid medical leave policy, according to new research led by Jody Heymann, distinguished professor of public health, public policy and medicine. Further, unpaid leave provided by the U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) is restricted by eligibility rules that have created marked racial and gender gaps, said Heymann, who directs the WORLD Policy Analysis Center at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. The study, published in Health Affairs, included these findings:

  • In the private sector, 18.7% of Latinas, compared to just 8.4% of white men, lack access to FMLA leave because of its minimum annual hours requirement.
  • Requiring one year with the same employer excludes higher shares of Black (22%), Indigenous (22.9%) and self-identified multiracial (27.7%) workers than white workers (19%).
  • Over a third of private-sector workers are employed by a business with fewer than 50 employees, making them ineligible for FMLA benefits.

The study’s analysis of data from 181 countries found that providing paid sick and medical leave to all workers — including the self-employed, a group commonly excluded from key social security and labor protections — is readily achievable. “Only by ensuring we design our paid leave policies to reach every worker can we protect public health and take one important step toward rectifying the longstanding and devastating racial and socioeconomic inequalities that have only intensified during this pandemic,” Heymann said.

 

Public Health Benefits of Predictive Analytics

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A Healthcare Innovation article on the use of artificial intelligence and predictive analytics to inform public health efforts put a spotlight on the work of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin. The center created a tool that maps Los Angeles County neighborhoods to assess residents’ vulnerability to COVID-19 infection. The predictive model used four indicators: preexisting medical conditions, barriers to accessing health care, built-environment characteristics and socioeconomic challenges that create vulnerabilities. “The UCLA case study is emblematic of precisely the kinds of use cases that will be emerging in the coming years, as healthcare leaders start to plumb the vast potential of AI and other forms of predictive analytics to serve the purposes of public health here in the U.S.,” the article said.

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Diaz Highlights Opportunity to Expand Health Care Coverage

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In a Sacramento Bee article on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget priorities, Sonja Diaz, executive director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, discussed the possibility of expanding Medi-Cal coverage to undocumented adults and seniors. Newsom is expected to release a revised state budget proposal this week with a huge budget surplus, which could be used to fund a variety of proposals to help Californians, including more stimulus checks, school funding and expanded health care coverage for undocumented adults. California recently expanded Medi-Cal coverage to undocumented children and adults up to 25 years old; expanding coverage to undocumented adults over 65 is estimated to cost the state about $250 million. “We’re in an unprecedented situation where we actually have resources to find robust and bold ideas that can correct failed systems,” Diaz said. “This includes expanding health care coverage to people irrespective of their immigration status and irrespective of their age.”

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Pierce on Tackling Failing Water Systems in California

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Gregory Pierce, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, was featured in a Revelator article about addressing the drinking water crisis in California. The Center for Innovation collaborated on a Drinking Water Needs Assessment that provided a detailed analysis of the problem and the cost of solutions in California. The study estimated it would cost about $10 billion to address the drinking water problem, but Piece explained that small-scale regional solutions could reduce the cost and make infrastructure more integrated. “What’s really novel is that [the report] also tries to comprehensively assess where our water quality is likely to fail next if nothing is done to prevent it,” Pierce said. While the problem is expensive, he argued that the costs of not fixing the problems will be higher in the long run. “One way or the other, society pays for this and it’s better to invest up front,” he said.

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Yaroslavsky on COVID-19 and the Price of Saving Lives

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to USA Today about California’s roller-coaster recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Months of shifting restrictions about lockdowns and stay-at-home orders took a significant toll on California residents. Yaroslavsky pointed out that when you ask the question “Were all the strict mandates worth it?” you are ultimately asking whether saving even one additional life was worth it. “Losing your business is an existential event; it’s a brutal price to pay,” he said. “But you can rebuild your business. You can’t do that with your life.” Yaroslavsky also said that accusations of inconsistency and hypocrisy surrounding Gov. Gavin Newsom’s management of the crisis “hurt public trust at a moment when it was sorely needed. … Any politician today has taken a hit politically because this has been an unprecedented societal disaster, but there have definitely been some who are paying a bigger price than others.”

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Journal Focuses on COVID-19’s Impact on Indigenous Communities

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Associate Professor of Public Policy Randall Akee guest-edited a special issue of the American Indian Culture and Research Journal that focuses on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on indigenous populations. “COVID-19 and Indigenous Peoples: Impact of and Response to the Pandemic” is the first of two special issues that include articles, reviews and commentaries by American Indian scholars and researchers in the field. American Indian communities have been hit disproportionately hard by the pandemic, experiencing death rates 1.5 times higher and infection rates 3.5 times greater than those for non-Hispanic whites. Akee and co-editors Stephanie Carroll and Chandra Ford wrote in the introduction that “the structural racism of colonialism is the driver of myriad negative outcomes for Indigenous Peoples, and the effects of COVID-19 are no exception.” The journal issue highlights the deep impact of the pandemic on indigenous communities as well as their resilience, and points to the importance of self-determination in preserving the well-being of these communities. The issue also compares the public health responses in different countries and how factors including racism, ableism, historical injustice and unfair resource allocation have contributed to the impact of the pandemic on different indigenous communities. The authors stress the need for public health responses that are culturally appropriate and respectful in order to support indigenous communities and their traditions. Akee said the forthcoming second special issue on COVID-19 will feature “emerging, innovative models of health care, access and service for effective public health responses to the needs of Indigenous communities.”

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Torres-Gil on Collective Responsibility to Support Elderly

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Professor of Social Welfare and Public Policy Fernando Torres-Gil was featured in a Covering Health article about developing policies to support aging populations. While advances in public health and medicine have increased the average life expectancy for humans, age- and health-related inequalities persist. Communities of color are especially vulnerable to social determinants of health and often have significantly lower life expectancies than other Americans. “If any good has come out of the pandemic, it may be that we are at a rare moment of opportunity for a paradigm shift moving away from individual to more collective responsibility,” Torres-Gil said. “One of the benefits of this great new era is that if we do all the right things, we have the real possibility to live a good long life, well into our 80s, 90s, and to be centenarians.”

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Shah Promotes Healthy Behavior Among Adolescents

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Public Policy Professor Manisha Shah authored an article in the Conversation about her work to improve adolescent sexual and reproductive health in Tanzania. Adolescent girls in sub-Saharan Africa experience high rates of HIV infection, unintended teenage pregnancy and intimate partner violence. While many reproductive health programs and services focus exclusively on females, Shah and her team developed a program to encourage adolescent boys and young men to make better choices around their sexual and reproductive health through sports programming. They also focused on empowering adolescent girls and young women to make healthy, informed decisions by using goal-setting exercises. The study found that both the men’s soccer league and the goal-setting activity for women reduced intimate partner violence and increased adolescents’ sense of personal agency to make better choices around sexual relationships. Shah concluded that “offering contraception alone, without focusing on behavior change for females and males, won’t necessarily improve sexual and reproductive health for adolescents.”

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Torres-Gil Highlights Generational Impact of COVID-19

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Professor of Public Policy and Social Welfare Fernando Torres-Gil was interviewed by Next Avenue about the generational impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. Older adults have experienced a heavy toll, and Torres-Gil argued that the failure to protect our oldest and most vulnerable communities is indicative of a flawed system. “We recognize that your ZIP code, race, income and education level matter when it comes to who is most likely to pay the price during this pandemic,” he said. As part of California’s Master Plan on Aging Task Force, Torres-Gil has spent the last few years working on ways to better prepare the state for its growing population of older adults. “If we use a holistic perspective — one that takes a lifespan approach — we can increase equity and intergenerational cohesion,” he said. “With understanding and commitment, we can get there, and I hope that will be a positive outcome of this very difficult time.”

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