Credit: Cydni Elledge for Outlier Media

Medicine delivered a sickle cell cure. So why was he struggling?Larenz Caldwell had plenty of experience with doctors and knew their limitations. They could relieve his pain, but only temporarily, writes Toby Kevin for Outlier Media’s series about Detroit’s sickle cell community. The 18-year-old had been in and out of hospitals all of his life due to his sickle cell anemia, a disease where blood cells become hard and sticky and form a C-shaped farm tool called a sickle. These blood cells are stiff and inflexible, often leading to blockages in the circulatory system. Outlier Media notes that the cells are extremely painful and can cause organ damage or even death.

In Caldwell’s case, the doctor examined the skin on his lower back, mottled and blackened from blocked blood vessels, before telling him he'd seen enough. When Caldwell heard his doctor say that he’d found a cure for his disease, he laughed in the doctor's face. 

“I said, ‘I challenge you. Prove me wrong,’” Caldwell recalls.  

Even a cure couldn’t erase Caldwell’s painful, 18-year-long experience of hospitalizations in a medical system that has long failed to provide adequate care for sickle cell patients, most of whom are Black. 

But in 2018, Caldwell received a successful stem cell transplant that effectively cured him of sickle cell disease.Read more about Caldwell and his family’s lifelong journey to healing and curing his sickle cell →

Credit: Chris Allen for Black Voice News

California's Inland Empire faces growing challenges in caring for its aging populationAccording to current population projections, one in five residents in California will be over 65 years old by 2030, reports Black Voice News in this story about the state's rapidly aging population and the growing demand for age-related services. The Inland Empire, which includes Riverside and San Bernardino counties, is among the regions most impacted by this demographic shift. Nearly one million people in this area will be 65 and older by 2030, and the population of those 80 and above will more than double to an estimated 320,000. 

“This demographic shift is putting a lot of pressure on healthcare and in-home care services, which are already stretched thin,” said Shannon McConville, research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of Southern California.

Black Voice News highlights that the state is already grappling with a shortage of resources for its elderly, especially in areas like healthcare and in-home care services. These shortages are even more pressing for Black seniors, who face unique challenges due to reduced life expectancies and a higher prevalence of chronic conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, dementia, stroke, and cancer, as noted by the American Psychological Association. 

In response to these challenges, California is implementing the Master Plan for Aging (MPA), which includes the "Caregiving That Works" initiative to support both paid and unpaid caregivers. The CalGrows workforce training program, a key component of the initiative, offers over 600 free courses to enhance caregiver skills.Get the full story here →

Credit: iStock

Oakland schools find dangerous amounts of lead in schools’ waterParents and administrators in Oakland, California's public schools say they were only notified last month about an April report revealing dangerously high levels of lead contamination in the district’s waterways, prompting concern over the district's lack of communication and action from school officials regarding the crisis. A coalition of educators and concerned parents, led by teachers and a school counselor from Frick United Academy in East Oakland, has publicly condemned district officials for failing to address the issue adequately.

Stuart Thompson, a sixth-grade math and science teacher at Frick United Academy, recently shared his frustration over the delayed notification with Prism. “This enrages me because that means that students were drinking from these water fountains for a month and a half of the remainder of the school year,” Thompson said. “And then we had a big summer program where 80 students were drinking from these water fountains all throughout the summer until the first day of school.” He and his colleagues were informed of the lead contamination on the first day of the new school year, despite the district knowing about the issue since April.

The April tests, obtained by Prism, showed that 21 schools had lead levels exceeding the Environmental Protection Agency’s action threshold of 15 parts per billion, and another 20 schools had levels between 5 and 15 parts per billion. 

There are many dangers associated with lead contamination, including damage to children’s brains and nervous systems, slowed growth and development, learning and behavior problems, and hearing and speech problems, according to the Centers for Disease Control.Read more here →

Highlighting the innovators transforming health outcomes in our communities

After unexpectedly losing her son, Bronx cook Orquídea Cabrera channeled her love for Dominican cooking into a window-side business. What started as a way to cope with grief has now become a thriving window buffet for the past six years — a business that, with the help of customers also recently went viral — blending passion with healing, one dish at a time → Credit: Ambar Castillo for Epicenter NYC