Health

Glendale is partnering with a local nonprofit to fill the void left by the downsizing of youth and family services offered by City Hall due to ongoing budget constraints.  The nonprofit All for Health, Health for All already operates three clinics in the city, but starting in April it will begin offering drug and addiction programs aimed at local teens at the Cedar House, a historic bungalow owned by the city in Central Glendale. The move may not seem huge, but City Manager Scott Ochoa said it represents a shift in how the city approaches meeting the needs of the community with fewer dollars to go around.

I have a friend who swears she healed her son's serious brain injury with food. Antioxidants, omega-3s, pure proteins - she found them in blueberries, eggs and other nutrition-packed foods and helped pave his road to health. Even if you're not recuperating from a bike accident, eating nutrient-rich foods is always a good idea. But wait, I'm not a doctor. I'm a restaurant reviewer. That's why I'm excited to have found Da Juice Bar, where my desire to increase personal health and vitality can rest easy with my love of good food.

GLENDALE — The largest health fair the Glendale Unified School District has held for its employees in years drew a minuscule crowd Monday at the district's Professional Development Center. "If everything is fine, everything is quiet," said Catherine Klapper, the school district's account manager for Blue Shield of California. Blue Shield is the district's health insurance carrier. Complacency or apathy may be some of the reasons district employees did not show up, Klapper said.

Glendale Adventist Medical Center on Thursday will host a community forum on the state of health in Armenia. The forum will begin at 7 p.m. with a film synopsis of Armenia presented by Kohar Kesian, a nurse at Glendale Adventist. A handful of guests will speak about health in Armenia, highlighted by the guest of honor, Norayr Tavityan, the Minister of Health for the Republic of Armenia. Tavityan will give an update on health care in Armenia. Admission is free and refreshments will be served.

Josh Goldstein GLENDALE -- Catching his breath after making "pretty good time," doing 6.2 miles in about 57 minutes, runner John Hasley was glad his knees held out. Casual runs like Sunday's "Just for the Health of It" 5K & 10K run/walk at Verdugo Park allows serious athletes tack on extra experience and gives those just wanting to have fun to do just that, said Hasley, a Duarte resident who has run in four marathons....

Gov. Gray Davis has signed into law a bill by state Assemblyman Dario Frommer (D-Glendale) and Assemblyman Rod Pacheco (R-Riverside) designed to reduce health risks to children who are carrying heavy backpacks. AB 2532 requires the State Board of Education to adopt maximum weight standards for elementary and secondary school textbooks. Many experts have recommended children not carry more than 10% to 15% of their body weight on their backs, but studies have shown most children carry backpacks that weigh more than 20% of their body weight.

Eating healthy helps you shrink your waistline but it can also shrink your wallet. During my long runs down Magnolia Blvd. in Burbank, I am constantly running by places that boast a line of healthy and organic foods. Finally, I visited one of those places, Full O' Life Natural Foods Market and Restaurant. Good food? Check. Steep prices? Double check. While I was in line to pay $15 for two items, another customer bought two half-gallons of milk that totaled $15, as well.

HEAD START RESOLUTION WHAT HAPPENED The City Council passed a resolution supporting fund reauthorization of the Head Start program under the federal Department of Health and Human Services. The resolution opposes President Bush's proposal to shift funding from local schools and organizations to state governments. The proposal would also move the program from Health and Human Services to the Department of Education. Head Start provides educational, health and family support services to low-income families and children 5 and younger.

Vatican officials are touting the Pope's recent suffering as an example of a willingness to suffer in the face of health problems and a modern society that believes medicine must cure all. Monsignor Elio Sgreccia, the Vatican's chief bioethicist, reportedly said recently that medicine has become unmanageable because it can't fulfill the desires of consumers for perfect health. Do you think we've gotten carried with a so-called "religion of health" -- too carried away with an idea that modern medicine must cure all?

The first-class gravy train is over. Last week, the Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority Commission officially discontinued -- perhaps 20 years late -- what could be considered one of its most outrageous practices: allowing its members to travel by first class when taking plane trips on airport business. It would be easy to recount the instances in which sitting members (and their families) have taken advantage of taxpayer largess to go on oh-so important luxury trips to such unpleasant locales as Hawaii and Paris.

More than a month after the shooting rampage in Newtown, Conn., mental health professionals stated that psychological disorders often emerge before people enter high school; however, only a small percentage of students ever receives necessary intervention or treatment. This is due to lack of knowledge and failure to recognize symptoms. The mass shootings in recent years have raised a debate about gun control and mental health, including a push by President Barack Obama for stronger gun controls and better mental health training for schools and communities.

Glendale mother Poonam Desai has health insurance for her family. But her plan doesn't provide for vision or dental coverage. So Desai brought her nine-year-old daughter to the fifth annual Family Health and Kids Fitness Expo, hosted by Glendale Healthy Kids on Saturday, because vision and dental services were available there, and at no cost. In the gymnasium at the Pacific Edison Community Center where the event was held, members of the Northwest Glendale Lions Club facilitated free eye exams.

This article has been amended, see note below for details. After spending more than 10 years and roughly $9 million, engineers testing two high-tech methods for removing chromium 6 from groundwater say neither method can reliably bring levels of the cancer-causing contaminant down to the point where it would hit a state public health goal. In 2011, the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessmentset set a goal of drastically reducing the amount of chromium 6 - the contaminant brought to notoriety by the 2000 film “Erin Brokovich” - in the water supply.

Glendale is partnering with a local nonprofit to fill the void left by the downsizing of youth and family services offered by City Hall due to ongoing budget constraints.  The nonprofit All for Health, Health for All already operates three clinics in the city, but starting in April it will begin offering drug and addiction programs aimed at local teens at the Cedar House, a historic bungalow owned by the city in Central Glendale. The move may not seem huge, but City Manager Scott Ochoa said it represents a shift in how the city approaches meeting the needs of the community with fewer dollars to go around.

Local hospitals and health care professionals agree they need to better integrate mental and physical care to address Glendale's most pressing health needs. For the Community Health Needs Assessment focus group, which meets once every three years, the most pressing public health issues affecting Glendale include obesity, smoking cessation, high blood pressure and diabetes. At a meeting Mondayof more than 30 representatives from local stakeholders - including Glendale Adventist Medical Center, Glendale Memorial Hospital and the Verdugo Hills Hospital - the city's most urgent health problems were discussed in terms of integrating services to have the highest impact.

A mental health program targeted at the Armenian community is struggling to meet its annual service goal, due in part, organizers say, to the cultural stigma attached to seeking help. For the past 10 months, the program through Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services - called ARMUNITY - has been trying to break through that stigma, but with the first anniversary approaching in March, organizers say they've only met about half their goal of serving 60 clients. “Historically we've always just held the issues inside the family, not taken it outside…it's been a difficult step for the elders to expose their issues,” said Arsineh Ararat, program coordinator for ARMUNITY.

I have a friend who swears she healed her son's serious brain injury with food. Antioxidants, omega-3s, pure proteins - she found them in blueberries, eggs and other nutrition-packed foods and helped pave his road to health. Even if you're not recuperating from a bike accident, eating nutrient-rich foods is always a good idea. But wait, I'm not a doctor. I'm a restaurant reviewer. That's why I'm excited to have found Da Juice Bar, where my desire to increase personal health and vitality can rest easy with my love of good food.

When I was a child, someone told me that if I crossed my eyes too long they would get stuck that way. Someone else told me that if I stepped on a rusty nail and didn't get a tetanus shot, my jaw would lock shut. Thus two absolute laws of the universe were seared into my mind. I didn't doubt them. I didn't fact-check them. I didn't make any distinctions between them. My unquestioning belief in both bits of information had nothing to do with their plausibility. In fact, if you'd told me back then that only one of those two statements was true and asked me to guess which one, I probably would have pegged lockjaw as the fabrication.

Bargaining teams for Glendale Unified School District and its teachers union are expected to finalize a deal this week that would defer five unpaid furlough days scheduled for 2012-13. District officials said they expect to put the agreement in writing during a meeting scheduled for Thursday. In April, the Glendale Teachers Assn. had rejected an identical proposal - which defers the furlough days to 2013-14 - asking instead that two of the five days be eliminated outright and three be deferred.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) is used to asking tough questions as a member of the House Appropriations and Intelligence committees, but at Crescenta Valley High School on Monday, he was the one on the spot. Roughly 70 students from the school's ROTC and Advanced Placement Government classes heard from Schiff in an event moderated by AP Government teacher Alicia Harris. Students asked Schiff to explain his views on the Affordable Care Act, No Child Left Behind and the Armenian genocide, where the topic was pressure from Turkey to block legislation recognizing as a genocide the death of more than 1 million Armenians at the hands of Ottoman Turks from 1915 to 1923.