This is the Opinion of NUHW

Kaiser Permanente, in an effort to deflect mounting criticism of its mental health care services from patients and their families, state regulators, and NUHW-represented Kaiser mental health clinicians, claimed in a press release earlier this week to have hired hundreds of additional therapists.

Kaiser’s misleading figures fail to account for staff attrition Kaiser has suffered due to the HMO’s patient-care failures, violations of state law, and declining working conditions. Read more.

Sometimes, disease-prevention really is this simple: Adults with high blood pressure who take all of their hypertension medications before they go to bed, rather than in the morning, are less likely to develop Type 2 diabetes, new research has found. Read more.

On Tuesday, a dismayed Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Maureen Folan had stern words for the parties and lawyers in the Sunnyvale lawsuit against a boy with autism and his parents. Unhappy with the heavily litigious way the case was proceeding, she asked the parties to be “solutions-oriented” and engage in a court-supervised settlement conference. She expressed shock that these “bright people” could not solve this neighborhood conflict. Read more.

Priscilla Wong creates paintings on a computer by moving a digital brush with her tongue because she long ago lost the use of her arms. Her labored breathing is aided by a ventilator, an instrument she has had to wear since she was 10. Wong can sit up for only a few hours a day and, as her grandmother Maria says, the now-23-year-old UC Davis graduate spends much of her life in “in solitude. In solemnity.” Read more.

Donald Trump likely wrecked the day of vaccine experts across the country in last night’s Republican debate. Trump reiterated his opinion that vaccines cause autism, a belief that has been thoroughly debunked by repeated studies.

Candidate Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, did refute Trump, saying, “We have extremely well-documented proof that there’s no autism associated with vaccinations.” The Autism Self Advocacy Network also pointed to the “wealth of scientific evidence debunking any link between autism and vaccinations,” in its own statement. Read more.

Calling the input received from Sonoma Developmental Center stakeholders “the first essential phase of the closure planning process,” the Department of Developmental Services released an 80-page draft of its closure plan for SDC late Tuesday, Sept. 15. Read more.

On September 8, 2015, the United States entered into a proposed settlement agreement with the State of Oregon to vindicate the civil rights of individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (I/DD) who are unnecessarily segregated in sheltered workshops, or at risk of such unnecessary segregation. The settlement agreement with Oregon resolves a class action lawsuit by private plaintiffs in which the Department moved to intervene in May 2013. The lawsuit alleged that the State’s employment service system over-relied on segregated sheltered workshops to the exclusion of integrated alternatives, such as supported employment services, and placed individuals, including youth, at risk of entering sheltered workshops. Read full text here: Oregon Olmstead 9.8.15