Farmworkers and vulnerable communities prioritized during SJVHF's policy briefing 

On June 25, nearly 150 participants joined San Joaquin Valley Health Fund’s second Policy Briefing on Climate Change and Resiliency, which focused on farmworkers and vulnerable communities in the San Joaquin Valley. 

“Addressing the interrelated issues of climate change and the social determinants of health is fundamentally important to the work of The Center,” shared Reyna Villalobos, managing director of Regional Programs at The Center, which manages the San Joaquin Valley Health Fund (SJVHF). 

Participants heard from local government leaders, researchers, community-based organization leaders, scientists and farmworkers about climate change impacts and opportunities for community-centered policy solutions. Citing regional effects in the San Joaquin Valley, Tulare County Supervisor Eddie Valero shared that “health equity and climate risks are interconnected challenges that demand our immediate attention.” 

The San Joaquin Valley’s nearly 300,000 farmworkers experience many of these climate risks firsthand. “The heat is suffocating,” said Matias Nandayapa, a farmworker and McFarland community leader with Faith in the Valley. “As agricultural workers, we undergo emotional, physical, mental, social and economic stress, given [our] work conditions.”

California's Youth Suicide Prevention programming from the Bay to LA

The Center’s Youth Suicide Prevention Media and Outreach Campaign program team has been on the road, traveling to and from the Bay Area to the LA Area visiting with our incredible funded program partners. It's been inspiring to meet with organizations and learn about how they're uplifting the state-wide Never a Bother campaign and translating communications and programming efforts in culturally connected and meaningful ways with their communities. We took time with organizations like Jail Guitar Doors, whose team is working to uplift the statewide Never a Bother campaign by utilizing music and creative expression as therapeutic tools for mental health. They work with Black/African American and Latinx/Hispanic youth in Los Angeles County with a particular focus on youth impacted by the justice system and their families.

We also spent time with organizations like Instituto Familiar de la Raza (IFR), a Bay Area based organization working to enhance mental health for Hispanic/Latinx youth across Alameda, San Francisco and San Mateo counties. IFR has been a community staple for over 40 years. Through cultural arts interventions and proactive suicide prevention strategies, they aim to reduce suicide, suicide attempts and self-harm behaviors. 

Check out our Youth Suicide Prevention Media and Outreach program and follow on Instagram to learn more about our recent partner visits. 



Thanks to tireless advocacy from Children Now and their dedicated partners, we celebrate renewed state funding for California's Family Urgent Response System (FURS). FURS gives foster youth and caregivers 24/7, trauma-informed care focused on healing their relationships and reducing instability. While traditional child welfare and probation practices do more harm than good, FURS represents an early intervention that preserves family stability, decreases placement changes and ensures equitable service distribution across counties. At The Center, we know how vital healthy youth development is to the pursuit of a healthier California; this includes young people and their caregivers in the foster system, who are frequently left out of the conversation and denied the support and resources they need. In this article, we celebrate this budgetary win and explain why FURS is a crucial step to securing healthy futures for California's youth. 

Tomorrow we'll be joined by the experts at Planting Justice to learn about work happening at the critical intersection of economic and food justice. Don't miss this important discussion 11am-1pm. In-person seats are sold out, but you can register and watch our livestream on LinkedIn.