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Community Health Worker Medi-Cal Benefit: Implementation and the Role of Community Partners Like First 5

Community health workers (CHWs), promotores, and other non-licensed health professionals are frontline public health workers and trusted members of the communities they serve.

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FDA approval of the first postpartum depression pill and what it means for infant and toddler health and development

On August 4, 2023, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first pill for postpartum depression (PPD), marking a significant milestone in treating a condition that affects one in five California women.

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New Children’s Medi-Cal Behavioral Health Benefits 101: Family Therapy and Dyadic Services

California has created a dyadic services Medi-Cal benefit effective January 2023. The dyadic services benefit allows Medi-Cal to cover behavioral health wellness visits that focus on the individual child and their surrounding environment, including caregiver wellness, all within the context of the child’s medical appointment.

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Local Developmental Screening and Early Start Access Rates: A California Snapshot

In order to better understand the landscape of how counties are serving young children with developmental concerns, we did a deep dive into available data sources. The data uncover average developmental screening rates across the state, as well as the proportion of infants and toddlers accessing Early Start services (Part C) by regional center.

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Department of Health Care Services Releases 2021 Preventive Services Report

New data released from the Department of Health Care Services shows how children in Medi-Cal managed care fared in 2020, and just how far we will need to increase preventive service delivery to ensure children receive all the benefits to which they are entitled.

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Prioritizing Children and Families in California’s New Community Health Worker Benefit

The First 5 Center, First 5 Association, and our partners listed below recently submitted stakeholder comments to inform California’s definition of the new Community Health Workers benefit.

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Dyadic Therapy Changes Lives

Individual therapy approaches cannot capture the complexity involved as parent, baby, their relationship, their family system, and the culture they are in, all interact. Dyadic therapy, where parent and infant/young child are treated together, addresses all levels of these interacting factors.

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California will invest in dyadic care – and show its commitment to family wellness

Among the many important investments in this year’s state budget, California’s new dyadic care benefit in the Medi-Cal program is particularly significant.

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Dyadic Care in Action: Technical Assistance to Expand Parent/Child Social-Emotional Care

Dyadic care models like HealthySteps provide important support to families with young children. Such care is particularly important in this pandemic- recovery time, which exacerbated mental health concerns, family stress, isolation, and income insecurity, particularly for BIPOC families who already face health inequity due to structural racism and oppression.

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California’s Medicaid Breakthrough: An Opportunity to Advance Children’s Social and Emotional Health

Revamping Medicaid policies to improve young children’s social and emotional health and address health care inequities is particularly critical in California, where over half of children ages 0 to 5 have Medicaid coverage (known as Medi-Cal, in California), and two-thirds are children of color.

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