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Governor Newsom Appoints Two New Members to California Children and Families Commission
January 8, 2021 GMT
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (BUSINESS WIRE) Jan 8, 2021
California Governor Gavin Newsom yesterday made two appointments to the California Children and Families Commission, also known as the First 5 California Commission. To serve in the role of First 5 California Commission Chair, Governor Newsom appointed Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, California Surgeon General. Additionally, Governor Newsom appointed Elsa Mendoza Jimenez, Director of Health, Monterey County Health Department, as a Commission member.
Dr. Burke Harris is California’s first-ever Surgeon General, and she is a nationally recognized expert in the field of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and toxic stress. As Surgeon General, Dr. Burke Harris is an advisor to the governor and serves as the leading spokesperson on matters of
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Research has consistently demonstrated strong links between people’s health and societal sectors such as employment, community development, education, housing, and transportation. Efforts are underway nationwide to combine expertise and resources across multiple agencies and community partner organizations to help states more effectively address factors such as living environment, income level, and social conditions that often have strong ripple effects on community health outcomes.
That mission, however, has become more challenging during the COVID-19 pandemic in part because certain populations, such as racial and ethnic minorities, have been at increased risk of contracting and dying from the disease. As a result, these collaborative efforts have had to adjust their strategies to meet changing demands in an ongoing crisis.
2020 will be etched in our history as a year of long-awaited ambitions that were profoundly altered by Covid-19. Our vocabulary was supposed to be full of terms like “developed-country status”, “high-income economy” and “towering Malaysians”. Instead, we repeated phrases like “flattening the curve”, “physical distancing” and “movement control order” (MCO).
That is because Covid-19 is a national trauma of unprecedented proportions. It will set back Malaysia’s national development, educational achievements and economic growth for years. When the final toll is calculated, we are likely to see worse inequality, lost productivity and a scarred collective national psyche. There are no gentle ways to describe its impact on lives, emotions and the bonds that hold individuals and societies together, but we can still draw strength and three lessons from the bleakness of 2020.