Health

Free summer meal program helps Oakland families

The last bell of the school year rang for Oakland school students on Thursday. But where to swim, travel or play sports aren’t the only questions these newly liberated youth—or their parents—have on their minds. How to provide a daily, nutritious meal is a more immediate concern this summer for low-income families and the 20,000 children that depend on reduced-price meals during the school year.

Program partners kids, elderly for cooking and crafting visits

North Oakland Senior Center had some young visitors on Friday as a group of third graders from Peralta Elementary School came to visit the seniors of an adult day care program in the center. Together with the elderly, the kids prepared salad and lemonade for lunch.

Children’s Hospital and Clorox partner up to fight against life-threatening disease

In 2005, Elijah Adams, a 10-year-old North Oakland boy, died from meningococcal disease, an often-deadly form of bacterial meningitis. Just a year earlier, 20-year-old UC Berkeley women’s basketball player Alisa Marie Lewis had gone to the emergency room early in the morning complaining of a severe headache, rash and flu-like symptoms. By the afternoon she was dead from the same disease.