Public Health
Racism a Strong Factor in Black Women’s High Rate of Premature Births, Study Finds
The tipping point for Dr. Paula Braveman came when a longtime patient of hers at a community clinic in San Francisco’s Mission District slipped past the front desk and knocked on her office door to say goodbye. He wouldn’t be coming to the clinic anymore, he told her, because he could no longer afford it. […]
Student Nurses Who Refuse Vaccination Struggle to Complete Degrees
Kaitlyn Hevner expects to complete a 15-month accelerated nursing program at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville in December. For her clinical training this fall, she’s working 12-hour shifts on weekends with medical-surgical patients at a hospital. But Hevner and nursing students like her who refuse to get vaccinated against covid-19 are in an […]
Listen: California Banks on a Bold Treatment: Pay Drug Users to Stop Using
When Billy Lemon was trying to kick his methamphetamine addiction, he went to a drug treatment program at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation three times a week and peed in a cup. If it tested negative for meth, he got paid about $7. As the pandemic has raged, so has the country’s drug epidemic. Health […]
A Colorado Town Is About as Vaccinated as It Can Get. Covid Still Isn’t Over There.
San Juan County, Colorado, can boast that 99.9% of its eligible population has received at least one dose of covid-19 vaccine, putting it in the top 10 counties in the nation, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If vaccines were the singular armor against covid’s spread, then on paper, San […]
Hospitals Confront Climate Change as Patients Sick From Floods and Fires Crowd ERs
[UPDATED at 5:45 p.m. ET] When triple-digit temperatures hit the Pacific Northwest this summer, the emergency room at Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center was ill prepared. Doctors raced to treat heat-aggravated illness in homeless people, elderly patients with chronic ailments, and overdosing narcotics users. “The magnitude of the exposure, this was so far off the charts […]
Readers and Tweeters Feel Americans’ Pain
Letters to the Editor is a periodic feature. We welcome all comments and will publish a selection. We edit for length and clarity and require full names. This made me cry. I don’t think we understand yet the devastating impact this is having on our nurses, doctors, and other members of the healthcare workforce. At an Overrun ICU, […]
Santa Cruz Health Officials Honored for Persevering in Covid Battle Against Tide of ‘Denialism’
Two California public health officials who pressed forward with aggressive measures to contain covid-19 even while enduring death threats and harassment will be honored with the 2021 PEN/Benenson Courage Award from PEN America, the group announced Friday. Mimi Hall and Dr. Gail Newel, health director and health officer, respectively, for Santa Cruz County, California, will […]
Covid Is Killing Rural Americans at Twice the Rate of Urbanites
Rural Americans are dying of covid at more than twice the rate of their urban counterparts — a divide that health experts say is likely to widen as access to medical care shrinks for a population that tends to be older, sicker, heavier, poorer and less vaccinated. While the initial surge of covid-19 deaths skipped […]
The ‘Burn Scars’ of Wildfires Threaten the West’s Drinking Water
Colorado saw its worst fire season last year, with the three largest fires in state history and more than 600,000 acres burned. But some of the effects didn’t appear until this July, when heavy rain pushed sediment from damaged forests down mountainsides, causing mudslides that shut down sections of Interstate 70 for almost two weeks. […]
Wildfire Smoke Is Here to Stay. Here’s How to Clean the Air Inside Your Home.
[Note: This article was originally published on Sept. 28, 2021.] The fierce wildfires that broke out across much of the western United States this summer, spreading smoke across hundreds of miles, continue to pose a serious health hazard to millions. More are expected this fall. That’s a major health concern because microscopic particles in wildfire […]