Public Health

Can’t see the audio player? Click here to listen on PRX. You can also listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Pocket Casts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Click here for a transcript of the episode. Congressional Democrats are finding it harder to actually write legislation to lower drug prices than it is to make promises about it. But the drug […]

[Editor’s note: This story contains language references that some readers may find offensive.] Months after Kyle Dixon died, his old house in Lanse, Pennsylvania, is full of reminders of a life cut short. His tent and hiking boots sit on the porch where he last put them. The grass he used to mow has grown […]

[UPDATED at 12:30 p.m. ET] In January — long before the first jabs of covid-19 vaccine were even available to most Americans — scientists working under Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases were already thinking about potential booster shots. A month later, they organized an international group of epidemiologists, […]

Promise: “I’m never going to raise the white flag and surrender. We’re going to beat this virus. We’re going to get it under control, I promise you. “ On the campaign trail last year, Joe Biden promised that, if elected president, he would get covid-19 under control. Since assuming office in January, Biden has continued […]

Motivados por votantes enojados por los cierres y los mandatos sobre el uso de máscaras durante la pandemia, legisladores republicanos en más de la mitad de los estados de EE.UU. están quitando los poderes que los funcionarios estatales y locales usan para proteger al público contra las enfermedades infecciosas. Una revisión de KHN encontró que, […]

Republican legislators in more than half of U.S. states, spurred on by voters angry about lockdowns and mask mandates, are taking away the powers state and local officials use to protect the public against infectious diseases. A KHN review of hundreds of pieces of legislation found that, in all 50 states, legislators have proposed bills […]

Gary Popiel had to drive more than 200 miles round trip to visit his adult daughters in separate behavioral health facilities as they received psychiatric and medical treatment.   It was 2000, and the family’s only options for inpatient psychiatric beds were in Helena and Missoula — far from their Bozeman, Montana, home and from each […]

It’s a struggle for Joe Gammon to talk. Lying in his bed in the intensive care unit at Ascension Saint Thomas Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, this month, he described himself as “naive.”  “If I would have known six months ago that this could be possible, this would have been a no-brainer,” said the 45-year-old father of […]

Rapid at-home covid tests are flying off store shelves across the nation and are largely sold out online as the delta variant complicates a return to school, work and travel routines. But at $10 or $15 a test, the price is still far too high for regular use by anyone but the wealthy. A family […]

Hospital discharge day for Phoua Yang was more like a pep rally. On her way rolling out of TriStar Centennial Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, she teared up as streamers and confetti rained down on her. Nurses chanted her name as they wheeled her out of the hospital for the first time since she arrived […]