Public Health
States Pull Back on Covid Data Even Amid Delta Surge
Two state government websites in Georgia recently stopped posting updates on covid-19 cases in prisons and long-term care facilities, just as the dangerous delta variant was taking hold. Data has been disappearing recently in other states as well. Florida, for example, now reports covid cases, deaths and hospitalizations once a week, instead of daily, as […]
Medicaid Vaccination Rates Founder as States Struggle to Immunize Their Poorest Residents
Medicaid enrollees are getting vaccinated against covid-19 at far lower rates than the general population as states search for the best strategies to improve access to the shots and persuade those who remain hesitant. Efforts by state Medicaid agencies and the private health plans that most states pay to cover their low-income residents has been […]
KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: Vaccine Approval Moves the Needle on Covid
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. The Food and Drug Administration gave full approval this week to the covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer and BioNTech, which […]
What Missouri Learned the Hard Way About Rapid Covid Testing in Schools
Early in the tumultuous 2020-21 school year, Missouri officials made a big gamble: set aside roughly 1 million rapid covid tests for the state’s K-12 schools in hopes of quickly identifying sick students or staff members. The Trump administration had spent $760 million to procure 150 million rapid-response antigen tests from Abbott Laboratories, including 1.75 […]
New Montana Law Sows Confusion, Defiance Over School Quarantines
As classes get underway this week and next, Montana school and county health officials are grappling with how a new state law that bans vaccine discrimination should apply to quarantine orders for students and staffers exposed to covid-19. It’s the latest fallout from the law that says businesses and governmental entities can’t treat people differently […]
Pandemia revela una creciente crisis de suicidios en comunidades de color
Rafiah Maxie ha sido trabajadora social clínica en el área de Chicago durante una década. En todo ese tiempo, vio al suicidio como un problema más frecuente entre los hombres caucásicos de mediana edad. Hasta el 27 de mayo de 2020. Ese día, su hijo de 19 años, Jamal Clay, a quien le encantaba tocar […]
From Uber Rides to Patient Advocates: What It Takes to Increase ER Addiction Treatment
[UPDATED on Aug. 27] For years, Kayla West watched the opioid epidemic tear through her eastern Tennessee community. As a psychiatric nurse practitioner, she treated people with mental illness but felt she needed to do more to address addiction. So in 2020, when the state created a position to help hospitals improve addiction care in […]
These Governors Push Experimental Antibody Therapy — But Shun Vaccine and Mask Mandates
For months, Joelle Ruppert was among the millions of Americans who are covid vaccine holdouts. Her reluctance, she said, was not so much that she opposed the new vaccines but that she never felt “compelled” by the evidence supporting their experimental use. Nonetheless, after she fell ill with covid last month, Ruppert, a Florida preschool […]
Temperaturas extremas aumentan los riesgos de salud de los trabajadores agrícolas
COACHELLA, California. — Leoncio Antonio Trejo Galdamez, de 58 años, murió en brazos de su hijo el 29 de junio después de pasar el día colocando tuberías de riego en el Valle de Coachella, en California. Otra víctima de un negocio peligroso, la noticia de su muerte resonó en la comunidad mayoritariamente latina cerca de […]
Pandemic Unveils Growing Suicide Crisis for Communities of Color
This story is a collaboration between KHN and “Science Friday.” Listen to the conversation between KHN national correspondent Aneri Pattani and John Dankosky, Science Friday’s director of news and radio projects. Rafiah Maxie has been a licensed clinical social worker in the Chicago area for a decade. Throughout that time, she’d viewed suicide as a problem […]