Public Health

Tensions were running high at PDX Commons, a cohousing community for adults 55 and older in Portland, Oregon. Several people wanted to keep visitors off-site until all 35 residents were vaccinated. Others wanted to open to family and friends for the first time in a year. How do communities with dozens of members decide what […]

LOS ANGELES — The inmates huddled near the front or lingered on the bunk beds lining both sides of their narrow, crowded dorm at the Men’s Central Jail, listening as Lt. Sheriff Dwight Miley and nurse practitioner Marissa Negrete offered them covid vaccinations and answered their questions. Those who wanted the vaccine should line up […]

If you think vaccination is an ordeal now, consider the 18th-century version. After having pus from a smallpox boil scratched into your arm, you would be subject to three weeks of fever, sweats, chills, bleeding and purging with dangerous medicines, accompanied by hymns, prayers and hell-fire sermons by dour preachers. That was smallpox vaccination, back […]

Covid survivors are at risk from a separate epidemic of opioid addiction, given the high rate of painkillers being prescribed to these patients, health experts say. A new study in Nature found alarmingly high rates of opioid use among covid survivors with lingering symptoms at Veterans Health Administration facilities. About 10% of covid survivors develop […]

The Amish communities of northeastern Ohio engage in textbook communal living. Families eat, work and go to church together, and through the pandemic, mask-wearing and physical distancing have been spotty. That has meant that these communities bore a high rate of infection and death. Despite this, health officials are struggling to encourage residents to get […]

In March 2020, just weeks into the covid-19 pandemic, the incident command center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston was scrambling to understand this deadly new disease. It appeared to be killing more Black and brown patients than whites. For Latinos, there was an additional warning sign: language. Patients who didn’t speak much, or […]

In the first 100 days, new presidents try to turn campaign promises into quick legislative victories, defuse lingering crises, set themselves apart from their predecessor and set a leadership tone for the next four years — all while avoiding blunders that could destroy their momentum. So how is President Joe Biden doing as he approaches […]

On New Year’s Eve 2017, sheriff’s deputies in the Denver suburb of Highlands Ranch responded to a domestic disturbance. Before the night was over, four officers had been shot and Douglas County Sheriff’s Deputy Zackari Parrish III was dead. The gunman was a 37-year-old man with a history of psychotic episodes whose family had previously […]

[Editor’s note: This article contains strong language that readers might find offensive or disturbing.] SANTA CRUZ COUNTY, Calif. — Dr. Gail Newel looks back on the past year and struggles to articulate exactly when the public bellows of frustration around her covid-related health orders morphed into something darker and more menacing. Certainly, there was that […]

KHN freelancer Christine Spolar discussed how during the pandemic the nation’s richest hospitals and health systems profited after accepting the lion’s share of the federal health care bailout grant with WESA’s “The Confluence” on Tuesday. Click here to hear Spolar on WESA Read “Despite Covid, Many Wealthy Hospitals Had a Banner Year With Federal Bailout” […]