Public Health

When Tom Becker was diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat in March 2020, the 60-year-old EMS helicopter pilot from Washington, Missouri, worried he would never fly again. But his cardiologist, Dr. Christopher Allen, had served in the Air Force and knew aviation physiology. So Becker felt reassured when Allen told him he didn’t expect any problems, […]

As states expand covid-19 vaccine eligibility to allow shots for 16- and 17-year-olds, teens in rural America may have trouble getting them. Of the three vaccines authorized in the U.S., currently only one can go to that age group: the Pfizer-BioNTech shot. That vaccine comes in 1,170-dose packages at minimum and expires after five days […]

[UPDATED on April 26] When Kathryn Watkins goes shopping these days, she doesn’t bring her three young children. There are just too many people not wearing masks in her southern Michigan town of Hillsdale. At some stores, “not even the employees are wearing them anymore,” said Watkins, who estimates about 30% of shoppers wear masks, […]

Can’t see the audio player? Click here to listen on PRX. The Biden administration is speeding up the pace of efforts to undo Trump administration health policies. The two most recent: overturning a ban on fetal tissue research funded by the National Institutes of Health and canceling a last-minute extension of a Medicaid waiver for Texas. […]

One night in March 2020, Joy Wu felt like her heart was going to explode. She tried to get up and fell down. She didn’t recognize friends’ names in her list of phone contacts. Remembering how to dial 9-1-1 took “quite a bit of time,” she recalled recently. Wu, 38, didn’t have a fever, cough […]

California and Texas, the country’s two most populous states, have taken radically different approaches to the pandemic and the vaccination campaign to end it. California has trumpeted its reliance on science and policies it says are aimed at improving social equity. Texas state officials have emphasized individual rights and protecting the economy, often ignoring public […]

SACRAMENTO — A rogue industry. A gun to our head. Extortion. That’s how infuriated lawmakers described soft drink companies — and what they pulled off in 2018 when they scored a legislative deal that bars California’s cities and counties from imposing taxes on sugary drinks. Yet, despite its tarnished reputation, the deep-pocketed industry continues to […]

Facing a yearlong siege from the coronavirus, the defenses in another, older war are faltering. For the last two decades, HIV/AIDS has been held at bay by potent antiviral drugs, aggressive testing and inventive public education campaigns. But the COVID-19 pandemic has caused profound disruptions in almost every aspect of that battle, grounding outreach teams, […]

In early April, YouTube took down a video featuring Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and a group of controversial scientists at a March 18 coronavirus roundtable. The online video platform, owned by Google, cited as its rationale that the video contained false statements about the efficacy of children’s mask-wearing. The decision has drawn public blowback on […]

On this week’s episode of “America Dissected,” host Dr. Abdul El-Sayed spoke with Dr. Paloma Marin-Nevarez, an emergency medicine resident at UCSF Fresno, and KHN senior correspondent Jenny Gold about the challenges Marin-Nevarez faced as a new doctor learning the ropes during a devastating pandemic. Each July, thousands of new physicians begin their on-the-job training […]