Race & Health

(Hannah Norman / KHN) Click here for a transcript of the interview. Just as covid-19 vaccines were rolling out, Dr. Taison Bell spoke with KHN about why Black Americans were getting vaccinated at lower rates than white Americans were. More than a year later, we checked in with Bell, an assistant professor of medicine and […]

MINNEAPOLIS — Tucked away on a side street near downtown, the Mashkiki Waakaa’igan Pharmacy offers its Native American clientele the services of any ordinary drugstore — it dispenses critical medication and provides consultation on treatments. But there are two key differences: Every Mashkiki patient gets prescriptions for free — with no out-of-pocket expense — and […]

MINNEAPOLIS — Bison pastrami is not typical school lunch fare, but it’s a crowd favorite at a preschool in Minneapolis. Fawn Youngbear-Tibbetts — the seemingly always on-the-go coordinator of Indigenous foods at the Wicoie Nandagikendan Early Childhood Urban Immersion Project — is frequently found tweaking recipes in the kitchen or offering homemade goodies like flourless […]

The 2020 census missed nearly 1 of every 17 Native Americans who live on reservations, an undercount that could very well lead to insufficient federal funding for essential health, nutrition, and social programs in remote communities with high poverty rates and scarce access to services. The census counted 9.7 million people who identified as a […]

En Whitman-Walker Health, el doctor David Fessler y su personal administran dosis altas de vacunas contra la influenza a todos los pacientes VIH positivos y adultos mayores. Aunque la vacuna es cerca de tres veces más cara que la vacuna estándar contra la gripe, parece proteger más a las personas con sistemas inmunes debilitados, algo […]

[UPDATED at 11:15 a.m. ET] At Whitman-Walker Health, Dr. David Fessler and his staff administer high-dose influenza vaccine to all HIV-positive and senior patients. Although the vaccine is roughly three times as expensive as standard flu vaccine, it seems to do a better job at protecting those with weakened immune systems — a major focus […]

Three years ago, Lauren Bryant was walking across Appalachian State University’s campus with several other Black students when they were verbally assaulted with a racist tirade. “This guy in a pickup truck stopped at the light, rolled down his window, and just started calling us a bunch of N-words,” she recalled. It wasn’t the only […]

From a well-lighted room, the plants blurred in the background, their face framed by closed captioning, Shahem Mclaurin speaks directly into the camera. The lesson: “Ten ways to start healing.” But this is not a classroom, nor is it a therapist’s office. This is TikTok. “We all have our own things to carry, and those […]

Days typically start early for patients undergoing opioid addiction treatment at Denver Recovery Group’s six methadone clinics in Colorado. They rise before dawn. Some take three buses to get to a clinic by 5 a.m. for a 15-minute conversation with a counselor and their daily dose of methadone, all before they go to work or […]

GREAT FALLS, Mont. — Louella Fredrickson has long created workarounds to fill gaps in the spotty medical care available to her as a member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana. The 86-year-old uses dollar-store reading glasses to improve her blurry vision because she’s worried about the cost of an eye appointment. […]