Senate Deal Raises Hopes for a Reduction in Gun Suicides
A bipartisan U.S. Senate agreement on guns that focuses on mental health raises hopes and doubts in rural Western states with high suicide rates and easy access to guns.
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A bipartisan U.S. Senate agreement on guns that focuses on mental health raises hopes and doubts in rural Western states with high suicide rates and easy access to guns.
People in jail who have serious mental illness and cannot stand trial because of their condition are waiting months, or even more than a year, to get into their state psychiatric hospitals.
Residents of a Butte neighborhood are concerned about the dust from a nearby open-pit mine that can coat their homes and vehicles. In a city where past mining left a legacy of soil and water pollution, is the air unsafe, too?
Montana, one of about a dozen states still managing its own Medicaid programs, has a new Medicaid director who championed handing the management of the program to private companies in Iowa and Kansas.
The deadly synthetic opioid has spread across the nation during the pandemic, and the problem is disproportionately affecting Native Americans.
Meigs County in Tennessee reported one of the highest covid-19 vaccination rates in the South for much of the past year. But those reports were wrong because of a data error that has surfaced in other states, such as West Virginia and Montana, as well.
The 2020 census undercounted people living on Native American reservations. The money for many needed federal aid programs is tied to those population numbers.
Travel nurse contracts that were plentiful and paid the temporary nurses far more than hospital staff nurses are vanishing. Hospitals nationwide are turning their energies to recruiting full-time people.
Conservative-leaning states and nonprofit reproductive health care providers are competing over control of states’ Title X funding for family planning programs.
Dying malls have turned out to be good places to care for the living. During the pandemic, mall-to-medicine transitions accelerated, with at least 10 health systems moving in where retail has moved out.
More people have visited emergency departments for eating disorders during the pandemic. Those living in rural areas have limited pathways to treatment.
Montana lawmakers stripped authority from local health boards, leading to power struggles between cities and counties and leaving public health officers to wonder to whom they answer.
President Joe Biden’s Cabinet members are fanning out across the country to promote benefits coming to rural America from covid relief and infrastructure legislation.
Emergency medical services are a lifeline in regions with scarce medical care. But paramedics, trained to respond to patients with life-threatening injuries, are in short supply where they’re needed most.
KHN and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
State health officials are using Medicaid funds to send children in their care to treatment programs in states with less stringent regulations, including programs accused of abuse and mistreatment.
Montana’s governor pushed the state’s health workers to seek religious exemptions to a federal mandate to be vaccinated against covid, but the number who have done so is unknown.
A backlog at Montana’s psychiatric hospital for those facing criminal charges has left people with serious mental illness behind bars for months without adequate treatment. In some cases, judges have freed defendants over due-process violations.
Montanans engage in plenty of spirited political disagreements. But debates about covid-19, public health, and personal liberties have reached a fever pitch, tugging at tightknit towns and making some residents wonder how their communities will survive.
Officials testing water found high lead levels in more than 100 of the state’s nearly 600 school buildings. But as of mid-February, half the state’s schools had yet to provide samples.
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