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Studies show that high rates of Black fetal and infant deaths are largely preventable — and part of systemic failures that contribute to disproportionately high Black maternal mortality rates.
Mandy Cohen, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, earned praise for her leadership and communication as the face of North Carolina’s response to covid-19. People in the state’s most vulnerable communities tell a more complicated story.
Federal officials are trying to clamp down on private arrangements among some hospitals to pay themselves back for the Medicaid taxes they’ve paid. State health officials and the influential hospital industry argue that regulators have no jurisdiction over the agreements.
The day-to-day struggles that parents of kids with mental health conditions must navigate have led to their own crisis: The stress can take a physical toll that disrupts parents’ ability to provide care, say psychologists, researchers, and advocates for families.
Stark, plaintive testimony from women denied abortion care represents the start of “the 50-year fight to get rid of Dobbs,” one historian says.
As drought and climate change threaten water supplies, municipalities around the country are ramping up water reuse efforts. But they have to overcome the “yuk” factor.
Florida’s six-week abortion law allows exemptions in cases of rape, incest, and human trafficking, and to save the health or life of the mother. But the recent history of such exemptions in other states suggests that very few women will be able to take advantage of them.
As much of the U.S. faces extremely high summer temperatures, Texas’ Republican governor, Greg Abbott, has taken steps that effectively eliminate mandated water breaks for construction workers. In response, protesters from the Lone Star State came to Washington, D.C., to press for federal protections for such outdoor workers.
A little-noticed provision of sweeping legislation to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration would make it easier to fly human organs from donor to recipient.
The first FDA-authorized cigarettes with 95% less nicotine than traditional smokes will go on sale in California, Florida, and Texas starting in early July. Anti-smoking groups oppose greenlighting just one plant biotech’s products and instead urge federal regulators to set a low-nicotine standard for the entire industry.
As evidence supporting medication treatment for opioid addiction mounts, judges, district attorneys, and law enforcement officials in rural America are increasingly open to it after years of insisting on abstinence only.
Physicians and attorneys say it’s a question of when — not if — a pregnant person dies from lack of care in a state with an abortion ban, potentially setting the stage for a malpractice lawsuit that could pressure providers to reconsider delaying or denying care.
A federal program meant to reduce maternal and infant mortality in rural areas isn’t reaching Black women who are most likely to die from pregnancy-related causes.
As more states restrict gender-affirming care for transgender people, some are relocating to more welcoming destinations, such as California, Illinois, Maryland, and Nevada, where they don't have to worry about being locked out of medical care.
The pandemic disrupted the massage industry. Now those who specialize in hospice massage therapy are in demand and redefining their roles.
Montana, Alaska, Mississippi, Missouri, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming are among the latest states moving to provide health coverage for up to a year after pregnancy through the federal-state health insurance program for low-income people.
The federal government’s arcane process for medical coding is influencing which reconstructive surgery options are available, creating anxiety for breast cancer patients.
After local leaders in rural Nevada reached an impasse over a proposed Planned Parenthood clinic, an anti-abortion activist pitching local abortion bans across the U.S. arrived at their remote City Hall.
Before the covid-19 public health emergency ended, Medicare advocates around the country noticed a rise in complaints from beneficiaries who received at-home covid tests they never requested. Bad actors may have used seniors’ Medicare information to improperly bill the federal government — and could do it again, say federal investigators.
The computer program, designed in 1996 to be a secure location for foster children’s medical and school records and histories of neglect and abuse, is older than Google — and has had far fewer updates.
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