As billions of dollars from settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors go to state and local governments, efforts to reduce the epidemic’s harm can be hamstrung by drug paraphernalia laws. Health authorities say distributing clean syringes to users can save lives, but in states like Pennsylvania, it may be illegal.
People with disabilities say they are abruptly losing their Medicaid home health benefits and are being advised incorrectly when they call state offices for more information. “Every day the anxiety builds,” one beneficiary told KFF Health News.
The legislature is considering taking the first steps to make Covered California plans available to immigrants without permanent legal status. The state has already extended Medi-Cal coverage to low-income immigrants.
People across the nation claim cancer-causing emissions from local sterilizing plants are making them sick. It’s an example of environmental racism, say residents of one predominantly Black area in southwest Memphis, Tennessee, where life expectancy is much shorter than county and state averages.
Researchers in Charleston, South Carolina, are trying to build a DNA database of 100,000 people to better understand how genetics affects health risks. But they’re struggling to recruit enough Black participants.
The state is looking at ways to weed out false reporting of child abuse and neglect as the number of reports reaches a record high.
Facing widening racial disparities in overdose deaths, Philadelphia officials are sending workers and volunteers to knock on doors across the city, aiming to equip households with naloxone and other drug overdose prevention supplies. City officials hope a proactive approach will normalize naloxone as an everyday item in people’s medicine cabinets and prevent overdoses, especially among Black residents.
A federal program that helped pay for more than 23 million low-income households’ internet access runs out of money soon. The end of the subsidy launched earlier in the pandemic could have profound impacts on health care access.
With U.S. syphilis rates climbing to the worst level in seven decades, public health experts and the federal Indian Health Service are scrambling to detect and treat the disease in Native American communities, where babies are infected at a higher rate than in any other demographic.
Many people from racial and ethnic minority groups brace themselves for insults and judgments before medical appointments, according to a new survey of patients that reaffirms the prevalence of racial discrimination in the U.S. health system.
