No local hospital and anemic ambulance services mean residents in rural Pickens County, Alabama, are thrown into perilous situations when they have medical emergencies. It’s a kind of medical care roulette that has become a fact of life for rural Americans who live in ambulance deserts.
Community health workers, who often help patients get to their appointments and pick up prescriptions for them, have increasingly been recognized as an integral part of treating chronic illnesses. But state-run Medicaid programs don’t always reimburse them equally, usually excluding those who work on tribal lands.
Pueblo, Colorado, residents have higher-than-average medical debt, while the city’s two tax-exempt hospitals provide relatively low levels of charity care.
Florida’s new immigration law requires hospitals to ask patients about their immigration status at admission and in emergency rooms, and report that information plus the cost of care for residents without legal status. Doctors and nurses who oppose the policy seem reluctant to criticize lawmakers for fear of political retribution.
With the community’s help, former co-workers came together to fill gaps in care left by the loss of doctors and departments at a Gallup, New Mexico, hospital.
Amid a years-long rise in maternal mortality rates in the United States, Idaho lawmakers decided to disband a committee created to investigate pregnancy-related deaths.
The $120 million International African American Museum that opened this week in Charleston, South Carolina, allows visitors to step back in history at Gadsden’s Wharf, where tens of thousands of enslaved Africans arrived in America, the genesis of generations of health disparities.
The $120 million International African American Museum that opened this week in Charleston, South Carolina, allows visitors to step back in history at Gadsden’s Wharf, where tens of thousands of enslaved Africans arrived in America, the genesis of generations of health disparities.
Cities and towns are again in deep waters this summer trying to hire enough lifeguards to open their public pools. Many are proceeding with sensitivity to issues of race and ethnicity.
Cardiovascular disease is the biggest killer of older Americans, with Black and Hispanic people at higher risk. Despite medical advances, researchers say, disparities are expected to worsen in the coming decades.
