As the pandemic brings long-standing health disparities into sharper view, community health workers are being asked to help the public health response. This fast-growing workforce helps fill the gaps between health care providers and low-income communities by offering education, advocacy and outreach.
Everyone is trying to figure out how relationships work in the time of covid. That includes a Bozeman, Montana, couple who suddenly found themselves in a long-distance relationship when the pandemic sent their group homes for adults with disabilities into lockdown.
The U.S. has fumbled almost every step of its public health response in its battle against covid-19. Experts say that must change if we’re going to outflank the variants emerging as the virus continues to mutate.
Hospitals dealing with staff shortages during the current covid surge are unable to tap into one valuable resource: foreign-trained doctors, nurses and other health workers, many with experience treating infectious diseases. Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Nevada are the only states to have eased credentialing requirements during the pandemic.
Many front-line health workers who have faced a perpetual lack of PPE and inconsistent safety measures believe the government and their employers have failed to protect them from covid-19.
As the pandemic hits Latino communities especially hard, Illinois is expanding public health insurance to all low-income noncitizen seniors. Advocates hope other states follow its lead.
How two effective vaccines on the market make it so much harder to quickly test any competing vaccines.
As long as humans encroach on nature, pandemics are inevitable — making it important to concentrate resources in areas where people and wildlife are linked.
It typically takes years of persuasion to change habits in the name of health safety. Local officials who are stuck with the responsibility of enforcing statewide pandemic-related mandates are trying to transform behavior fast.
There are already signs that the distribution of the COVID vaccines will be messy, confusing and chaotic.
