Category: Public Health

How National Political Ambition Could Fuel, or Fail, Initiatives to Protect Abortion Rights in States

As money flows to abortion rights initiatives in states, some donors focus on where anger over the “Dobbs” ruling could propel voter turnout and spur Democratic victories up and down the ballot, including in key Senate races and the White House.

Health Workers Fear It’s Profits Before Protection as CDC Revisits Airborne Transmission

Four years since the covid pandemic emerged, health care workers want rules that protect them during outbreaks. They worry the CDC is repeating past mistakes as it develops a crucial set of guidelines for hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, and other facilities that provide health care.

Amid Mental Health Staffing Crunch, Medi-Cal Patients Help One Another

Peer leaders can help ease the shortage of mental health providers and build trust through shared experiences, state health officials say. In 2022, California started allowing counties to use Medicaid dollars to pay them for their work.

US bans asbestos

The Environmental Protection Agency banned ongoing uses of asbestos, a carcinogen that is linked to more than 40,000 annual deaths, the White House said March 18. 

CDC responds to maternal death rate study, refutes claims

CDC experts are defending how the agency calculates maternal deaths after researchers from several universities have said the CDC’s method inflates numbers, according to Politico’s reporting.

A New Orleans Neighborhood Confronts the Racist Legacy of a Toxic Stretch of Highway

New federal funds aim to address an array of problems created by highway construction in minority neighborhoods. These are economic, social, and, perhaps above all, public health problems. In New Orleans’ Treme neighborhood, competing plans for how to deal with harm done by the Claiborne Expressway reveal the challenge of how to mitigate them meaningfully.

Flawed data inflated US maternal mortality rates, new study says

New research calls into question the severity of the nation’s maternal mortality crisis, finding that flawed data has inflated death rates over the past two decades. 

KFF Health News’ ‘What the Health?’: Maybe It’s a Health Care Election After All

Health care wasn’t expected to be a major theme for this year’s elections. But as President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump secured their respective party nominations this week, the future of both Medicare and the Affordable Care Act appears to be up for debate. Meanwhile, the cyberattack of the UnitedHealth Group subsidiary Change Healthcare continues to do damage to the companies’ finances with no quick end in sight. Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, and Joanne Kenen of Johns Hopkins University and Politico Magazine join KFF Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews Kelly Henning of Bloomberg Philanthropies about a new, four-part documentary series on the history of public health, “The Invisible Shield.” Plus, for “extra credit” the panelists suggest health policy stories they read this week that they think you should read, too.

Why advocates are bringing a little-known psychedelic to the limelight

Support is growing for a little-known psychedelic drug called ibogaine that could help people overcome addiction, but concerns over its impact on the heart remain, The Washington Post reported March 14.

Montana, an Island of Abortion Access, Preps for Consequential Elections and Court Decisions

A 25-year-old state Supreme Court ruling protects abortion rights in conservative Montana. That hasn’t stopped Republicans and anti-abortion advocates from trying to institute a ban.