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.
Category: Public Health
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.
They Were Injured at the Super Bowl Parade. A Month Later, They Feel Forgotten.
In the first of our series “The Injured,” a Kansas family remembers Valentine’s Day as the beginning of panic attacks, life-altering trauma, and waking to nightmares of gunfire. Thrown into the spotlight by the shootings, they wonder how they will recover.
Exclusive: Social Security Chief Vows to Fix ‘Cruel-Hearted’ Overpayment Clawbacks
New Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley is promising to change how the agency reclaims billions of dollars it wrongly pays to beneficiaries, saying the existing process is “cruel-hearted and mindless.”
Child mortality reaches record low: UN group
A higher percentage of children worldwide are living beyond their fifth birthdays as childhood mortality rates hit a record low in 2022, according to a joint report published by the United Nations Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation.
