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Hannah Recht was a data reporter for Ńī¹óåś“«Ć½Ņīl Health News until December 2023.
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The expansion of Catholic hospitals nationwide leaves patients at the mercy of the churchās religious directives, which are often at odds with accepted medical standards.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra is asking states to make more of an effort to keep eligible Medicaid recipients enrolled. He particularly fears children losing health insurance coverage.
In whatās known as the Medicaid āunwinding,ā states are combing through rolls to decide who stays and who goes. But the overwhelming majority of people who have lost coverage so far were dropped because of technicalities, not because officials determined they are no longer eligible.
The government soon will stop paying for the covid drug that has proved to be the most effective at keeping patients alive and out of the hospital.
Health insurers and health care systems across the country are violating disability rights laws by sending medical bills that blind and visually impaired people cannot read, a KHN investigation has found. By hindering the ability of blind Americans to know what they owe, some bills get sent to debt collections.
Many public health workers are unable to see how many doses of Pfizerās antiviral treatment are shipped to their communities and cannot tell whether vulnerable residents are filling prescriptions as often as their wealthier neighbors.
The federal ātest-to-treatā program was designed to be a one-stop shop for people to get tested for covid and to receive treatment. But as covid cases rise again, many communities have no participating locations, and website bugs make it difficult to book an appointment at the biggest participant.
At least 7 million immunocompromised people could benefit from the monoclonal antibody injections designed to prevent covid-19. The government says it has enough doses for a fraction of those in need ā and it doesnāt have the money to buy more.
Two rapid-testing initiatives the Biden administration released in the past week are inaccessible to some residents of multifamily housing, people who donāt speak English well, or those without internet access.
Just 18% of 5- to 11-year-olds are fully vaccinated, with rates varying significantly across the country, a KHN analysis of federal data shows. Pediatricians say the slow pace and geographic disparities are alarming, especially against the backdrop of record numbers of cases and pediatric hospitalizations.
Following a February KHN investigation into covid vaccine accessibility, the Department of Justice reached an agreement with five New York government agencies to make their websites accessible to people who are visually impaired.
Black Americansā vaccination rates still trail all other groups, while Hispanics show improvement. Native Americans show the strongest rates nationally.
Across Appalachia and the Mississippi Delta, where death rates from stroke are above the national average, routing patients from rural areas to the right level of care can be an intricate jigsaw puzzle. The closest hospital might not offer the full scope of stroke treatments, but hospitals with more advanced care could be hours away.
Congress has poured tens of billions of dollars into public health since last year. While health officials who have juggled bare-bones budgets for years are grateful for the money, they worry it will soon dry up, just as it has after previous crises such as 9/11, SARS and Ebola. Meanwhile, they continue to cope with an exodus from the field amid political pressure and exhaustion that meant 1 in 6 Americans lost their local health department leader.
A KHN investigation found covid vaccine registration and information websites at the federal, state and local levels are flouting disability rights laws and limiting the ability of people who are blind or visually impaired to sign up for shots.
Covid vaccines are reaching more Americans, but Black residents are being vaccinated at dramatically lower rates in the 23 states where data is publicly available. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention plans to release national data next week.
Black Americans are receiving covid vaccines at a much lower rate than their white peers due to a combination of mistrust and access issues, leaving them behind in the mission to vaccinate the nationās population.
At least 181 public health leaders in 38 states have resigned, retired or been fired amid the turmoil of the pandemic. The departures come as backlash against public health is rising with threats to officialsā personal safety and legislative and legal efforts to strip their governmental public health powers.
A KHN review found more than 20 states either donāt count or have incomplete data on the use of COVID-19 antigen tests, leaving the public in the dark about the true scope of the pandemic.
As the nation hollowed out its public health infrastructure for decades, staffing and funding fell faster and further in Florida. Then the coronavirus ran roughshod, infecting more than half a million people and killing thousands.
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