One of Patrick Green’s first orders of business each day is to open a tap and fill a bottle with sludge. A utilities plant operator in Modesto, a city of nearly a quarter-million people in California’s San Joaquin Valley, Green helps keep the city’s sewers flowing and its wastewater treated to acceptable levels of safety. […]
As New York City peels back virus safety measures in schools, including mask mandates and social distancing guidelines, one tool remains in place: its in-school COVID testing program that swabs a slice of each school community every week. But that program comes at a significant cost, roughly $30 million a month on average, Chalkbeat has […]
For many people, accessing abortion care can be a major challenge. Abortion services are usually only available in certain clinics with specialized equipment like ultrasounds, often requiring long-distance travel to get there. When medication abortion, or abortion with pills, was introduced to the U.S. in 2000, it offered a more accessible option to end pregnancy. However, […]
Texas has more uninsured people than any other state, whether you count in raw numbers (about 5.4 million) or in the uninsured percentage of the total population (18.4%). But it’s one of only a dozen states that hasn’t expanded its Medicaid program. Whether lawmakers suddenly change their mind about that program or not, they still […]
I don a gown, gloves and a mask to enter the hospital room of a new mother who is sick with COVID-19. She lies in bed, exhausted between coughing spells; her day-old infant rests comfortably across the room. She contracted COVID-19 the week before her due date and was hospitalized when her labor began. Given […]
A bipartisan group of senators passed a resolution 57-40 that would overturn the federal mask requirement on airplanes and federally regulated public transit. Now that measure’s fate is in the hands of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. So far, Pelosi has not spoken publicly on the resolution, which would overturn an announcement from the Transportation […]
The city’s health department is taking baby steps toward Mayor Eric Adams’ campaign promise to provide coaches known as doulas to all first-time parents giving birth. It’s been talking to maternal care providers about plans to spend $2 million a year to bring on up to 10 organizations to provide doulas in neighborhoods with high […]
This was supposed to be the year that low-income Californians could hire a doula to guide them through pregnancy and advocate for them in the hospital. But the new benefit for people enrolled in Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid health insurance program, has been delayed twice as the state and doulas — nonmedical workers who help […]
Seattle Public Schools (SPS) are receiving pushback after announcing the end of the mask mandate on Monday, March 14. The lifted mask mandate is one of the first orders under Dr. Brent Jones, who the school board selected as their new superintendent on March 4. He had been serving as the interim superintendent since May […]
New York City is renewing efforts to get more public school children vaccinated against COVID, with new pop-up clinics at schools where rates are low, and an information blitz consisting of robocalls to parents, fliers sent home in backpacks, and town halls with public health officials. The push, announced Thursday, comes as child vaccination uptake […]
On Thursday, Gov. Roy Cooper encouraged school districts and local governments to drop indoor mask requirements by March 7 to give people the option of baring their faces as the state moves toward a new pandemic phase. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers who have often challenged the Democratic governor’s approach to the pandemic, especially in years with […]
Aotearoa New Zealand has entered new COVID territory, characterised by high vaccination rates but also the rapid spread of the Omicron variant and rising numbers of hospitalisations. As we approach the peak of this wave, some have suggested it would be better to drop remaining public health measures, let the infection rip through our population and accept nearly […]
