MURPHYSBORO – Some who work for clinics targeting vulnerable, hard-to-reach populations say they would like to play a bigger role in the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. But those clinics are still waiting to get access to doses. Karla Grathler is the coordinator of the Farmworker Health Program at Shawnee Health Service, a community health center…
BRIDGEVIEW – In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mayra Ramirez contracted the virus and ended up in the ICU on life support. She was 28 years old. The virus had severely damaged her lungs that her doctors concluded she would not survive the illness unless she got a double-lung transplant. In June, Mayra…
CHAMPAIGN – Anyone who lacks health insurance — or wants to change their marketplace coverage — has through May 15 to sign up for options offered through the Affordable Care Act. That’s thanks to a three-month special enrollment period that began Feb. 15 — after President Biden signed an executive order to open up the…
URBANA – Carle has begun offering addiction recovery services through its mobile health clinic. Since 2018, the mobile clinic has traveled to neighborhoods in Champaign-Urbana and the surrounding area to provide non-urgent medical care. Patients can now come to the mobile clinic to receive individual counseling and medication for addiction treatment and get plugged into…
URBANA – Because opioid pain medications can be so addictive, there’s an urgent need for scientists to develop alternatives for treating pain. One of the researchers looking into this issue is Aditi Das, associate professor of comparative biosciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Das studies how the body handles lipids — a class of…
URBANA – Within three weeks of having tens of thousands of students return to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for the spring semester, the campus had identified more than 450 cases of COVID-19. This is fewer than half the number of cases identified by the same time last fall — and lower than U of…
CHAMPAIGN – Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker visited the vaccination site located at the I Hotel and Conference Center in Champaign on Wednesday. During a press briefing following a tour led by Champaign-Urbana Public Health administrator Julie Pryde, Pritzker praised Champaign County for leading the way in building local partnerships to get the vaccine out to…
Durante más de una década, Saraí ha sido una trabajadora agrícola que ha cultivado maíz y soya en los campos del centro de Illinois. Se mudó de México a…
When schools closed last spring, children with severe mental illnesses were cut off from the services they’d come to rely on. Many have since spiraled into emergency rooms and even police custody.
URBANA – People who have navigated tough situations in health care often have the best ideas for how to improve the system. The goal of the Carle Illinois College of Medicine Health Make-a-Thon competition is to provide the support that everyday people need to help bring those ideas to life. The competition is organized by…
Nearly half a million cannabis arrest records were expunged in the first year of recreational cannabis legalization in Illinois. Ten counties, including Peoria and Knox, are years ahead of schedule in automatically expunging all eligible records. But for other communities, that process is still ongoing. Tim Shelley spoke with Teri Ross, executive director of Illinois Legal…
CHAMPAIGN – An emergency women’s shelter in Champaign, “C-U at Austin’s Place,” is now operating out of a new permanent location. Starting 13 years ago as a grassroots mission effort by Champaign’s First United Methodist Church, the Austin’s Place women’s shelter has been operating lately out of local churches. In the past year, the shelter…
URBANA – Supply chain issues and logistical challenges are causing the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine in Illinois to move slower than expected. But the vaccine is now going out to older adults in some parts of the state. The first phase of the state’s rollout of the vaccine included both health care personnel and…
URBANA – The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on long-standing racial disparities, when it comes to access to health care and other resources. People of color, who are overrepresented among essential workers and in low-income communities, have been disproportionately hurt by the virus and are among those in need of better access to coronavirus…
SPRINGFIELD – A central Illinois hospital system recently launched a new mental health crisis clinic, which aims to meet the growing need for services amidst the pandemic while reducing pressure on local hospital emergency departments. Rates of anxiety and depression appear to be rising during the pandemic, according to federal data. The U.S. Centers for…