Reports Highlight Problems with Illinois’ Department of Children and Family Services
In late March, a child welfare worker visited the family home of 9-year-old Byron Casanova in Johnston City, Illinois. he social worker expressed…
Abortion Stories: Mother, Daughter And A Clinic
“This is the spot,” Marilyn Evans says, standing in the empty parking lot of the Women’s Med Center in Kettering, Ohio. The Women’s Med Center is the…
Abortion Stories: Woman Counsels Others On Regret
Nicole Dempsey remembers crying in a pew at church, watching a video of a woman with long dark hair and deep brown eyes. The woman was talking about her…
Why This Group Hands Out Free ‘Morning After’ Pills
Rows of silver and pink plastic packages sit on the bathroom counter inside Bean, a Louisville coffee shop. Each package carries these words: emergency…
How Foreign-Born Doctors Help Refugees, Other Immigrants
Deepa Halaharvi is a morning person. “Eat, read, pray, and get ready to go to work,” she says, laughing. “And usually I’m out the door around 6:15 or 6…
How One Hospital Drastically Cut Opioid Prescriptions
As the opioid epidemic continues, hospitals are looking for new ways to treat pain and combat addiction. At Indiana University Health, which has 16…
E-cigarette Popularity Surges In Rural Classrooms
North Newton Junior/Senior High lies in the Northwest corner of Indiana, in a county home to more dairy cows than people. But students have no problem…
Aging In Rural America: The Link Between Chronic Disease and Mental Health
Dennis Pond doesn’t tell his psychiatrist about his thoughts of suicide. But he has them. He often feels useless, in large part because his diabetes has…
Meating In The Middle: The Challenge of Lowering Greenhouse Gas Emissions On Farms
Cow guts are quite the factory. Grass goes in, microbes help break it down and make hydrogen, then other microbes start converting it to another gas. In…
How Many Patients Should a Nurse Care For?
Several Illinois lawmakers want to improve patient outcomes through legislation that would limit the number of people nurses can care for at any given…
Why Don’t More Doctors Help Cancer Patients Quit Smoking?
Most people knew James Strain as “Butch.” Dr. Cynthia Meneghini called him “Dad.” She remembers h im as a handyman who could fix anything. When she…
Grandparents Are Raising Their Grandkids. Blame Opioids.
Getting to Anne Polston’s house is a journey: first, you have to get to Liberty , a town about two hours southeast of Louisville. Then, there’s a…
Can Cannabis Help Patients In Pain Avoid Opioids?
Since February, patients in Illinois have been able to swap their opioid prescriptions for marijuana. And many are doing just that.
New Medicaid Coverage for Transgender Illinoians
The Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services will soon allow gender confirmation surgery to be covered by Medicaid. That procedure, most…
Struggling for Housing
In the course of reporting my previous story on the gap between wages and the cost of housing, I spent time following a case manager with the Southern…