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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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‘If You Build It, They Will Come’: Saving Pollinator Habitat With Solar Power’s Help
From bees to butterflies , a worldwide decline in pollinators has entomologists trying to figure out how to help those bugs and the plants that rely on…
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For Low Wage Workers Housing Is Out Of Reach
An estimated 10,643 people in Illinois are homeless according to federal data. Many of those are working – but still can’t make ends meet. For the…
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Illinois lawmakers may regulate midwives in home births
A small but growing number of U.S. women are choosing to have their babies at home. In more than 30 states, including most of the Midwest, it’s legal for certified professional midwives–trained specifically in home birth–to assist them. Illinois is not among them; but the state Senate wants to study the issue. Carrie Vickery, vice president of the Illinois Friends…
