Category: Health

It was Labor Day weekend 2021 when Sara Walsh, who was 24 weeks pregnant with twins, began to experience severe lower-back pain. On Wednesday, a few days later, a maternal-fetal specialist near her home in Winter Haven, Florida, diagnosed Walsh with twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, a rare complication that occurs when fetuses share blood unevenly through […]

(Oona Tempest / KFF Health News Illustration) Sadé Lewis of Queens, New York, has suffered migraines since she was a kid, and as she started college, they got worse. A recent change in her insurance left the 27-year-old looking for a new neurologist. That’s when she found West 14 Street MedicalArts in New York. MedicalArts […]

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Years-old tissue samples from armadillos in museum collections may harbor Mycobacterium leprae, the bacteria that causes Hansen’s disease, also called leprosy, according to recent research my colleagues and I conducted. Leprosy can cause nerve damage that, without early effective treatment, can […]

Joel Wakefield isn’t just an armchair epidemiologist. His interest in tracking the spread of covid is personal. The 58-year-old lawyer who lives in Phoenix has an immunodeficiency disease that increases his risk of severe outcomes from covid-19 and other infections. He has spent lots of time since 2020 checking state, federal, and private sector covid […]

WESLEY CHAPEL, Fla. — In BayCare Hospital Wesley Chapel’s 86 private rooms, patients can use voice-activated Alexa devices to dim the lights, play music, or summon a nurse. BayCare boasts some of the latest high-tech equipment. Yet, the company said, its $246 million facility that opened here in March doesn’t provide any health care services […]

Disability rights advocates sued Tuesday to overturn California’s physician-assisted death law, arguing that recent changes make it too easy for people with terminal diseases whose deaths aren’t imminent to kill themselves with drugs prescribed by a doctor. California’s original law allowing terminally ill adults to obtain prescriptions for life-ending drugs was passed in 2016. Advocates […]

[Editor’s note: In 2019, federal lab regulators ordered the prestigious U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases to halt all work with dangerous pathogens, such as Ebola and anthrax, which can pose a severe threat to public health and safety. Army officials had assured the public there was no safety threat and indicated that […]

Marcus Cummins grew up dreaming of becoming a doctor, but the Central Valley, California, native didn’t have Black physicians to look up to. At times he doubted himself, but he credits the determination he developed as a receiver on the University of California-Davis football team to get him through his studies. “Being a collegiate athlete […]

(Oona Tempest / KFF Health News) In the 1990s, residents of Mexico City noticed their dogs acting strangely — some didn’t recognize their owners, and the animals’ sleep patterns had changed. At the time, the sprawling, mountain-ringed city of more than 15 million people was known as the most polluted in the world, with a […]

The Supreme Court has ruled that the abortion pill mifepristone should remain widely available for now, a decision that maintains access to the drug while the lower courts consider the issue. Julie Rovner, KFF Health News’ chief Washington correspondent, appeared on NPR’s “Weekend All Things Considered” to explain the complicated, even contradictory court decisions surrounding […]