Category: Health

Lost careers. Broken marriages. Dismissed and disbelieved by family and friends. These are some of the emotional and financial struggles long covid patients face years after their infection. Physically, they are debilitated and in pain: unable to walk up the stairs, focus on a project, or hold down a job. Facing the end of the […]

Tony Leys MONTROSE, Mo. — It took Samantha Lesmeister’s family four months to find a medical professional who could see that she was struggling with something more than her Down syndrome. The young woman, known as Sammee, had become unusually sad and lethargic after falling in the shower and hitting her head. She lost her […]

Katheryn Houghton When budget cuts led Western Montana Mental Health Center to start curtailing its services five years ago, rural communities primarily felt the effect. But as the decline of one of the state’s largest mental health providers has continued, it’s left a vacuum in behavioral health care. It started in places like Livingston, a […]

KFF Health News senior correspondent Aneri Pattani discussed the transparency — or lack thereof — and distribution of $50 billion in settlement funds from opioid manufacturers on WNHN’s “Attitude With Arnie Arnesen” on April 11. Click here to hear Pattani on “Attitude With Arnie Arnesen” Read Pattani’s “$50 Billion in Opioid Settlement Cash Is on […]

Many of her clients don’t believe it when Maryland tax preparer Diana Avellaneda tells them they might qualify for low-cost health insurance. Or they think she’s trying to sell them something. In reality, she wants to help her customers take advantage of an underused feature of her state’s tax forms that allows them to get […]

A 62-year-old man was bitten by a tick while hiking through fields in Spain. Two days later he began to feel ill and was taken to a hospital in Madrid, where his condition deteriorated rapidly. He died on the ninth day of his illness. This was in 2016 and proved to be the first fatality […]

Arthur Allen The new drug looked so promising — except for that one warning sign. At the American College of Rheumatology’s annual meeting in 2008, Duke University’s Dr. John Sundy proudly announced that pegloticase, a drug he’d helped develop, was astoundingly effective at treating severe gout, which affects perhaps 50,000 Americans. In about half of […]

A growing number of California’s oldest residents are dying of malnutrition, a yearslong trend that accelerated during the covid pandemic. Deaths attributed to malnutrition more than doubled, from about 650 in 2018 to roughly 1,400 in 2022, according to preliminary death certificate data from the California Department of Public Health. The same trend occurred nationwide, […]

The report based on research by the Economist Impact partnership across 13 African countries, A Triple Dividend: The health, social and economic gains from financing the HIV response in Africa, estimates that millions of lives will also be saved if funding is forthcoming. Not only would there be between 40 and 90 per cent fewer new […]

Federal prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into the Anterior Growth Guidance Appliance, or “AGGA” dental device, following a recent KFF Health News-CBS News investigation, according to a motion filed in federal court. Multiple lawsuits allege the device has caused grievous harm to at least 20 patients and the FDA is now investigating its safety, […]