Healthcare
KCK summit tackles food issues among the needy
John Hornbeck came to a Thursday forum in Kansas City, Kan., with two cans of green beans. His point was to illustrate that solving hunger isn’t as simple as merely providing someone something to eat — especially when health is thrown into the mix. The CEO of Episcopal Community Services in Kansas City, Mo., a…
MO governor proposes health assistance for working poor
Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon is proposing that the state use federal health dollars to subsidize health insurance for low-wage workers. Under a program he is calling Missouri Health Works, Nixon is proposing that the state pay a portion of employers’ health insurance costs for their employees that make below 138 percent of the poverty level,…
Brownback signs controversial health care compact bill
By Dave Ranney — KHI News Service TOPEKA — Gov. Sam Brownback has signed into law a bill that might make it possible for Kansas to join a compact of states that want the power to run Medicare and Medicaid within their borders. The new law also creates the possibility that the compact states could circumvent…
Closing of clinic elicits rainbow of emotions
The pale white walls and beige cloth desk chair pretty much sum up the decor of the medical director’s office at the Shared Care Free Clinic of Jackson County in Independence. Yet just inside the doorway, underneath a seat for visitors, sit two bundles of fluorescently colored socks. The director, Dr. Bridget McCandless, keeps the…
Teens help community, themselves heal in aftermath of shootings
The plan was to memorialize each victim with the release of a hot-air-powered lantern, but the first attempt ended with stomps as a gusty wind ignited the white paper. A crew did finally get one to lift off in honor of all the dead. But a tree briefly snagged that one, and it skittered off…
Health Profile: Nathan Jackson, Executive Director, Hope Family Care Center
Mike Sherry – The Hale Center for Journalism Hope Family Care Center provides primary care to three medically underserved, low-income ZIP codes in the urban core of Kansas City, Mo. The faith-based clinic at 3027 Prospect Ave. opened five years ago as an initiative of The Hope Center, a Christian community development organization that has…
NIH director talks about one and done at KU — for flu shots
That annual flu vaccine could be a thing of the past by the end of the decade, the director of the National Institutes of Health said during a Monday visit to the University of Kansas Medical Center. Dr. Francis Collins said that NIH-funded researchers are perhaps five years away from developing a universal flu vaccine,…
KU Hospital, others attacking problem of child deaths
Mike Sherry – The Hale Center for Journalism Chloe Robinson was about the size of a bag of frozen spinach at birth. Born 15 weeks early and weighing only 1 pound, she spent her first eight months in the neonatal intensive care unit at the University of Kansas Hospital. That was five years ago, and,…
Wyandotte County officials face trust issue with healthy campus
A town hall forum on a Wyandotte County health initiative drew a standing-room-only crowd to City Hall Thursday evening, but that level of interest didn’t mean participants believed government officials would follow through with the plan. In reporting feedback from their break-out sessions, facilitators said many attendees were skeptical because they felt City Hall had…
Local company part of national ‘Stamp Out Stigma’ mental health campaign
Leawood-based New Directions Behavioral Health is participating in a new national campaign aimed at reducing negative views about mental illness. The Stamp Out Stigma initiative, organized by the Association for Behavioral Health and Wellness, aims to reach 1 million people this year to change perceptions about mental illness and substance abuse, according to a news…