News & Issues
Stories from around the Kansas City Metro area on a variety of topics.
KC Checkup: seven questions for Carrie O’Toole
Like many people in rural, medically underserved areas, many of Kansas’ Native American groups struggle with health problems. The four largest groups – the Iowa, Kickapoo, Prairie Band Potawatomi, and Sac and Fox – live in isolated reservations in northeastern parts of the state. In August, the tribes held a Kansas Tribal Health Summit, the…
Missouri and Kansas rank among lowest spending states for tobacco prevention
States continue to spend a miniscule portion of the billions of dollars they collect annually in tobacco revenues on smoking prevention and cessation programs, according to a new report by six leading health organizations. Missouri spent $76,314 on tobacco prevention in the latest fiscal year, the report says. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…
AARP to urge passage of Kansas caregiver legislation
When diabetes began to steal her mother’s legs and vision three decades ago, Lawrence resident Judy Bellome and her family joined the ranks of thousands of caregivers across Kansas. Bellome had advantages others don’t, but even so she found it challenging. “If I hadn’t been a nurse — and my sister is a physical therapist…
KU Medical Center group recruits rural teens for health jobs
In the last two years Seth Nutt has traveled to nearly every corner of Kansas, introducing rural students to health care professionals. During trips to Goodland, Hays, Highland, Girard, El Dorado, Harper and Seward County, Nutt and others from the Area Health Education Center at the University of Kansas Medical Center have met with 1,000 high schoolers…
What to donate this holiday season? Depends.
Before you put together a donation for your local food pantry, take a moment to consider which items are needed most. It’s not the classic stuffing, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie you might find on your own kitchen table this holiday. The biggest needs, local food pantry organizers say include more practical items: canned vegetables,…
Kansas City reacts to Ferguson grand jury decision
Riots erupted overnight in Ferguson, Missouri, after it was announced that a grand jury chose not to indict police officer Darren Wilson for the August shooting death of unarmed black teen Michael Brown. [View the story “Kansas City reacts to Ferguson grand jury decision” on Storify]
If at first your experiment gets blown up in a rocket, try, try again
Sitting at a lab table over the lunch hour at St. Peter’s School in Kansas City, Missouri, a group of eighth graders are loading freeze dried E.coli bacteria into plastic tubes. It’s all part of a special package destined for the International Space Station. And it’s not the first time students Holden O’Keefe, Eamon Shaw…
Kansas City mental health clients walk the walk
Could you walk an average of seven miles each day for three months straight? That’s what you’d need to do to keep up with Ed Rogers, who was one of the peak perambulators in the 50 Million Step Challenge organized by the Metropolitan Council of Community Mental Health Centers, which includes seven agencies. Rogers was…
How a Denver company is improving treatment for eating disorders in KC
A highly regarded eating-disorder treatment center is about to make the Kansas City area its first site outside of its home state of Colorado, a development local clinicians said would help fill a critical gap in services here. The Eating Disorder Center of Denver expects to open its partial hospitalization program on Dec. 29, according to local program…
Children’s Mercy Hospital develops app for infant heart defects
About 3,000 infants are born each year with single-ventricle heart defects. While that’s a relatively small number, for the newborns’ families the diagnosis can be devastating, says Dr. Girish Shirali, co-director of the Ward Family Heart Center at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City. “It’s very difficult for families, because nobody expects this. So it…