News & Issues
Stories from around the Kansas City Metro area on a variety of topics.
National Latina advocate returns home, encourages KCK community to vote
A packed meeting room buzzed with excitement Tuesday morning at the South Branch library in the Argentine neighborhood of Kansas City, Kansas. Families and friends huddled together, chatting animatedly. Students from El Centro’s Academy for Children squirmed in their seats. As soon as Irene Caudillo, president and CEO of El Centro, stepped up to the podium,…
Video: First World Series tailgate at Kauffman in 29 years
Kansas City Royals fans gathered at Kauffman Stadium to celebrate game one of the World Series versus the San Francisco Giants. Here are some sights and sounds from the first World Series tailgate at the K in 29 years. Video produced with assistance from Bridgit Bowden.
Lenexa man’s exercise obsession underscores eating disorders’ gender neutrality
At one point when he was in college at Kansas State University, Jon Smith would jog as many as 20 miles a day. “If I wasn’t in the library and not in class,” he said, “I was running.” But Smith was far from healthy. His over-the-top regimen was a manifestation of an eating disorder known…
Blue Cross picket highlights insurance conundrum with eating disorders
The business day was ticking away as Sarah Wilcher waited on the phone. She was an hour into a desperate protest of an insurance decision about her seriously ill daughter, Piper. By around 5:10 p.m., she realized everybody was gone. “They just left me on hold,” Wilcher recalled recently of that day four years ago….
Kansas City-area supporters strive to reopen eating disorder clinic
Approximately 30 million Americans – two-thirds of them women – battle a clinically significant eating disorder during their lifetime, and hundreds of thousands of these people live in Missouri or Kansas,
Ebola crisis hits home for KC’s West African community
Peteh Jalloh lives in Kansas City, but he lived in Sierra Leone until 1995. Lately, he has limited his communication with friends and family in Africa who are dealing with the Ebola crisis to messaging back and forth on Facebook. He says talking on the phone has become too painful. “Every day I get Facebook…
At harvest, corn huskers still pick by hand
Dick Humes squinted and sweat as he moved down a row of corn. He sliced through the husk with a metal hook in his right hand, snapped the ear from its stalk with his left and threw it over his shoulder into a wagon rolling alongside him. Every other second, the corn hit the floor…
Measles, pertussis vex Kansas health workers as Ebola steals headlines
[row class=”row-fluid”][col class=”span12″] TOPEKA – Even as local health officials prepare for the unlikely event of an Ebola outbreak in Kansas, some have had their hands full trying to convince people in their communities to take basic measures to contain the spread of more prevalent, contagious and preventable diseases like measles and pertussis. Kansas has…
California company finalizes agreement to buy two KC-area hospitals
The operator of two local Catholic hospitals has finalized their sale to a for-profit company based in Ontario, Calif. Ascension, the nation’s largest Catholic health system, said in a statement Tuesday that it had reached a definitive agreement to sell St. Joseph Medical Center in Kansas City, Mo., and St. Mary’s Medical Center in Blue…