News & Issues
Stories from around the Kansas City Metro area on a variety of topics.
New Missouri law pays dividends for Kansas City CARE Clinic
A year and a half ago, a local safety-net clinic underwent one of the most significant changes in its more than four decades of serving the metropolitan area: it went from a purely free provider to one that also accepted paying patients covered by insurance. Known for years as the Kansas City Free Health Clinic,…
Hub key to sustaining local food movement In Northeast Kansas
The now well-established local food movement in and around the university community of Lawrence is in danger of stalling unless a concerted effort is made to expand its reach beyond an already committed group of consumers and build more demand for locally grown or produced fruits, vegetables and meats. That’s the conclusion of a recent…
KU docs say proposed cure for transplant waits would make local patients sicker
When Steve Jobs needed a liver transplant in 2009, the Apple CEO left California and went to Memphis, Tenn. While his home state has some of the longest waiting lists in the country for donated livers, Tennessee has some of the shortest. Many health advocates point to Jobs’ story as an example of the harsh disparities…
Student poets slam dropout crisis through spoken word contest
Unique Hughley likes to compose poetry by the glow of his iPhone while he walks around at night through the urban core of Kansas City, Missouri, where he grew up. “I grew up in a bad place. I grew up right on Prospect and that’s like a horrible place where I come from,” Hughley said….
KC Week In Review: The Missouri Transportation Tax Debate
Critics call it the biggest tax increase in Missouri history. Proponents call Amendment 7 on the August 5 ballot a crucial vote to improve highways, bridges and transit in the state. The 3/4 cent sales tax increase would bring in more than $5 billion dollars over 10 years and add about 8 cents to a…
Med school program emphasizes career possibilities for urban teens
Shannon North can preach and preach to her students that their aspirations are achievable, that advanced education is attainable. And she does just that, as the college and career facilitator at Hogan Preparatory Academy in Kansas City, Mo. The charter school, at 1221 E. Meyer Blvd., has a student population where virtually all the attendees…
Missouri becomes third state to enact ‘Right To Try’ drug therapy law
Missouri residents who have exhausted conventional disease cures will have access to experimental drugs under legislation signed on Monday by Gov. Jay Nixon. The so-called Right to Try legislation gives patients and their doctors the ability to procure drugs that have yet to gain approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration if the pharmaceutical…
KC Week in Review: Meet KC’s new Tourism & Convention chief
Nick Haines dissects the convention business with the new chief of Kansas City’s Convention and Visitors Association, Ronnie Burt. Also on this edition: Missouri transportation sales tax, Tea Party candidate Milt Wolf, Google Fiber comes to Overland Park and other stories with news reviewers Garrett Haake, 41 Action News, Steve Kraske, KCUR and Dave Helling…
Dental funds for the poor caught in Missouri budget battle
Approximately $18 million that would restore basic dental benefits for hundreds of thousands of low-income Missouri adults is in limbo due to a sweeping budget action by Gov. Jay Nixon. Acting under what he termed his constitutional duty to balance the state budget, Nixon late last month restricted or vetoed approximately $1.1 billion in spending…
KU Med Center Tests Promising Alzheimer’s Drug As Part Of International Trial
It’s a form of dementia that afflicts as many as 5.2 million people in the United States. It has no cure. And as the population ages, the number of people afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease is expected to quadruple over the next 35 years, according to a study from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health….