This story is part of a partnership that includes NPR and KHN. It can be republished for free.

As states await the promise of a renewed federal pandemic response and expand the number of Americans who qualify for a shot, some governors are trying to scale up their covid vaccine operations — and smooth out the kinks — with the help of the private sector.

In Washington state, Starbucks, Microsoft and Costco are lending logistical expertise and manpower to public health agencies that are trying to dispatch their doses of vaccines more efficiently.

Over the weekend, thousands of people filed through the Charlotte Motor Speedway in North Carolina — now serving as a mass vaccine site — run by Honeywell and other local businesses that have partnered with the state.

And on Monday, Google pledged $150 million to “promote vaccine education and equitable distribution” and to make it easier for … Read the rest

Read More »

Cuando los hospitales de todo el país luchan contra la nueva ola de la pandemia, no son camas ni ventiladores lo que escasean. Son las personas que cuidan de los enfermos.

Pero existe mano de obra altamente calificada de médicos, enfermeras y otros trabajadores de salud, con formación en el extranjero, que no se aprovecha debido a las dificultades para la obtención de licencias y credenciales.

Según el Migrant Policy Institute de Washington D.C., unos 165,000 inmigrantes formados en el extranjero, que ya están en los Estados Unidos, tienen títulos en campos relacionados con la salud, pero están desempleados o subempleados en medio de la crisis.

Muchos de estos trabajadores cuentan con una enorme experiencia en epidemias, como el SARS, el Ébola o el VIH, en otros países, pero deben permanecer al margen de la pandemia de covid.

La pandemia pone de manifiesto las barreras para la concesión de licencias … Read the rest

Read More »

Anita Baron first noticed something was wrong in August 2018, when she began to drool. Her dentist chalked it up to a problem with her jaw. Then her speech became slurred. She managed to keep her company, which offers financing to small businesses, going, but work became increasingly difficult as her speech worsened. Finally, nine months, four neurologists and countless tests later, Baron, now 66, got a diagnosis: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

ALS, often called Lou Gehrig’s disease after the New York Yankees first baseman who died of it in 1941, destroys motor neurons, causing people to lose control of their limbs, their speech and, ultimately, their ability to breathe. It’s usually fatal in two to five years.

People with ALS often must quit their jobs and sometimes their spouses do, too, to provide care, leaving families in financial distress. A decade-long campaign by advocates highlighting this predicament notched a … Read the rest

Read More »

La Pequeña Habana es un barrio de Miami que, hasta la pandemia, era conocido por su activa vida en las calles, a lo largo de la Calle Ocho, en donde hay locales de música en vivo, ventanitas que sirven café cubano y un parque histórico donde los hombres se reúnen a jugar dominó.

Pero durante la pandemia, un grupo llamado Healthy Little Havana se está concentrando en esta área con una tarea muy específica: persuadir a los residentes para que se hagan una prueba de coronavirus.

La organización sin fines de lucro tiene mucha experiencia en divulgación. Ayudó con el censo de 2020 y, a causa de la pandemia, hizo la mayor parte de ese trabajo por teléfono. Pero Líderes comunitarios dicen que este nuevo desafío necesita un enfoque cara a cara.

Los trabajadores del grupo han salido casi a diario por las tranquilas calles residenciales, para persuadir a la … Read the rest

Read More »

Joe Biden ran on an expansive health care platform during his 2020 presidential campaign, with a broad array of promises such as adding a government-sponsored health plan to the Affordable Care Act and lowering prescription drug prices. Perhaps most significantly, he pledged to get control of the covid pandemic that claimed more than 400,000 American lives by Inauguration Day.

President Biden now faces major challenges in accomplishing his health care agenda; among the biggest will be bridging partisan divides in both Congress and the nation at large.

Even with the Democrats’ newfound majority in the Senate — the result of victories by the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff in Georgia’s runoff elections — differences in health policy between the party’s moderate and progressive wings will persist.

“With razor-thin Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate and many other priorities in addition to health care, Biden is unlikely … Read the rest

Read More »

With the arrival of winter and the U.S. coronavirus outbreak in full swing, the restaurant industry — looking at losses of $235 billion in 2020 — is clinging to techniques for sustaining outdoor dining even through the cold and vagaries of a U.S. winter.

Yurts, greenhouses, igloos, tents and all kinds of partly open outdoor structures have popped up at restaurants around the country. Owners have turned to these as a lifeline to help fill some tables by offering the possibility at least of a safer dining experience.

“We’re trying to do everything we can to expand the outdoor dining season for as long as possible,” said Mike Whatley with the National Restaurant Association.

Dire times have forced the industry to find ways to survive. Whatley said more than 100,000 restaurants are either “completely closed or not open for business in any capacity.”

“It’s going to be a hard and … Read the rest

Read More »

Está en la naturaleza de los candidatos presidenciales y de los flamantes presidentes: prometer grandes cosas. Apenas unos meses antes de su juramentación en 1961, el presidente John F. Kennedy prometió que iba a enviar un hombre a la luna antes de que terminara la década.

Esa promesa se cumplió, pero muchas otras no, como la de Bill Clinton de lograr una atención médica universal o la George H.W. Bush de no generar nuevos impuestos.

Ahora, durante una pandemia que ocurre una vez en un siglo, Joe Biden ha prometido proporcionar 100 millones de dosis de vacunas contra covid-19 en sus primeros 100 días de mandato.

“Este equipo ayudará a que 100 millones de dosis lleguen a los brazos de los estadounidenses en los primeros 100 días”, dijo Biden en la conferencia de prensa del 8 de diciembre en la que presentó a su equipo de salud.

Luego de … Read the rest

Read More »

ST. LOUIS — The public service announcement showed a mother finding her teenage son lifeless, juxtaposed with the sound of a ukulele and a woman singing, “That’s how, how you OD’d on heroin.”

It aired locally during the 2015 Super Bowl but attracted national attention and has been viewed more than 500,000 times on YouTube.

“You want to tap into a nerve, an emotional nerve, and controversy and anger,” said Mark Schupp, whose consulting firm created the ad pro bono. “The spot was designed to do that, so we were happy with it.”

But like other ads and PSAs seeking to move the needle on public health, it went only so far.

Marketing experts say public health advertising often falls short because it incites people’s worst fears rather than providing clear steps viewers can take to save lives. They say lessons from opioid messaging can inform campaigns seeking to … Read the rest

Read More »

As a health care journalist in Los Angeles reporting on the pandemic, I knew exactly what I needed to do once I landed in the hospital with covid pneumonia: write my goodbye emails.

I’d seen coverage of some final covid messages during this terrible year. They were usually directed to spouses, but my No. 1 concern was how to explain my own death to my 3-year-old, Marigold, whom we call “Goldie.” How much of me would she remember, and how would she make peace with what happened to me, when I could barely believe it myself?

After the emergency room doctor confirmed pneumonia in both of my lungs on Dec. 17, I was whisked upstairs to the hospital’s covid unit, where I got a blood thinner injection, infusions of steroids and remdesivir, and continued on the supplemental oxygen they had started in the ER.

Immediately after the treatments, my mind … Read the rest

Read More »

Use Our Content

It can be republished for free.

Dr. Monte Junker, an Oregon dentist, is waiting for his turn to get vaccinated for covid even though he considers himself a front-line health worker.

“If they offered it to me today, I would be there,” he said.

In December, just before the first vaccines were cleared for emergency use, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention immunization advisory board recommended that health care workers — as well as nursing home residents and staff members — be the first to be inoculated because of their high risks of infection.

But Oregon is one of a handful of states, including Colorado, North Carolina and Texas, that have put dentists lower in priority order than other health professionals who treat patients — even though they have their hands in people’s mouths and are exposed to aerosols that spray germs in their faces during … Read the rest

Read More »