health care
HIV/AIDS vaccine: Why don’t we have one after 37 years, when we have several for COVID-19 after a few months?
By Ronald C. Desrosiers, University of Miami Smallpox has been eradicated from the face of the Earth following a highly effective, worldwide vaccination campaign. Paralytic poliomyelitis is no longer a problem in the U.S. because of development and use of effective vaccines against the poliovirus. In current times, millions of lives have been saved because […]
Young farmers struggle with child care and health insurance
By Shoshanah Inwood, Andrea Rissing, and Florence Becot, of Ohio State University Kat Becker feeds hundreds of people with the vegetables she grows on her Wisconsin farm, and she wants to expand. But her ability to grow her business collides with her need for affordable health insurance and child care. She has had to make […]
Dental care remains neglected in state, nation
One of the leading health care needs in the state of Ohio is one that’s most neglected, especially when it comes to low-income communities. As dental director at the Cincinnati Health Department and as part of the CincySmiles dental clinic program, Dr. Larry Hill’s major task was making sure low-income and high risk populations had […]
Biden pitches big boosts in education and health spending in budget request
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration released a key portion of its budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year Friday, calling for increasing money for schools, public health programs, cancer research and other discretionary programs that it says have been underfunded for too long. The president’s $1.5 trillion request seeks to spend $769 billion on discretionary programs […]
My wife and I are doctors. We have an opportunity to lead by example by getting the COVID-19 vaccine.
Officials recently confirmed the alarming news that the virulent UK strain of COVID-19 has been found in various counties in Ohio. New strains of the virus also are spreading in New York and California and will no doubt make their way to our state before long. The emergence of these variants underscore how crucial it is that […]
COVID-19 revealed how sick the US health care delivery system really is
If you got the COVID-19 shot, you likely received a little paper card that shows you’ve been vaccinated. Make sure you keep that card in a safe place. There is no coordinated way to share information about who has been vaccinated and who has not. That is just one of the glaring flaws that COVID-19 […]
How Ohio should value Black lives in health care
As a country, we are waking up daily to the unacceptable and completely avoidable loss of Black life. We know some of their names, like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. But many more we sadly only know as numbers and statistics, reported as part of the daily coronavirus public health updates. What they have in […]
Don’t let COVID-19 prevent your child’s annual doctor visit
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the way of life in Ohio, our country and across the world. In recent months, stay-at-home orders, mask wearing and social distancing measures have created a “new normal,” and all of us have put activities on hold to reduce the spread of the virus. But one activity that you should […]
How racism in US health system hinders care and costs lives of African Americans
As the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the U.S., the virus hit African Americans disproportionately hard. African Americans are still contracting the illness – and dying from it – at rates twice as high as would be expected based on their share of the population. In Michigan, African Americans are only 14% of the population, but […]
Being convicted of a crime has thousands of consequences besides incarceration. Some last a lifetime.
At least 77 million U.S. adults have criminal records, including nearly 7 million currently in prison or jail or on probation or parole. Typically, more than 10,000 of the incarcerated leave prison and nearly 200,000 churn through jails every week. But because more than 64,000 inmates and workers have become infected with the coronavirus so […]
COVID-19 may hit rural residents hard, and that spells trouble because of lack of rural health care
The burden of COVID-19 in rural areas has been under the radar, as the toll of the disease so far has been heaviest in dense urban areas. But up to 30% of the U.S. population lives in rural America, which already has experienced more than 128 hospital closures since 2010, including 19 last year. COVID-19 […]
Some lawmakers itching to reopen economy as COVID-19 cases keep climbing
It was only minutes after state legislators ended their Zoom conference meeting, with many urging a swift reopening of the economy, that the Ohio Department of Health announced a new slate of virus deaths and illnesses. Fifteen more Ohioans had died in the prior 24 hours. An additional 363 people were confirmed to have the […]