Across the country, the recession has cut state revenues at the same time the COVID-19 pandemic has increased costs, forcing state lawmakers into painful decisions about how to balance their budgets. Health care is one of the targets even in the midst of a health care crisis.
Mientras funcionarios tratan de sumar cuántas personas dan positivo para el coronavirus y cuántas mueren por COVID, la pandemia ha dejado un número incalculable de muertes en las sombras.
Counting deaths caused by the coronavirus pandemic is easier said than done. Without widespread testing, officials must sort through presumed COVID deaths and those who died with infections rather than from them. Then there are the indirect deaths of people who died from circumstances created by the pandemic.
Denver is considering adopting a new 911 alternative used in Eugene, Ore., that allows mental health and medical professionals, not police officers, to respond to some emergency calls, saving money and de-escalating situations with mentally ill people.
An Oregon epidemiologist is using data to find patterns in suicides, then offering prevention training at the motels where people keep taking their lives, the animal shelter where they give away their pets, the pain clinics where patients struggle. Her model is spreading to New York, California and elsewhere.
Veronica Kelley, head of San Bernardino County’s Department of Behavioral Health, knows firsthand that the mental health effects from mass shootings linger. Nearly four years after her community was devastated by a massacre of 14 people, Kelley has advice for Gilroy, El Paso, Dayton and other communities reeling from recent carnage.
So-called red flag laws that let police take guns away from people with mental illness have support from both advocates and opponents of gun control. But it won’t alleviate gun violence.
The depth of psychological damage after the fire in Paradise, Calif., may depend on how much help residents are getting now.
Hospital visits related to amphetamine use have spiked, with the biggest jumps in the West, new research shows. Experts say more attention needs be paid to the resurgence of methamphetamine.
The attention may help women understand that miscarriage is common but still not easily talked about.