This is the fourth story in our series chronicling the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Trigger warning: This article contains descriptions of suicide, gun violence, and child deaths that may be distressing to some readers. As the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approached in 2015, Michelle McCullum, a 25-year-old mother of two, drove her children, […]
Health
Posted inHealth, Maternal Health, Partner Content
A Brain-Dead Pregnant Black Woman Was Kept Alive in Georgia. It’s Unclear if State Law Required It.
Originally published by KFF Health News A Georgia woman declared brain-dead and kept on life support for more than three months because she was pregnant was removed from a ventilator in June and died, days after doctors delivered her 1-pound, 13-ounce baby by emergency cesarean section. The baby is in the neonatal intensive care unit. […]
Posted inHealth
RFK Jr.’s Public Health Overhaul Could Disproportionately Put Black Lives at Risk
Alarm bells are ringing again for health advocates. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. scrapped a meeting for a federal advisory task force charged with making recommendations for which preventive care treatments must be covered by insurance companies, including cancer screenings and tests for sexually transmitted infections. The future of the task […]
Posted inEnvironmental Justice, Extreme Weather, Mental Health, Partner Content
Extreme Heat Is Causing a Black Suicide Crisis in Phoenix. Urban Farms Offer a Lifeline
LIKE THOUSANDS OF OTHER BLACK AMERICANS, Tiffany Hawkins’ grandparents, Earnest and Mattie Lee Johnson, left the Jim Crow South in the 1950s to pick cotton in Arizona’s desert. Many sought opportunities in cities like Chicago and Detroit, but the Johnsons chose Arizona, where their lives and those of their children — including Hawkins’ mother, Arlene […]
Posted inCourts, Health, LGBTQ, Politics & Policy
7 Supreme Court Cases That Black Americans Should Track This Summer
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday issued a number of blockbuster rulings that have implications for everything from President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship executive order to the future of LGBTQ books in schools. The justices punted a major Voting Rights Act case until next term, allowing time for further argument in the fall. In the […]
Posted inHealth, LGBTQ, Partner Content
Inside HIV Activists’ Plan to Save Lives as Trump Guts Federal Funding
GREENVILLE, Miss. — Cedric Sturdevant woke up with “a bit of depression” but made it to church, as he does every Sunday. In a few days, he would drive from Mississippi to Washington, D.C., to join HIV advocates at an April rally against the Trump administration’s actions. It had clawed back more than $11 billion […]
Posted inHealth, Maternal Health
Baby Born to Brain-Dead Mom Spurs Lawmaker’s Push to Protect Women’s Rights
Adriana Smith, the Georgia woman declared brain-dead in February and then kept on life support, has a new son. Chance, weighing just 1 pound and 13 ounces, arrived June 13. Smith’s family announced she was taken off life support on Tuesday. In the wake of the controversy surrounding Smith’s complex situation, U.S. Rep. Nikema Williams […]
Posted inHealth, Partner Content, Science
Kennedy’s HHS Sent Congress ‘Junk Science’ To Defend Vaccine Changes, Experts Say
A document the Department of Health and Human Services sent to lawmakers to support Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to change U.S. policy on covid vaccines cites scientific studies that are unpublished or under dispute and mischaracterizes others.
Posted inCourts, Maternal Health, Politics & Policy
Hospitals Are Drug Testing Mothers Without Consent, Fueling Family Separations
By junior year of high school, Desseray Wright was already a mother and didn’t expect to become pregnant again so soon. The Bronx, New York, teen was juggling raising a toddler and dreaming about becoming a lawyer. Sometimes, she would hang out with her friends and occasionally smoked weed. Then one day, despite still getting […]
Posted inCOVID-19, Health, Politics & Policy
COVID Guidelines Just Changed. Black Americans Could Pay the Price.
The Trump administration has declared an end to COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant people, and health experts have a warning: This is a threat to Black communities. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, announced the decision on May 27 and […]