Author: Elizabeth B

The Kanawha County Commission is considering providing free mental health services to emergency responders, a move that commission Chairman Lance Wheeler hopes will set an example for counties across the state. “Mental health has been a hot topic nationwide since COVID-19, especially among paramedics,” Wheeler said. “…We want to make sure that paramedics are taken care of in all aspects of their medical care, whether that’s through their personal insurance or by also taking their mental health into consideration.” County commissioners on Thursday first discussed a contract with Christy Haynes, a licensed clinical social worker who also works as a…

Elisabeth Rosenthal August 26, 2024 Article HTML Elisabeth Rosenthal A hard-won provision in the Affordable Care Act allows young people to buy their family’s health insurance until age 26. But after that, people without employer-sponsored insurance face a complicated set of choices: search insurance exchanges, apply for Medicaid, or take a chance and remain uninsured. Are you a young adult who is confused by navigating the exchanges you use to choose a plan? Did you buy a plan on the ACA exchanges only to discover that your medical care isn’t covered? Did you get married or get a job just…

The number of people in Missouri prisons needing court-ordered mental health treatment is currently 344, and the wait time for a hospital bed is an average of one year.That’s up from 254 during the same period last year, according to data provided to The Independent by the Missouri Department of Mental Health. A department spokesman said the number of people waiting for treatment in jails is likely to continue to rise because the department’s inpatient beds are full.Debra Walker, a spokeswoman for the department, said February was the first month the number on the waitlist exceeded 300.None of the people…

A leading conservation group has accused the Government of trying to “hide the bad news” about the health of the Great Barrier Reef with the release of a major five-year outlook report on Friday afternoon.A 600-page report from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said the reef’s “window of opportunity to secure a bright future” was “rapidly closing” and that the outlook for the ecosystem was “very poor”.WWF-Australia marine chief Richard Leck said the report was significant but “its release late on Friday afternoon is concerning”.”The impression is that the government is trying to hide the report’s findings in…

Eric Tegetthoff, Oregon News Service SALEM, Ore. (KTVZ) — Oregon is aiming to make social and emotional health care for young children more accessible with new metrics. The Oregon Health Authority has adopted child-level social-emotional health indicators to improve and incentivize care for children enrolled in the state’s Medicaid program from birth to age 5. Oregon is the first state in the nation to adopt such measures. Andy Walsh, senior health policy adviser at the Oregon Children’s Research Institute, said social-emotional health is the foundation of everyone’s mental health. “It develops the ability to form relationships and experience, express and…

STUDY: Evaluating the 15 Minute Challenge: A Workplace Health and Wellbeing Program. Image credit: Pixel-Shot / Shutterstock.com The World Health Organization’s (WHO) 2020 guidelines recommend 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise, or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise, per week, which is associated with a 20 to 30% reduction in the risk of all-cause mortality. In a recent study published in the journal Healthcare, researchers from the University of South Australia investigated the effectiveness of the 15-Minute Challenge, a mobile health (mHealth) initiative to support workplace wellness by promoting physical activity and improving health outcomes among employees across…

NHANES (1999–2018) data from 5163 individuals were enrolled in the final analysis (Additional file 1: Fig. S1). A total of 101,316 persons ≥ 1 year of age who participated in the in-person or in-home interview and 96,153 were excluded, as follows: (1) 46 235 participants < 20 years of age; (2) 49,915 whom were not diagnosed with cancer, and (3) 3 individuals who did not have unique identifiers to allow linkage to the National Death Index. Of the 5163 cancer survivors (weighted population, 32,623 176; 57.7% female) in this study cohort, 3580 (69.3%) were NHW, 631 (12.2%) were Hispanic, 718 (13.9%) were NHB, and 234 (4.5%)…

If you get sick and need expensive treatment, your options are worse than ever.Getty For at least half a century, we have been grappling with three health policy problems that never seem to go away: cost, quality, and access to care. Public policy has been actively working, with increasing vigor over time, to solve all three of these problems, yet the situation remains the same. Over the past 50 years, medicine has advanced. Today we know more and can do more: better medicines, better diagnostic tools, better treatments, and better outcomes. But given the state of knowledge at a given…

REGIONAL—Mental health-related incidents continue to rise in Sioux County, and the first to respond often are law enforcement officers.“It’s falling into law enforcement’s laps more because the funds aren’t available,” said deputy Jessica Dorhout of the Sioux County Sheriff’s Office based in Orange City. “We’re closing facilities in our area, and we don’t have the resources that maybe we used to.”Rural communities in Iowa face a critical shortage of mental health-care providers. Since 2007, eight nonprofit Iowa hospitals have permanently closed their inpatient psychiatric units and in 2015, former Gov. Terry Branstad closed two of the state’s four mental health…

CASPER, Wyo. — The Casper-Natrona County Health Department inspects restaurants, grocery stores, convenience stores, mobile food vendors, food stands and food vending machines. All establishments undergo unannounced inspections at least twice a year. According to the ministry, “there are three types of violations: priority, priority base and core.” While the Department of Health looks for deficiencies, the organization’s main goal is to educate companies and help them understand unsafe practices and how to correct them. According to Natrona County’s Environmental Health Program Manager, “There is no sliding scale or pass/fail for sanitation inspections. All violations are corrected immediately or within…