Latest California Healthline Stories
People Proving to Be Weakest Link for Apps Tracking COVID Exposure
Contact tracers in many states are stretched thin. Colorado is among the latest states to launch an app that aims to help, based on the COVID contact-tracing tool built by Apple and Google. But there’s a chicken-and-egg problem: More people will use them if they prove to work, but the apps become effective only if more people use them.
States’ Face-Covering Mandates Leave Gaps in Protection
States vary in how they define face coverings in their mandates. But a bandanna or neck gaiter isn’t nearly as effective as a surgical or cloth mask. Public health experts say every state needs more standardization to protect against COVID-19.
Government-Funded Scientists Laid the Groundwork for Billion-Dollar Vaccines
Drugmakers will walk away with massive profits, but much of the pioneering work on mRNA vaccines was done with government money.
As Broad Shutdowns Return, Weary Californians Ask ‘Is This the Best We Can Do?’
California’s ping-ponging approach to managing the pandemic — twice reopening large portions of the service sector economy only to shut them again — has residents and business owners on edge. But experts say the push and pull on businesses may be what success looks like in much of the U.S. for months to come, given COVID-19’s pervasive spread.
Anger After North Dakota Governor Asks COVID-Positive Health Staff to Stay on Job
Doctors and nurses say order puts lives in danger, amid a COVID surge and a statewide shortage of health care workers.
Public Health Programs See Surge in Students Amid Pandemic
Catalyzed by the paltry response to the pandemic and the inequities it is causing, people are flocking to graduate programs in public health to become the next front-line workers.
Facebook Live: Helping COVID’s Secondary Victims: Grieving Families and Friends
More than 246,000 people in the U.S. have been killed by the coronavirus, leaving hundreds of thousands of others grieving. Judith Graham, author of KHN’s Navigating Aging column, hosted a discussion on these unprecedented losses and dealing with bereavement. She was joined by Holly Prigerson, co-director of the Center for Research on End-of-Life Care at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, and Diane Snyder-Cowan, leader of the bereavement professionals steering committee of the National Council of Hospice and Palliative Professionals.
What Doctors Aren’t Always Taught: How to Spot Racism in Health Care
Activists across the country are demanding that medical schools eliminate the use of race as a diagnostic tool, recognize how systemic racism harms patients and reckon with some of medicine’s racist history.
Homeless Shelters Grapple With COVID Safety as Cold Creeps In
During the pandemic, shelters are having to change the way they do things to prevent the virus from spreading among the vulnerable homeless population. Now, as winter weather moves in, there’s less room at the shelters for those in need — threatening to leave many, literally, out in the cold.
Long-Term Care Workers, Grieving and Under Siege, Brace for COVID’s Next Round
As the coronavirus surges around the country, workers in nursing homes and assisted living centers are watching cases rise in long-term care facilities with a sense of dread. Many of these workers struggle with grief over the suffering they’ve witnessed.