Public Health

Latest California Healthline Stories

For Seniors With Hoarding Disorder, a Support Group Helps Confront Stigma and Isolation

Hoarding disorder disproportionately affects older people. As baby boomers age, it is a growing public health concern. Effective treatments are scarce, and treating hoarding can require expensive interventions that drain municipal resources. Some experts fear a coming crisis.

Los Angeles County Has Cut Homelessness, but Wildfires Threaten To Erase That Gain

As Los Angeles recovers from historic wildfires, both previously unsheltered and chronically homeless people are facing even greater instability. Some lawmakers and providers argue now is the time to put in even more resources to maintain the progress the county and state have made in fighting the crisis.

Texas Measles Outbreak Nears 100 Cases, Raising Concerns About Undetected Spread

Health officials expect a measles outbreak in West Texas to exceed 100 cases because of low vaccination rates and undetected infections. Vaccine misinformation and new laws may make such situations more common and harder to contain.

KFF Health News' 'What the Health?': Medicaid in the Crosshairs, Maybe

President Donald Trump has said he won’t support major cuts to the Medicaid health insurance program for people with low incomes, but he has endorsed a House budget plan that calls for major cuts, leaving the program’s future in doubt. Meanwhile, thousands of workers at the Department of Health and Human Services were fired over the holiday weekend, from the National Institutes of Health, the FDA, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with possibly more cuts to come.

Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico Magazine, and Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet join KFF Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these stories and more.

The Covid ‘Contrarians’ Are in Power. We Still Haven’t Hashed Out Whether They Were Right.

Jay Bhattacharya, nominated to lead the National Institutes of Health, opposed most covid mandates. Without an honest public debate about what worked and what didn’t, public health experts say, we’re even less prepared for the next pandemic.

KFF Health News' 'What the Health?': Courts Try To Curb Health Cuts

Some of the Trump administration’s dramatic funding and policy shifts are facing major pushback for the first time — not from Congress, but from the courts. Federal judges around the country are attempting to pump the brakes on efforts to freeze government spending, shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, eliminate access to health-related webpages and datasets, and limit grant funding provided by the National Institutes of Health. Meanwhile, Congress is off to a slow start in trying to turn President Donald Trump’s agenda into legislation, although Medicaid is clearly high on the list for potential funding cuts. Shefali Luthra of The 19th, Jessie Hellmann of CQ Roll Call, and Maya Goldman of Axios News join KFF Health News’ Julie Rovner to discuss these topics and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews Mark McClellan, director of the Duke-Margolis Institute for Health Policy and a former health official during the George W. Bush administration, about the impact of cutting funding to research universities.

A Year After Super Bowl Parade Shooting, Trauma Freeze Gives Way to Turmoil for Survivors

Survivors and witnesses of gun violence often freeze emotionally at first, as a coping mechanism. As the one-year mark since the parade shooting nears, the last installment in our series “The Injured” looks at how some survivors talk about resilience, while others are desperately trying to hang on.