Latest Morning Briefing Stories

Why Is Finding Covid Shots for Young Children Still So Hard?

In Los Angeles and elsewhere, some parents are having trouble finding the new pediatric covid shot, especially for young children. Not all pediatricians or pharmacies have it and can administer it, even if vaccines.gov says they can.

A Third of Schools Don’t Have a Nurse. Here’s Why That’s a Problem.

School nurses treat children daily for a wide range of illnesses and injuries, and sometimes serve as a young patient’s only health provider. They also function as a point person for critical public health interventions. Yet many states don’t require them, and school districts struggle to hire them.

PrEP, a Key HIV Prevention Tool, Isn’t Reaching Black Women

New HIV infections occur disproportionately among Black women, but exclusionary marketing, fewer treatment options, and provider wariness have limited uptake of preexposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, drugs, which reduce the risk of contracting the virus.

‘I’m So Burned Out’: Fighting to See a Specialist Amplified Pain for Riverside County Woman

Teresa Johnson has been in extreme pain for more than a year after what she believes was a severe allergic reaction to iodine. Her Medi-Cal plan approved her referral to a specialist, but it took her numerous phone calls, multiple complaints, and several months to book an appointment.

Epidemic: Bodies Remember What Was Done to Them

Trust is hard to build and easy to break. In Episode 6 of the “Eradicating Smallpox” podcast, meet Chandrakant Pandav, a health worker who used laughter and song to try to rebuild trust with communities harmed by India’s sometimes violent and coercive family planning campaign.

KFF Health News' 'What the Health?': An Encore: 3 HHS Secretaries Reveal What the Job Is Really Like

In this special encore episode, KFF Health News’ “What the Health?” asks three people who have served as the nation’s top health official: What does a day in the life of the U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services look like? And how much of their agenda is set by the White House? Taped in June before a live audience at Aspen Ideas: Health, part of the Aspen Ideas Festival, in Aspen, Colorado, host and chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner leads a rare conversation with the current and two former HHS secretaries. Secretary Xavier Becerra and former secretaries Kathleen Sebelius and Alex Azar talk candidly about what it takes to run a department with more than 80,000 employees and a budget larger than those of many countries.

Mothers of Color Can’t See if Providers Have a History of Mistreatment. Why Not?

Many women, especially Black women, have reported discrimination in maternity care, but expectant mothers lack tools to see where this happens. Funding and regulations to measure disparities have been slow in arriving, but some innovators are trying to fill the void.