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Wash, dry, enroll: Finding Medicaid help at the laundromat
Phil Galewitz, KFF Health News, Feb. 5
State Medicaid and Affordable Care Act coverage programs have struggled to connect with low-income Americans to help them access health care. They send letters and emails, make phone calls, and post to social media. Some state programs are trying a new approach: meeting people at the laundromat– where they regularly go and have time to talk. Fabric Health, a Washington D.C.-based startup, sends outreach workers into laundromats to help people get and use health coverage. The workers, many of whom are bilingual, help schedule check-ups or maternity care and build relationships and trust with their communities.
Black kidney patients find renewed hope after rules change for transplant list
Nathan Smith and Doc Louallen, ABC News, Feb. 4
A race-based method for assessing kidney function placed many Black patients lower on the transplant list since the 1990s. However, when a widely-used lab test was found to calculate results differently for Black patients, thousands of those patients were moved up the list. Jazmine Evans was among those. She was able to get her kidney transplant three and a half years earlier. “I knew that there was a legacy of racism and racial bias, like within the medical system. But then having to reconcile that with my own experience, it was really a sobering moment,” she said.
Drug deaths are down in one Ohio county and much of the U.S. Why is complex.
David Ovalle, The Washington Post, Feb. 3
In Ohio’s Hamilton County, outreach worker Sarah Coyne visits the homes of people who have overdosed multiple times. Her work includes bringing clients to pick up medication for their opioid addiction and arranging stays at hospitals and treatment centers. Hamilton County paints a picture of what much of America looks like at the start of 2025: deaths from overdoses have fallen, lifesaving antidotes flood the streets, and response teams are on the ground to offer services to people who have overdosed. Experts estimate that last year there were more than 20,000 fewer deaths than the year before, though the CDC won’t publish 2024 estimates for several months. The reasons behind a potential decline are complex, according to experts, and involve a number of factors that vary regionally.
For California farmworkers, telehealth visits with Mexican doctors fill a gap
Victoria Clayton, KFF Health News, Feb. 4
The coastal valley of Salinas, California is sometimes known affectionately as “America’s salad bowl,” where planting and harvesting is done mostly by immigrants from Mexico. It’s where Taylor Farms, a producer of packaged salads and cut vegetables, is offering its employees telehealth through MiSalud. MiSalud is a startup which connects Spanish-speaking employees with physicians and mental health therapists in Mexico. Providers aren’t licensed in the U.S. and can’t prescribe medications but instead serve as health coaches who can give advice and work with a U.S.-based doctor if needed. Proponents of the program argue the approach helps bridge linguistic and cultural barriers in health care.
Racial gap widened in deaths among US moms around the time of childbirth
Mike Stobbe, The Associated Press, Feb. 5
Black women in the U.S. died at a rate nearly 3.5 times higher than white women around the time of childbirth in 2023. While maternal mortality fell below pre pandemic levels overall, racial gaps widened. A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that the COVID-19 pandemic, at its peak, impacted all pregnant women. However, “once we went back to ‘usual activities,’ then the impact of systemic racism and unequal access (to medical care) … came right back into place,” said Dr. Amanda Williams, interim medical director for the March of Dimes.