public health

The Kansas legislature is considering a bill that would strip powers from local public health officials to contain disease outbreaks.

The city of Shawnee will not enforce future masking, vaccination and social distancing orders from Johnson County.

The federal COVID-19 public health emergency will end in May, and with it some significant policy changes around health insurance and public benefits. Kansas City's health director shares what's changing and what residents should do before then.

The FDA banned donations entirely during the HIV epidemic in the early 1980s when little was known about AIDS. But the risk of transfusion-related transmission hasn’t been a real concern for decades. Kansas City University professor Dr. Benjamin Grin says the government’s holdout on changing guidelines is in part because of a lingering stigma.

Insulin costs less than $2 per vial to make yet is sold for between $300-$700, according to a new court filing from Jackson County. The county is suing drugmakers like Eli Lilly and distributors like CVS Caremark for keeping the price of the life-saving drug artificially high.

With the end of pandemic-era housing protections, Midwest states are ramping up evictions again, which is causing a growing public health crisis. Since March 2020, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment has increased nearly 18% percent in Missouri.

This week marked three years since the first announcement of a COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China. After more than 31,000 deaths in Missouri and Kansas, local health officials are trying to keep people vigilant — but people are tired of pandemic measures.

The Kansas City, Missouri Health Department sounded the alarm about syphilis in 2019. Since then, cases have continued to climb, spurred by the pandemic and reduced federal funding.

A new federal designation would allow struggling hospitals to end inpatient services, but some have concerns about how that could affect rural health care.

The United States recorded its first case of AIDS in 1981. On World AIDS Day, a survivor and a physician discuss how public perception and treatment of the disease has changed over 40 years.

In his new book "Me vs. Us: A Health Divided," Dr. Michael Stein explains how the U.S. healthcare system should prioritize the collective health.

The rate of myopia, or nearsightedness, among young people worldwide is growing at a dramatic rate. There are several theories about why this is happening.