rural health

Midwest lawmakers have tried and failed to ban paraquat, a toxic weedkiller that’s been tied to Parkinson’s disease. One state senator plans to keep fighting. Plus: The federal government has released new rules controlling how farmers can use the controversial herbicide dicamba.

Childcare costs in Missouri and Kansas can now rival a mortgage for working families, but two Midwestern lawmakers are fighting to change that. Plus: After the Affordable Care Act tax credits lapsed, healthcare premiums spiked for millions of farmers and ranchers.

CTF will be distributing the $600,000 in federal funding to eligible prenatal home visit programs in rural Missouri. More than 10% of births in Missouri occur in maternity care deserts.

Across Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, more than 270,000 people ages 65 and older live with Alzheimer's disease. Government support to help people detect dementia early is critical — especially in rural areas — advocates say.

Rural hospitals in Kansas will use federal money to help them transform and expand access to healthcare. Some are creating new services like mobile maternal health clinics, but looming Medicaid cuts still mean many hospitals are at risk of closing.

The program is meant to soften the coming cuts to Medicaid. The state health department recently announced the first round of Kansas grantees. Hospitals are using the money to increase healthcare access to rural patients.

Rural Kansans could see longer drives to access healthcare or fewer health services because of hospital closures. A report found that Kansas has 28 rural hospitals at immediate risk of closure.

Missouri officials have proposed cutting tens of millions of dollars in services for people with disabilities. And Montana halted a plan to pay for birthing doulas amid a budget shortfall and fears over coming federal Medicaid cuts.

Voters around Kansas City went to the polls yesterday, and we'll break down the elections. Plus: A community health center in southeast Kansas is working on solving rural health workforce shortages by introducing elementary schoolers to... frog dissections.

A community health center in southeast Kansas hopes exposing kids to health care careers through fun activities could lead them into the field in the future. It’s one way to hopefully fight a long-term shortage of health care workers in rural areas.

A University of Kansas Cancer Center bus retrofitted to serve as a clinic is headed out to cover rural communities in Kansas and western Missouri that don't have easy access to cancer screenings.

Rural communities across Kansas are losing their grocery stores, and small towns are coming up with new ways to revive them. But some of those solutions have not panned out.