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Anna Maria Barry-Jester was a senior correspondent for KFF Health News until June 2022.
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Counties say the ripple effects of the state’s COVID-19 data failures are impeding their ability to slow the spread of the coronavirus, even as they must make life-or-death decisions about business and school reopenings.
Health departments and other public agencies tasked with protecting the nation from disease-carrying mosquitoes are overstretched amid the coronavirus pandemic — even as the nation is told it’s safest to be outside.
The U.S. public health system has been starved for decades and lacks the resources necessary to confront the worst health crisis in a century. An investigation by The Associated Press and KHN has found that since 2010, spending for state public health departments has dropped by 16% per capita and for local health departments by 18%. At least 38,000 public health jobs have disappeared, leaving a skeletal workforce for what was once viewed as one of the world’s top public health systems. That has left the nation unprepared to deal with a virus that has sickened at least 2.6 million people and killed more than 126,000.
Public health officials have been alarmed by the increase in COVID-19 cases linked to family gatherings and socializing. While Gov. Gavin Newsom is defending the state’s reopening, local health officials worry the situation could get worse this summer.
Public health officials are confronting growing pressure — and threats — across the country as the backlash to the coronavirus response continues. At least 27 state and local health leaders have resigned, retired or been fired since April across 13 states.
A new federal report sheds light on the reasons newborn syphilis rates are on the rise despite simple treatment options. But amid the COVID-19 pandemic, public health departments will struggle to respond.
Amid questions about the accuracy of the COVID-19 antibody tests flooding the market — and the usefulness of the results they provide — the FDA has belatedly stepped in to try to rein in the chaos.
It’s hard to overstate how uneven access to critical coronavirus test kits remains in the nation’s largest state. Even as some Southern California counties are opening drive-thru sites to make testing available to any resident who wants it, a rural northern county is testing raw sewage to determine whether the coronavirus has infiltrated its communities.
An early morning text. A lawyer-filled meeting on a Sunday afternoon. Emotional journal entries. And, ultimately, action. In the 24 hours before San Francisco Bay Area public health officials issued the country’s first stay-at-home order, they debated how to tackle the alarming rise in COVID-19 infections. Their decision set the course for the nation.
The pandemic has exposed massive cracks in the foundations of the U.S. public health system. Getting the country back to normal, experts say, will require a major investment in Public Health 101: training a corps of workers who can track people with the virus and prevent them from passing it to others.
California is entering the most critical period in its battle against COVID-19, and may need thousands of hospital beds and ventilators to accommodate a surge of critically ill patients. Hospitals are taking extreme measures, such as using 3D printers to make ventilator parts and turning cafeterias into wards.
California physicians dealing with COVID-19 offer a sobering portrait of a health care system bracing for the worst of a pandemic that could be months from peaking.
Closing K-12 schools is part of a broad strategy to limit public interactions and slow the spread of COVID-19 cases. But the decision is far from easy, with conflicting science about how effective such closures are weighed against the massive disruption to families’ lives.
California’s capital region is among the areas that have had to shift response to the coronavirus outbreak because of a shortage of test kits in the U.S.
As the new coronavirus continues its spread through the U.S., the general public can look for guidance from millions of Americans with weakened immune systems who long ago adopted the rules of infection control that officials tout to avoid contagion.
Disease experts say a new coronavirus case in California underscores the need for more widespread community testing for the illness, as well as problems caused by the delays in getting functional coronavirus test kits to state and local public health agencies.
Health officials stress that the new coronavirus devastating mainland China continues to pose minimal risk in the United States. The exception involves people who have had “close contact” with someone infected with the virus. So what exactly is close contact?
To date, the U.S. has multiple confirmed cases of the viral infection that originated in Wuhan, China. That includes cases in which the virus passed from person to person within this country. So why don’t health officials share more information with the public?
Communities across California, frustrated with the growing number of homeless people living on public property, have tasked police and sanitation workers with dismantling encampments they say pose a risk to health and safety. The routine cleanups have spawned another public health concern: the loss of the displaced people’s personal possessions, including medicines.
Kate Gordon, director of Gov. Gavin Newsom's Office of Planning and Research, is tasked with identifying and mitigating the risks of climate change in California. She spoke to KHN about how that work intersects with health, and how residents can get involved.
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