Rural Dispatch: Tuesday, July 28, 2026
Pregnant Woman’s Roadside Death Triggers Push To Reopen Mississippi Delta Hospital
By Gwen Dilworth, Mississippi Today
The deaths of Harmony Ball-Stribling and her unborn daughter five years ago have galvanized local leaders determined to reopen a Mississippi Delta hospital. But once a rural community loses a hospital, bringing it back can be nearly impossible.
Tracking State Rural Health Transformation Plans
By Arielle Zionts and Sarah Jane Tribble and Lydia Zuraw
KFF Health News is working to collect and post approved plans as more states respond to emails and public records requests for their documents.
A Death Revives Concerns About Police Brutality Six Years After National Reckoning
By Cara Anthony
In a church in rural Missouri, mourners lined up to say goodbye to Lloyd Gilmore, a 44-year-old Black father who died in police custody last month. His death sparked protests in a city with a long history of racial violence, even as the national conversation about police brutality has waned. Six years after worldwide calls for change, what’s happened to the movement?
Severely Ill Prisoners Granted Early Release Are Left Stuck Behind Bars
By Ashley Mizuo
Prisoners with severe medical conditions can be granted compassionate release, but without a long-term care facility willing to accept them, many continue to wait in prison as their conditions worsen.
Facing Funding Losses, States Call Out Big Businesses With Employees on Medicaid
By Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez
With the federal Medicaid work requirements looming in January, Democrats are considering state legislation to call out big companies that employ workers enrolled in the safety net health program. Business giants such as Amazon and Walmart said the figures are misleading.
Newsom Vowed To Transform Kids’ Mental Health. Many California Schools Are Still Waiting.
By Christine Mai-Duc
Gov. Gavin Newsom launched an ambitious initiative to make public schools the epicenter of mental health services for young people. Five years after he promised transformation, many schools have struggled to get the program up and running, and hundreds more have yet to try.
Affordable Healthcare Emerges as a Voter Priority in Purple Nevada
By Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez
The Trump administration’s cuts to Medicaid and SNAP may complicate Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo’s reelection chances.
Thousands of Medicare Beneficiaries Thought Their Drug Plan Was Free. Then They Lost It.
By Susan Jaffe
Thousands of people who had a Medicare drug plan with zero-dollar premiums last year got small premium increases this year — and didn’t know it. They were dropped from their coverage for failing to pay amounts as little as $8, and most can’t get it again until 2027.
They Harvest the Nation’s Food, but a New Rule May Strip Them of Health Insurance
By Paula Andalo
New Medicaid work requirements could make a complex system even harder for farmworkers to navigate.
American Scientists See Prosecutions as Part of Federal Campaign Against Them
By Katheryn Houghton and Arthur Allen
Federal officials charged two virologists they stopped en route from an African disease outbreak with violating import rules. But scientists tell KFF Health News the inactivated samples they carried posed no threat to the public, and they characterize the arrests as part of a government harassment campaign.
Would Hunters Take a Lyme Disease Vaccine? We Asked
By Bram Sable-Smith and Hannah Norman and Kyle Pyatt
American hunters skew conservative, rural, and male — all associated with increased hesitancy about or resistance to vaccines. At the same time, hunters spend more time than most people outdoors and potentially exposed to Lyme disease. So how do they feel about a potential new vaccine against the tick-borne illness?