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KFF Health News covers the health issues facing people who live in America’s rural reaches.
KFF Health News is working to collect and post complete application materials, by state, here and will update this repository as new materials, released in response to public records requests, arrive.
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Three leading California officials who represented the state at the United Nations climate talks late last year reflect on climate change’s growing threat to human health — and explain what the state is trying to do about it.
A response is ramping up to a potential spillover of the neurological disease to humans from deer, elk, and other animals.
After the U.S. Supreme Court ended the federal right to an abortion and many states banned the procedure, reproductive health care organizations hired dozens of people to help patients arrange travel and pay for care.
Injectable penicillin is the go-to treatment for syphilis and the only treatment considered safe for pregnant people with the disease. But as rates of syphilis increase across the U.S., a shortage of the injectable has prompted some public health agencies to ration it.
The head of Montana’s health department said the agency is catching up on a months-long backlog of contracts with organizations that connect people to medical care that left organizations without pay, halted some services, and triggered job cuts.
Politicians keep talking about fixing primary care shortages. But flawed national data leaves big holes in how to evaluate which policies are effective.
There were nearly 50,000 emergency room visits for dog bites in California in 2022. The rate of such visits per capita is up about 70% since 2005.
Native Americans die by suicide at a higher rate than any other racial or ethnic group, yet research into effective and culturally appropriate interventions is uncommon.
As climate change-driven wildfires increasingly choke large parts of the United States with smoke each summer, new research shows residents in long-term care facilities are being exposed to dangerously poor air, even those who don’t set foot outside during smoke events.
The suicide rate for Hispanics in the United States has increased significantly over the past decade. The reasons are varied, say community leaders and mental health experts, citing factors such as language barriers, poverty, and a lack of bilingual mental health professionals.
Hospitals nationwide face growing scrutiny over how they secure payment from patients, but at one community hospital, the debt collection machine has been quietly humming along for decades.
Fewer than two dozen rural hospitals were converted into Rural Emergency Hospitals in the program’s first year. Now, advocates and lawmakers say tweaks to the law are necessary to lure more takers and keep health care in rural communities.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s tenure in the Palmetto State — which overlapped with several tumultuous years of health care reform — and her recent comments offer clues to how her presidency might affect national health care policy.
Small, community hospitals face challenges in paying for the capital improvement projects they need to stay open.
The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services is months behind in paying organizations contracted to connect people to care. The interruption is likely to have lasting effects, even after the state catches up.
Even in states where laws protect minors’ access to gender-affirming care, malpractice insurance premiums are keeping small and independent clinics from treating patients.
As enrollment in private Medicare Advantage plans grows, so do concerns about how well the insurance works, including from those who say they have become trapped in the private plans as their health declines.
Six years ago, the hospital in Fort Scott, Kansas, shuttered, leaving residents in the small community without a cornerstone health care institution. In the years since, despite new programs meant to save small hospitals, dozens of other communities have watched theirs close.
Deep gaps in rural America’s child care system threaten communities’ stability by shrinking the workforce and inhibiting economic potential. Now that pandemic-era federal aid for child care programs and low-income families has ended, it’s up to state and local leaders to find solutions.
Family medicine doctors already deliver most of rural America's babies, and efforts to train more in obstetrics care are seen as a way to cope with labor and delivery unit closures.
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