The pandemic has so seriously strained already tight state psychiatric hospitals in Georgia, Virginia, Texas and elsewhere that these facilities for the poorest and most vulnerable people with mental illness struggle to admit new patients.
Using a local approach, everyday people in cities without strict mask mandates take covid-19 safety into their own hands to protect themselves and their neighbors.
Hundreds of towns, cities and states across the U.S. have ignored part of the Americans With Disabilities Act, and now it’s costing them billions of dollars to comply.
Health care workers already bore the brunt of workplace violence in the U.S. Now, tensions from an exhausting pandemic are spilling over into hospitals.
An estimated 300,000 people were held in solitary confinement in U.S. jails and prisons at the height of the pandemic. An international movement is pushing to limit the form of incarceration due to its damaging physical and psychological effects.
Group homes and facilities that serve people with intellectual and developmental disabilities were hurting for staffers before the pandemic. Now the nationwide job crunch and pandemic pressures are making it even worse.
Since August, school bus drivers and monitors have died of covid-19 in at least 10 states, including Georgia and Florida. Masks are required on school buses, but enforcing the rules in districts without school mask mandates is especially hard to do.
More than 40 states have turned to managed-care companies to control costs in their Medicaid programs, which cover low-income residents and people with disabilities. As Georgia prepares to open bidding on a new contract, the question looms: Has this model paid off?
A change in FDA rules during the pandemic has let women receive the drugs needed for a medical abortion by mail after a telemedicine appointment. While some abortion rights advocates hail the move, others note that these services, which are often cheaper than going to a clinic, could siphon away patients needed to keep those brick-and-mortar facilities operating.
As covid case numbers rise nationwide, Georgia and some other states have restricted the case count data they share publicly.