Chicago Reporter (https://www.chicagoreporter.com/category/key-issue/health/)
His rent at a modest bedroom in a trailer park was due. Roberto, 43, had just emigrated to Miami from Cuba and lacked a safety net. Then, an immigrant friend recommended that he take part in a paid clinical trial and mentioned she had been making thousands of dollars through constant participation. The trials had become a well-paid “job,” she said. Roberto said he saw “a light.” It was 2013.
Sometimes, Deonta could hear inmates sick with COVID-19 screaming for help from his cell, said his loved one Chrisoula Drivas.
“The officers would kind of disregard people, so he said it was crazy to hear that people were desperate and no one cared,” she said. Since the onset of the pandemic, advocates like Drivas have raised concerns about inadequate cleaning supplies, unsanitary conditions and a lack of consistent COVID-19 protocols in Illinois Department of Corrections facilities. These are challenges Deonta faced firsthand, she said. In November, one of Deonta’s three cellmates at Dixon Correctional Center tested positive for COVID-19. Though this man was moved to another area to quarantine, the other three were not immediately tested, she said.
A U.S. Army Corps plan to expand a toxic dump on Lake Michigan’s shoreline in South Chicago is getting increased attention because it rejected community concerns over the project and dismisses alternatives promoted by environmental groups.
The planned closing of Mercy Hospital underscores the dramatic loss of maternity services in Chicago over the past year — reflecting the failure of local government agencies to adequately fund critical services in vulnerable communities, advocates say.
Ald. Brian Hopkins sponsored a resolution calling for the city to deprioritize arrests and investigations of adults using the drugs and for the public health department to study the plants as alternative treatment options.
Amid the high cost of hospitalizing an increasing number of young people suffering from the infection, doctors express reluctance to treat patients likely to resume drug use that will put them at greater risk in the future.
As officials revisit one of Rahm Emanuel’s most controversial policies, providers have different ideas for how to restore care to the many patients who have fallen through the cracks.
Most new grocery stores were built in areas with plentiful access in recent years, and those added to high-need areas were not enough to mitigate the effects of longstanding disinvestment and segregation, according to a new study.
Access to testing, treatment, and research needs to be improved among African-Americans, who are disproportionately impacted by new HIV diagnoses.
African Americans in Illinois and other states are disproportionately dying from opioid overdoses. That contradicts the prevailing racial narratives on handling the drug epidemic punitively.
With the GOP threatening health care coverage, especially for Medicaid recipients, activists are demanding answers from local lawmakers who are quietly supporting the bills.
