Category: Science
Heart Disease, Hypertension Take Toll on Alabama Women
Heart disease is the leading cause of death for women, both nationally and in Alabama. Alabama had the third-highest rate of death from heart disease in 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only trailing Oklahoma and Mississippi. That year, the death rate from heart disease for Alabama women was 193.7 per 100,000, compared to 135.6 for women nationwide. Read more.
An Alabama program helps residents stormproof their homes. Louisiana wants to copy it.
Strengthen Alabama Homes gives residents up to $10,000 to retrofit homes to the Fortified standard. Other states see it as a model for their own insurance woes. Read more.
Cahaba Lily Season Draws Crowds, Inspires Conservation Efforts
Alabama is thought to be home to the world’s largest population of the rare flower, which is only in bloom a few more weeks. Read more.
COVID by the Numbers
COVID-19 has had a lasting impact on Alabama in the 38 months since the first case was reported in the state.
One in three Alabamians have had the virus, and 21,138 Alabamians have died with it, according to numbers from the Alabama Department of Public Health. Just this year, 251 people in the state have died with COVID, illustrating that, while the “emergency” is over, the virus is still out there. Globally, COVID has killed almost 7 million people so far. Read more.
Field of Streams: Reconnecting the Alabama and Cahaba Rivers Would Restore Ecosystem Lost to Dams
Dams were built across the United States from the 1920s to the 1960s with the hope they would change economies and do great things for people all over the U.S.
But there was an unintended consequence in many places, including Alabama.
“Looking back with hindsight, if they were going to build a dam below the Cahaba River, they should have accounted for maintaining the connection of the ecosystem, but they didn’t,” said Mitch Reid, director of The Nature Conservancy in Alabama. “We’re trying to make it right now.”
The plan from the U.S. Corps of Engineers that would build a system of canals to reconnect the Cahaba and Alabama rivers and allow fish to make their way along the river system down to the Mobile area. Read more.
To Improve Birth Outcomes for Uninsured Moms, Birmingham is Training More Doulas
The city of Birmingham has teamed up with BirthWell Partners’ community doula project to sponsor 32 trainees to work in underserved communities. Read more.
COVID Continues Decline in Alabama, but It Is Still Out There
COVID-19 cases have declined across Alabama and hospitalizations are down from months past, Dr. Wes Stubblefield, district medical officer for the Alabama Department of Public Health’s northern third of the state.
But don’t be tempted to think it’s gone. Stubblefield said it is important to remember that COVID is still circulating in Alabama, it still is infecting people and it still is killing people.
Since early March, Alabama’s COVID-19 hospitalization numbers have hovered around 200. As of Friday, statewide there were 136 adults and seven children hospitalized with it, far below the highs of 3,000 patients seen periodically in previous years.
Stubblefield said most of the current COVID infections are due to the XBB.1.5 Omicron subvariant. Read more.
Health Advocates Hope Narcan’s Over-the-Counter Status Will Bypass Alabama’s Strict Laws
Public health officials say the federal rule change should expand access to the overdose-reversing medication, after years of navigating tough state restrictions on who can dispense Narcan. Read more.
U.S. Judge Rules Insurers Don’t Have to Cover Many Free Preventive Health Services
WASHINGTON — Health insurance companies may no longer need to cover a wide swath of preventive health care services that were required by the 2010 Affordable Care Act, under a federal judge’s ruling issued Thursday in Texas.
The decision could affect millions of Americans’ access to no-cost preventive health care — including pregnancy-related care, cancer screenings, HIV prevention pharmaceuticals and more — that a federal agency given new powers under Obamacare required health insurance companies to cover. Read more.
Lead keeps poisoning children. It doesn’t have to.
SANTA ANA, California — The news came as a shock: Lead, lurking somewhere in Nalleli Garrido’s home, was poisoning her 1-year-old son.
His pediatrician instructed her to clean all the toys of her toddler, Ruben, keep the home dust-free and prevent him from playing in the bare soil outside her rented bungalow in Santa Ana’s Logan neighborhood. She did all she could. But the dust kept sneaking in.
No one offered an alternative. The only solution she and her husband could find was to get out. In 2019, after two years of constant worry, they moved north to the city of Buena Park, buying a home with a grassy yard — not an exposed patch of soil like her Santa Ana front yard, where the toxic metal could be found in concentrations as high as 148 parts of lead per million parts of soil. California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment considers 80 parts per million and above dangerous for children.
“I was terrified to take my son out,” said Garrido, a psychiatric nurse. “Even walking through the yard, I would tell my kids to hold their breath. ‘Don’t breathe that in, don’t breathe in the dust.’” Read more.
