kffhealthnews.org

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A pair of heart devices linked to hundreds of injuries and at least 14 deaths has received the FDA’s most serious recall, the agency announced Monday....

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In Matthew Roach’s two years as vital statistics manager for the Arizona Department of Health Services, and 10 years previously in its epidemiology program, he has witnessed a trend in mortality rates that has rural health experts worried....

When the FDA recently convened a committee of advisers to assess a cardiac device made by Abbott, the agency didn’t disclose that most of them had received payments from the company or conducted research it had funded — information readily available in a federal database....

For pregnant Latinas, food choices could reduce the risk of preeclampsia, a dangerous type of high blood pressure, and a diet based on cultural food preferences, rather than on U.S. government benchmarks, is more likely to help ward off the illness, a new study shows....

For Cindy Westman, $30 buys a week’s worth of gas to drive to medical appointments and run errands....

Smallpox was certified eradicated in 1980, but I first learned about the disease’s twisty, storied history in 1996 while interning at the World Health Organization. As a college student in the 1990s, I was fascinated by the sheer magnitude of what it took to wipe a human disease from the earth for the first time....

Billy Abbott, a retired Army medic, wakes at 6 every morning, steps on the bathroom scale, and uses a cuff to take his blood pressure....

Following a pivotal year in the movement to discard the term “excited delirium,” momentum is building in several states to ban the discredited medical diagnosis from death certificates, law enforcement training, police incident reports, and civil court testimony....

Aside from a few discarded hypodermic needles on the ground, the Hunter’s Field Playground in New Orleans looks almost untouched. It’s been open more than nine years, but the brightly painted red and yellow slides and monkey bars are still sleek and shiny, and the padded rubber tiles feel springy underfoot....

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Gayle Borne has fostered more than 300 children in Springfield, Tennessee. She’s cared for kids who have rarely seen a doctor — kids so neglected that they cannot speak. Such children are now even more vulnerable because of a law Tennessee passed last year that requires the direct consent of birth parents or legal guardians...

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A Maryland firm that oversees the nation’s largest independent network of primary care medical practices is facing a whistleblower lawsuit alleging it cheated Medicare out of millions of dollars using billing software “rigged” to make patients appear sicker than they were....

Gavinn McKinney loved Nike shoes, fireworks, and sushi. He was studying Potawatomi, one of the languages of his Native American heritage. He loved holding his niece and smelling her baby smell. On his 15th birthday, the Durango, Colorado, teen spent a cold December afternoon chopping wood to help neighbors who couldn’t afford...

Debra Prichard was a retired factory worker who was careful with her money, including what she spent on medical care, said her daughter, Alicia Wieberg. “She was the kind of person who didn’t go to the doctor for anything.”...

Three ongoing federal lawsuits filed in South Carolina accuse the state of forcing boys and girls to undergo traumatic genital exams during child abuse investigations, even when no allegations of sexual abuse have been raised....