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Being a family caregiver is hard work. On June 17, KFF Health News Midwest correspondent Cara Anthony joined WAMU’s Health Hub to discuss her experience with parenting while also caring for aging parents. Listen in as she shares tips for other members of the “sandwich generation.” (DigitalVision/Getty Images) Are you juggling the responsibilities of raising children and having aging parents? Navigating that role can come with new responsibilities, stressors, and unexpected expenses, but claiming the caregiver identity can help. Researchers have found that people who identify as caregivers are more likely to use support services and feel a sense of…

LOS ANGELES — Damian Zermeño, 15, sensed something was wrong the moment he got home from school. His aunt sat at the dining table, sobbing. His father, who’d walked him to the bus stop that morning and promised to take him to dinner when he got back, wasn’t there. Saúl Zermeño, a 45-year-old single dad, had gone to a routine check-in appointment at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office that morning, a requirement he’d complied with for years. The father had deferred action that allowed him to stay and work in the U.S., according to his attorney. But that day,…

Students swim across the Kemp Welch River after school in Launakalana in Papua New Guinea’s Rigo District, who risk the crossing after floods destroyed the community’s only footbridge 14 years ago, leaving the river as their only route to and from school. A landmark UNICEF report that maps children’s exposure to overlapping climate threats finds that almost half the world’s children – 1.1 billion kids – now contend with at least three threats at once. To reach school each morning, 15-year-old Lorna first has to swim across the Kemp Welch River, known to locals for its strong currents and crocodile-infested…

South Africa, speaking for the Africa Group and Group for Equity at the last round of negotiations on an PABS Annex in May 2026. That failed to yield a final agreement. What’s left to tackle in the PABS talks? As the clock ran out, and then was extended for another year, on negotiations over the Pandemic Agreement’s Annex on Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS), the diplomacy and the nitty-gritty of the issues faced were deeply linked This edition of the Governing Pandemics Snapshot of the Geneva Graduate Institute’s Global Health Centre focuses on both, while noting that negotiators’ increased understanding…

How many people are uninsured? For the first time since 2019, the number of people without health coverage and the uninsured rate increased in 2024. The total number of people ages 0-64 without health coverage increased by more than 1.3 million to 26.7 million in 2024, and the uninsured rate for the population under age 65 increased from 9.5% to 9.8%. A decline in Medicaid coverage drove the increase in the uninsured rate in 2024. While non-group coverage, including ACA Marketplace coverage, increased from 2023 to 2024, the increase did not fully offset the drop in Medicaid coverage from 2023…

Key Takeaways Adults in the U.S. are turning to social media and AI to advise them on health issues. KFF’s latest Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust finds three in ten adults (31%) using social media at least monthly for health information and advice. This is similar to the share (29%) who now say they use AI tools or chatbots for health information monthly, a number that has nearly doubled in the past two years – up from roughly one in six (17%). Still, majorities say they either “never” or only “occasionally” use AI tools (71%) or social media…

About three in ten adults say they use social media to find health information and advice “at least monthly,” including larger shares of younger adults, Black and Hispanic adults, lower income adults, and those with lower educational attainment. For more information see KFF’s June 2026 Tracking Poll on Health Information and Trust. About one-third of adults who use social media for health information say a “major reason” they turned to social media for health advice was because they wanted to learn from people with similar experiences or because they wanted immediate information or support. About one in six users cite…

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Four years ago, Tennessee became the first state to allow adults to buy the antiparasitic drug ivermectin from a pharmacy without first seeing a doctor. Pharmacies can use a pre-written, blanket prescription to sell to just about anyone who walks through their doors. The drug is now marketed and sold across the state in roadside shops and small-town strip malls with little oversight from health authorities. Highway billboards advertise ivermectin as “Available Without a Prescription in Tennessee!” while dozens of pharmacies offer highly concentrated pills, sometimes at 10 or 20 times the potency of a standard tablet.…

The cancer diagnosis came as a shock, disrupting Morgan Newman’s plans for launching her life. It was 2015, and she was working as a dental assistant in Des Moines, Iowa, while studying to become a social worker. After an abnormal result on her Pap smear, her doctor brought her back in to check the tissue for signs of cancer. Newman wasn’t that concerned at first. She was only 24 years old. “I didn’t think anything of it,” she said. Friends had received abnormal results, she recalled, “and they turned out to be OK.” But during the follow-up examination, she started…

In a move that mixes pure politics with weedy congressional procedures, Senate Democrats are seeking to force a vote to overturn a Trump administration rule that they say will make it harder to enroll in Affordable Care Act health plans and sharply raise out-of-pocket costs for those who do. The measure is unlikely to pass in the Republican-controlled Congress, but Democrats could use the vote against their opponents on the campaign trail. When the ACA rule was released in May, the Trump administration touted it as a means to combat enrollment fraud, lower premiums for some people, and offer a…

Football fans are being urged not to ignore health problems, as new analysis reveals a significant drop in A&E attendances while the Three Lions are playing. Analysis of A&E attendance data during Euro 2024 found there were just under 17,000 fewer attendances than expected during England matches across the tournament – roughly a quarter of the capacity of the AT&T Stadium in Dallas, where England kick off their World Cup campaign tonight. In 2024, England’s group-stage opener against Serbia saw the biggest fall in attendances, with 8.8% fewer patients attending A&E than the 6-week average. The quarter-final against Switzerland (5.9%)…

Passengers being evacuated from MV Hondius, the cruise ship affected by a hantavirus outbreak, in Tenerife. Dutch, Spanish and Swiss medical experts applied slightly different criteria for discharging patients infected with Andes hantavirus during the recent outbreak on a cruise ship –  but none required a negative blood test, as this could remain positive “for months”. This emerged during a briefing convened by the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Information Network for Epidemics (Epi-WIN) team on Tuesday, with medical experts who had treated patients. The Netherlands had the most relaxed criteria. Two patients sought care in the Netherlands, and both were…

Despite the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requiring contraceptives to be covered without cost-sharing, many privately insured long-acting reversible contraceptives (LARC) users still face out-of-pocket expenses. In this analysis, published in the journal Contraception, KFF’s Linda Li, Brittni Frederiksen, and Alina Salganicoff look at intrauterine device (IUD) and contraceptive implant insertion-related costs among privately insured individuals to better understand why patients are experiencing unexpected expenses for what should be fully covered contraceptive services under the ACA. Using the 2023 Merative MarketScan Commercial Claims and Encounter Database, a national sample of healthcare claims for people enrolled in employer sponsored insurance plans, the…

During the 2025 and 2026 legislative sessions, states enacted or proposed a range of legislation that will impact immigrants’ access to state-funded health coverage and other services as well as actions related to how states may enhance or limit federal enforcement activities. Several states have rolled back or plan to scale back state-funded health coverage programs for immigrants to reduce budget deficits amid economic uncertainties. Some states have also enacted laws to support the Trump administration’s increased interior immigration enforcement activities, including sharing data from Medicaid or other state agencies with federal enforcement officials. In contrast, some states are expanding…

In Maine, state health officials hoped to steer a slice of $190 million in new federal rural health funding to shield hospitals and clinics from the fallout caused by cuts to federal health programs. Their plan would have helped pay to treat low-income, uninsured patients. But federal leaders overseeing the five-year, $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program said no. “It was not our decision,” said Lisa Letourneau, a senior adviser at Maine’s health department. Letourneau told an audience of healthcare providers, advocates, and community groups during a March webinar that the change was “disappointing.” Maine isn’t alone in having to…

Listen in and play along as hosts Cara Anthony and Blake Farmer test their knowledge with a HealthQ quiz on detecting early-onset cancers. (Candice Evers for WPLN and KFF Health News) Bryce Ramsey of Madison, Mississippi, was 33 when she was diagnosed with colorectal cancer. Upon noticing blood in her stool, she blamed the hemorrhoids she’d developed after delivering her son eight years earlier. Ramsey didn’t initially link her symptoms to cancer. “But I had just kind of made a deal with myself because the blood was starting to become more frequent,” she said. “I was like, ‘If this happens…