Sudden meat allergy may come from surprising source

It all started with a chili dog: A beef frankfurter laid across a doughy white bun, with beans and a bit more beef strewn across the top. Plus a few onions sprinkled around, along with squiggly lines of mustard and ketchup. Carole Cape had the tasty dog during lunch with one of her real estate…

Are state’s HIV laws unfair? Activists say it’s time for change

Nina Martinez moved to Georgia from Washington, D.C., in 2005. Just a few months after she settled into her new Atlanta home, she learned about Georgia’s criminal laws regarding people disclosing their HIV status to others. It personally changed things for her. “As a person living with HIV, I didn’t even form relationships because I…

Old attitudes still cast shadow over fight against HIV

This is the fifth in a series of articles reported in Northwest Georgia, an area rich in stories about unmet health needs and about people and programs making a difference. Georgia Health News and the health and medical journalism graduate program at UGA Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication collaborated to produce this series, made possible…

HIV criminalization laws: Georgia legislators to look at changes

Nearly 30-year-old criminal laws related to HIV are still in effect in Georgia – and a lot of other states. “A lot of these laws were written in the mid-‘80s, when we were first becoming aware that the HIV and AIDS epidemic was growing. Back then, it was a death sentence” to become infected, said…

Can mobile apps help fill sex education gaps?

It’s a rite of passage. Crowded onto the bleachers in the Clarke Central High School gym, ninth-grade students sit down for the start of a two-week health class. It’s their only such class in four years of high school. That’s where Katy Mayfield found herself as a 14-year-old freshman. “It consisted of them telling us…