The economic downturn caused by COVID-19 is wreaking havoc on the state budget. More than $3 billion is expected to be sliced from state spending. The depth of those budget cuts could mean furloughs and layoffs for educators and other employees. But could the financial devastation from COVID lead the state to accept long-stalled ideas…
Calls to the Georgia Poison Center have risen during the pandemic, with a spike in people reporting illnesses related to cleaning products and disinfectants. Those increases have occurred nationally, with poison centers seeing up to a 20 percent rise in exposure calls related to cleaning and disinfecting products, often from inhalation. It has been a…
By Naomi Thomas A bus mobilized during the COVID-19 pandemic is bringing behavioral health care to two rural counties. The mobile health unit, run by CarePartners, a local agency, has been traveling through Emanuel and Candler counties in east Georgia to bring services to people in need. Since the virus appeared in the state, the…
By Andy Miller and Scott Trubey The federal Environmental Protection Agency is doubling the area it’s probing for lead contamination west of downtown Atlanta, and residents and volunteer researchers said they want more help from local governments to notify neighbors and urge lead testing of children. So far, the campaign to encourage testing of children…
At 3 years old, Sarah Davis was a typically rambunctious child. But one day when she leaped onto the family sofa and plopped into her favorite position, the maneuver resulted in a piercing pain that struck without warning. “We didn’t know what was wrong, we just knew she was in a lot of pain,” says…
Work teams using heavy equipment began digging up soil contaminated with lead from an empty lot in west Atlanta on Monday morning. It’s the start of an Environmental Protection Agency cleanup action that will take months to complete. Targeting a neighborhood near Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the EPA has found unsafe levels of lead — a powerful neurotoxin —in…
By Crysta Jones and Andy Miller Habersham County has a high uninsured rate, with 12 percent of its children lacking health coverage. The mountainous northeast Georgia county also has a low number of primary care physicians and mental health providers. For those reasons and others, a school-based telemedicine program would seem like a natural fit…
A recent report ranks Georgia No. 49 among the states and the District of Columbia on preventing kids from using tobacco products. The report, released by several public health organizations, measures states’ spending of tobacco settlement dollars on prevention, in fighting both tobacco use and the rise in e-cigarette use among kids. This fiscal year, the…
The recent Cobb County measles outbreak began in October with five cases that were not reported to public health officials. Health officials didn’t learn of the October cases — all within one family — until they began investigating the six additional cases that emerged in November in the suburban Atlanta county. Dozens of local and…
Rosario Hernandez regularly gardens with her grandchildren at her two Atlanta properties in the English Avenue district, about a mile from Mercedes-Benz Stadium. So Hernandez, who works with Historic Westside Gardens, was alarmed when an Emory University team analyzed the soil in July 2018 and discovered it contained unsafe concentrations of lead — a potent…