About 3,000 infants are born each year with single-ventricle heart defects. While that’s a relatively small number, for the newborns’ families the diagnosis can be devastating, says Dr. Girish Shirali, co-director of the Ward Family Heart Center at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City. “It’s very difficult for families, because nobody expects this. So it…
Last year, Republican Kansas Governor Sam Brownback and the state legislature enacted huge tax cuts, slashing income taxes and exempting some business income from state taxes. Now, as the election approaches, the governor is struggling to persuade voters that the cuts have actually fueled an economic comeback for the state. Federal statistics show that the…
As the Affordable Care Act’s second open enrollment period began Saturday, for-profit and non-profit groups ramped up efforts to assist populations that have proven hard to reach. At events in and around Kansas City, counselors, insurance brokers and insurance companies held public education events and free health fairs to reach the uninsured and underinsured among…
Grant Curtis remembers the day he went shopping for his first tractor. “It was an eye opening experience,” he said. “Walking into a dealership, getting the prices, walking back to the bank and pleading my case. Saying, ‘I want to get back to the farm, but I need a way to do that.’” Curtis, in…
Professor Emeritus Bill Tuttle is himself part of a complicated legacy of race relations at the University of Kansas and the surrounding community. In 1968, Tuttle taught the University’s first ever African American studies course, and has devoted much of his career to examining equality in the progressive burg of Lawrence, Kansas. “I think there…
On a warm October afternoon Veronica Jaramillo walks through rows of skinny apple trees on the orchard where she works as the sun sinks behind rolling Missouri hills. The 30 year-old migrant farmworker reaches into a tree on the Waverly, Mo., orchard, and in one fluid motion, picks a Golden Delicious apple. “I don’t like…
Some people’s lives are chronicled by professional writers in their biographies. Some people write their own memoirs. And then, some people hire The Story Scribe. This Kansas City memoir writing business, founded by Amy Butler, is part of the personal history industry. The Association of Personal Historians, the industry’s professional organization, has more than 600…
Kansas finds out it has a $1 billion problem this week. Newly released state revenue estimates show that Kansas will burn through $380 million in reserves and still need to cut $280 million to balance its current budget, which ends in June. The problem continues in 2016, when revenues are projected to run $436 million…
Growing up in a really small town in Wisconsin, Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher found their fun at nearby thrift stores. “I remember we used to buy answering machines, eject the tapes and listen to people’s incoming and outgoing messages,” Prueher said. Everything changed for Pickett and Prueher when VHS tapes started showing up at…
Cerner Corp., the Kansas City-based health care information technology giant, broke ground Wednesday on its huge campus in south Kansas City, Mo., a project that’s eventually expected to house as many as 16,000 workers. Cerner officials, along with Missouri Governor Jay Nixon and Kansas City mayor Sly James, took part in the ceremony at the…