News & Issues
Take 5 for your health
KU Tobacco Cessation Expert Sees ‘Big Disparity In Who’s Smoking And Who’s Dying’ Studies have shown that nearly half of the cigarettes consumed in the United States are smoked by people thought to have a mental illness. At the same time, people who have a mental illness die an average of 25 years earlier than those…
Sounding Smarter
According to the state-run Xinhua news agency, the Chinese Communist Party has banned its members from joining golf clubs. Additional rules were announced against “extravagant eating and drinking” and “improper sexual relationships,” proving there ain’t no party like a communist party. Because a communist party is lame. The golf clubs in China, however, sound like…
KC effort aims to snuff out teen smoking
Business and health leaders on Thursday announced an ambitious initiative to convince elected officials in the dozens of municipalities throughout the Kansas City area to raise the legal age for buying cigarettes from 18 to 21. Spearheaded by the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, “Tobacco…
Med students mix volunteerism, fitness in KC’s Historic Northeast
It was windy and unseasonably warm, but that didn’t stop a group of students from Scuola Vita Nuova Charter School from gathering one afternoon this week for their long-distance-running training session. Sweating right along with the roughly two dozen fifth- through eighth-graders was a trio of medical students from Kansas City University of Medicine and…
Take 5 for your health
Medicaid Mystery: Why Is Coverage Dropping Among Kansas’ Youngest? For two years now, the staff at Kansas Action for Children has been trying to unravel a mystery: Why is Medicaid enrollment dropping among the state’s youngest children? Enrollment of low-income children 1-5 peaked in October 2012 and has been dropping steadily since. Enrollment of infants…