News & Issues
Stories from around the Kansas City Metro area on a variety of topics.
Mule jumping: The county fair tradition you didn’t know you loved
Fair-goers pack the stands at the East Perry Community Fair in Altenburg, Missouri, on a warm, sunny Saturday afternoon. They aren’t here for the blue ribbon pigs, the truck pull or the beauty contest. These people are here for the fair’s biggest attraction — the jumping mules. Mule jumping is a simple sport. A handler…
Forum develops a healthy to-do list for Kansas City area
The Kansas City of the future would be a place where people have affordable medical care, policymakers work with the community on health issues and residents suffer less from chronic diseases and violence. That, at any rate, is the consensus that emerged Saturday at a forum in Kansas City, Mo. And it was just the…
KC Week in Review: Wedding bells ringing in JOCO for same-sex couples
In an historic move, Johnson County becomes the first jurisdiction in the metro and in the state of Kansas to issue legal marriage licenses to gay partners. Also on the program…news reviewers Mary Sanchez of the Kansas City Star, Steve Vockrodt of The Pitch, Garrett Haake from 41 Action News and Dave Helling of the Kansas City Star dissect the Kansas U.S. Senate debate, Dan Cofran’s…
With next Obamacare enrollment period set to start, navigators share successful strategies
Meridith Berry and her team learned a valuable lesson at an event where they were encouraging Hispanics to purchase coverage through the health insurance marketplace established by the Affordable Care Act: don’t use green card stock. Berry, a family financial education specialist with the University of Missouri Extension in Trenton, Mo., said the slip-up occurred…
The language of lullabies: KU professor develops music therapy for preemies
(Video by Todd Feeback/The Hale Center for Journalism) If the idea of music therapy brings to mind 1960s-era folk singers warbling to bemused patients, you haven’t seen Deanna Hanson-Abromeit at work. At Operation Breakthrough in Kansas City, Missouri, the University of Kansas assistant professor sings a good morning song to Daren, a curious, if slightly…