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WWNO reporter Rosemary Westwood gave birth to her first child during the pandemic, hundreds of miles from any family. She remembers feeling lonely and overwhelmed. So when she heard about a program in New Orleans where nurses visit new moms for two hours in their homes, she knew she wanted to learn more.
One of the moms that Westwood interviewed is Lizzie Frederick. Despite having taken birth and baby classes with her husband, Frederick says she wasn’t prepared for the stress of the postpartum period. Her son James was having trouble breastfeeding, and waking up every 90 minutes at night.
Frederick says the nurse who came to her home reassured her that James was gaining weight, but she focused most of her time on Frederick’s needs. After walking her through a mental health questionnaire, the nurse recommended she see a councilor. Frederick was eventually diagnosed with postpartum depression. "I think that I would have felt a lot more alone if I hadn't had this visit,” Frederick said.
"There is no more critical time and vulnerable time than right at birth and in the few weeks to months following birth," says New Orleans' health director, Dr. Jennifer Avegno. She helped launch Family Connects New Orleans, which provides up to three nurse home visits for any city resident who gives birth. Officials and lawmakers hope that the program will help reverse Louisiana's high rate of hospitalization and death for new mothers and babies.
Here’s more on the perinatal home visit program, including some promising early data.
Plus: 'Irth' hospital review app aims to take the bias out of giving birth |
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Join a live taping of our upcoming Oscars episode!Ever wondered what happens in an episode recording? We’re pulling back the curtain and inviting you to sit in on a live virtual taping of Pop Culture Happy Hour.
We’ll be diving into one of our favorite topics — the Oscars — and we want you there with us.
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When: Friday, February 13 @ 3pm ET / 12pm PT
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Where: Live on Zoom
This exclusive event is a "thank you" for our NPR+ supporters and other qualifying donors*. To join us and get early access to this episode, sign up for NPR+ today. |
Once you sign up, check your new supporter-only PCHH podcast feed for the registration link. See you there!
*Other qualifying donors (without NPR+) will receive a direct invite email with a registration link before January 30th. If you would like to attend and don’t get an email invite by February 9th, but give more than $8 a month or $96 a year to The NPR Network or your local station, reach out to us directly for a registration link at NPRSpecialEvents@npr.org. |
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If you want to live to 100, you may be in good company. By mid-century, the number of centenarians is expected to quadruple. But what good is this milestone if you're in poor health?
A new study underway is testing whether a particular combination of exercise, supplements and medication can help older adults better fend off disease, as NPR’s Allison Aubrey reports. Key to the experiment is controlling inflammation. Inflammation is part of the immune system’s natural response to infection — it’s meant to help the body recover.
But as people age, the immune system weakens, and inflammation can become chronic. "It's this sort of bad inflammation that underlies the development of many different diseases," says Dr. Thomas Marron, an oncologist helping to lead the study. Diseases like cancer, heart disease and dementia.
The small study includes adults aged 65 to 80, and has three components. The first is a type of workout called high-intensity interval training, or HIIT, which mixes short bursts of cardio with resistance training. Second, all participants will take the supplement spermidine, a naturally-occurring compound that helps the body clean up damaged cells and reduce inflammation. Third is the medication: Half of participants will be given the antiviral drug lamivudine, and the other half will take rapamycin, an immuno-supressant.
Here’s more about the study and other efforts to increase the human ‘healthspan.’
Also: Scientists can tell how fast you're aging. Now, the trick is to slow it down |
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Imagine opening a piece of mail and reading that a chunk of your debt has been erased. Would you think scam! and toss it? That's what Gaston, N.C. resident Dawn Daly-Mack almost did, except the letter turned out to be real. The hospital wiped away her $459 debt, dating back to a 2014 emergency room visit for a sinus infection. It's part of a debt relief agreement between hospitals and the state of North Carolina, as Alex Olgin reports.
The agreement tied additional Medicaid dollars for hospitals to debt relief dating back to 2014. Hospitals also agreed to shift the burden of applying for financial assistance away from patients and automatically apply discounts.
"People can walk in the front door of a hospital in an [emergency] situation and not feel like they're taking both their health and their financial well-being at risk in that moment," says former state health secretary Kody Kinsley, who came up with the plan.
Other states are also taking actions to tackle the $220 billion problem of medical debt. But loss of health coverage due to the expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, plus possible cuts to Medicaid are expected to drive up the numbers of the uninsured.
Find out more.
Plus: Their first baby came with medical debt. These Illinois parents won't have another. |
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Judd Demaline for KFF Health News |
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We hope you enjoyed these stories. Find more of NPR's health journalism online.
All the best,
Andrea Muraskin and your NPR Health editors |
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