Author: Gabrielle M. Etzel

Foodborne illness, fireworks injuries, and heat exhaustion are just some public health safety concerns likely to arise during Independence Day celebrations across the country this weekend.  According to the Pew Research Center, roughly 91,000 people visit emergency rooms on July 4 and 5 each year, making Independence Day one of the most dangerous holidays of the year.…

The Democratic Party is coalescing around a strategy of attacking Republicans for planning to cut Medicaid spending, a move that could unite the fractured party and pay dividends in the 2026 midterm elections.  Democrats are engaging in a “Day of Action” across the country on Tuesday, led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), to…

Stock prices for alcohol makers and distributors fell sharply early Friday morning after Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a new advisory report calling for Congress to enact legislation to add a cancer risk warning label on all alcohol products.  According to the new report, alcohol is the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the…

Supreme Court justices on Wednesday used the preferred honorific of the first openly transgender-identifying person to argue before the high court during oral arguments in a landmark case on the ability of states to regulate hormone-based therapies for minors with gender dysphoria. Chase Strangio, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union’s LGBT & HIV Rights…

Georgia officials dismissed all members of a state maternal health panel after information about the deaths of two women with abortion pill complications was leaked to the press earlier this fall. The dismissal comes two months after the deaths of Amber Nicole Thurman and Candi Miller, two Georgia women who suffered from severe complications after…

Leaders at the National Institutes of Health launched a yearlong project Tuesday to rework the organization’s mission and structure, an exercise carried out under the shadow of the impending sweeping changes to federal public health infrastructure of the incoming Trump administration.  NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli, appointed by President Joe Biden to rebrand the agency following the COVID-19 pandemic, told a…

Arizona voters approved a ballot measure amending the state constitution to ensure access to abortion, a victory for the abortion-rights side that comes after a complicated legislative and legal battle over rules in the state.  A simple majority was needed to pass. The vote in favor was called by the Associated Press at 3:31 p.m., with…

Voters in South Dakota rejected a proposition to establish a constitutional right to abortion, becoming the second state to vote “no” on an abortion rights referendum following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022.  Constitutional Amendment G needed a simple majority to pass, but the vote against the amendment led by…

PITTSBURGH — Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) made a last-minute appeal to small-business owners to support Vice President Kamala Harris as his shadow looms over Harris’s presidential campaign the weekend before Election Day. “As usual, it seems like it’s coming down to the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It may be that the only thing Kamala Harris and…