By Clarissa Donnelly-DeRoven About a month before 18-year-old Madison Workman died of a fentanyl overdose, she told her mom, Amber DelVechio, she wanted to get into a substance use treatment program that used suboxone. This sort of program, called medication-assisted treatment (MAT), was new to the family. Workman had been in a recovery program before, […]
Posted inSubstance Use
A nationwide problem, worse in North Carolina
By Clarissa Donnelly DeRoven Early in the morning on July 28, 2017 Amber DelVechio’s phone rang. She missed the call, but it woke her up. She rolled out of bed, and began getting ready for her job as an executive assistant at a manufacturing company in Newton, in Catawba County. Her phone buzzed again. It […]
Posted inState Health Policy
Health secretary Mandy Cohen resigns, governor taps a successor
By Rose Hoban and Anne Blythe Mandy Cohen, the physician who has led North Carolina through the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and a massive transformation of how Medicaid is administered, told her staff at the state Department of Health and Human Services on Tuesday that she would try not to cry while letting them know she […]
Posted inInfectious Disease
Coronavirus Today – Nov 30: What is and isn’t known about Omicron variant
By Anne Blythe Mandy Cohen, secretary of the state Department of Health and Human Services, brought out her charts and graphs on Tuesday to update North Carolinians on the state of the COVID-19 pandemic. That latest COVID news, even as the Omicron variant adds new mystery about how long the pandemic will last, was dwarfed […]
Posted inAging
NC’s perennially popular senior centers eye post-COVID changes, modernized approaches
By Thomas Goldsmith North Carolina’s senior centers have for decades offered havens of company, support and education for older people but had to adapt most of those roles during the pandemic that hit the over-65 population especially hard. As the state’s more than 160 centers reopen this year with the ongoing COVID-19 disease still a […]
Posted inInfectious Disease
Religious burial rituals slowly resuming after shift forced by pandemic
By Nadia Batool Bokhari As more is understood about the transmission of COVID-19 some 19 months into the pandemic, some religious communities in North Carolina are breathing sighs of relief at being able to return to preparing bodies for burial as they have traditionally done for centuries. Many Jews and Muslims, for example, have been […]