Tag: Catawba County

By Thomas Goldsmith As part of his work as a groundskeeper at Alamance Community College, Sean Brady has had the chance to travel as far away as Utah and Las Vegas for trade conferences. But until 18 months ago, Brady, 34, had to ask his stepmother for permission to travel, because between 2014 and 2017

By Mark Tosczak If you get your health insurance — including Medicare Advantage policies — from UnitedHealthcare, you may want to double-check before you head to your local hospital this holiday season. Several Duke LifePoint hospitals are in contract negotiations with the insurer and are at risk of being out of network by year’s end.

By Michael Graff Carolina Public Press On July 23, a private equity company famous for having saved the Twinkie agreed to buy eight hospitals in small communities across North Carolina, but hardly anyone in the state took note. Nationally, financial wire services reported on Apollo Management Group’s $5.6 billion buyout of LifePoint Health that day,

By Thomas Goldsmith When leaders in Anson County looked at public health needs recently, childhood obesity emerged as one of the most troubling trends among the county’s 26,000 citizens. Statistics show that more than a third of adults are obese in Anson, located about 60 miles southeast of Charlotte. And county health director Fred Thompson

By Thomas Goldsmith North Carolina is making plans to address some of the alarming changes predicted for the state’s rapidly growing population of older people. Those who work in the field of aging describe long waiting lists for services chronically short of funds, retirees seeking scarce accessible housing to replace family homes with too many

By Thomas Goldsmith When Jesse Casterlow was growing up near Rich Square in Northampton County, in the 1950s, people in the northeastern North Carolina community often met to enjoy music at a place that had a small jukebox. Or folks would get together at a relative’s house because Grandma wanted to see the kids dance.

By Catherine Clabby State environmental regulators entered a Roxboro auditorium last week intending to brief residents on proposed rules for future coal ash landfills built in North Carolina. But four years after the Dan River coal ash spill revealed how much coal waste Duke Energy stores in unlined pits across this state, the small number

By Thomas Goldsmith One hour every other week. That’s the average break that a North Carolinian looking after someone with dementia gets under Project CARE, a state-funded respite program found in 94 counties. Using a Project CARE voucher for a fill-in by another person, an adult day care, a home care agency or other program,

By Taylor Knopf Adults with disabilities are leading longer lives thanks to advances in medicine and technology and where once people with disabilities died young, now a good number will likely outlive their parents. But many of those parents have been the guardians for their children, providing guidance, security and steering their every move. Advocates

By Frank Taylor and Michael Gebelein Lawmakers created the adult care home system in North Carolina largely as a reaction to a national movement to move those with mental illness out of institutions during the 1970s and 1980s. But the nature of their solution has run afoul of the U.S. Department of Justice, which is