Tag: Charlotte

This story is supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting and co-published by NC Health News, the Charlotte Post and the Charlotte Observer. By Melba Newsome Melissa James can still recall meeting her first coronavirus patient. A woman– probably in her mid-30s–came to the Southpark office in late February complaining of

By Melba Newsome Dec. 11, 2020. I consider that my first official day as a participant in the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine clinical trial. I’d volunteered a month earlier and gone in twice before but that’s the day I finally got the jab. Months would pass before I knew for sure whether I’d been given

By Taylor Knopf Olehonna Lynch started Pembroke Center for Wellness in 2010 because she wanted people in her home community to receive the best mental health care possible. Lynch, a psychiatric nurse practitioner, said that before she started her practice the residents of Robeson County waited up to three months for an outpatient psychiatric appointment.

By Melba Newsome This story is  supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting and co-published by NC Health News, the Charlotte Post and the Charlotte Observer. For most of 2020, the coronavirus dictated every aspect of Erika Gantt’s life. For months the orthopedic surgeon saw her patients via telemedicine and canceled

by Korie Dean and Taylor Buck, Carolina Public Press When Shane Dotson receives a complaint that a home in Rutherford County doesn’t have properly functioning plumbing, there’s not much he can do. He can follow up on the complaint and make a visit to the property. He can carefully document every leaky toilet and broken water heater on his inspection

By Jenni Bergal Stateline Jane Campbell is frustrated. Campbell, the town commissioner in Davidson, North Carolina, worries that some of her constituents, especially older adults, don’t have a way to get to COVID-19 vaccine sites. From Davidson, the nearest locations for anyone seeking a shot have been at mass vaccination events in the Charlotte area—more

Read Part I of Melba’s journey to becoming part of a vaccine trial here By Melba Newsome On Nov. 4, a friend passed along an email she’d received from Tryon Medical Partners. The south Charlotte practice was recruiting participants for a new COVID-19 vaccine trial. The ENSEMBLE Study would evaluate the safety and efficacy of

By Liora Engel-Smith North Carolina’s hospitals are quickly filling up with patients stricken by the coronavirus, even as health systems in some of the hardest-hit regions — the Triad and greater Charlotte area — take steps to make room for a wave of new patients. The looming crisis is fueled by lack of clinical staff,

By Melba Newsome When I first became interested in taking part in a coronavirus vaccine trial, I assumed all I had to do was step forward. I believed that the same characteristics that raised my coronavirus risk — Black, over 60, type 2 diabetic — also made me highly sought-after as a volunteer. But it wasn’t

By Liora Engel-Smith Exercise was the last thing on Crissi Harrison’s mind when she learned she had contracted the novel coronavirus in November. The emergency room nurse, who works in Gastonia but lives in Charlotte, had many of the classic symptoms of coronavirus. She felt tired and she had a fever and congestion. But perhaps