Natalie Krebs

3 days ago | truthout.org | Natalie Krebs

Even by rural hospital standards, Keokuk County Hospital and Clinics in southeastern Iowa is small. The 14-bed hospital, in Sigourney, doesn’t do surgeries or deliver babies. The small 24-hour emergency room is overseen by two full-time doctors. CEO Matt Ives wants to hire a third doctor, but he said finding physicians for a rural area has been challenging since the covid-19 pandemic.

6 days ago | iowapublicradio.org | Natalie Krebs

The Family Planning Council of Iowa said it’s concerned that its services could be affected after unexpectedly receiving significantly less federal funding this year. The nonprofit is one of two organizations in Iowa that receives federal funding through Title X, a 55-year-old federal program that supports reproductive heath care and family planning services at nearly 4,000 clinics nationwide for low-income people. The other is the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services.

6 days ago | kffhealthnews.org | Natalie Krebs

Even by rural hospital standards, Keokuk County Hospital and Clinics in southeastern Iowa is small. The 14-bed hospital, in Sigourney, doesn’t do surgeries or deliver babies. The small 24-hour emergency room is overseen by two full-time doctors. CEO Matt Ives wants to hire a third doctor, but he said finding physicians for a rural area has been challenging since the covid-19 pandemic.

1 week ago | iowapublicradio.org | Natalie Krebs

Nearly all pregnancy-related deaths of Iowa residents between 2019 and 2021 were preventable, according to the most recent state Maternal Mortality Review Committee report. The first report released by the committee in nearly four years reviewed 20 deaths that occurred during pregnancy or up to a year postpartum that it determined were “pregnancy-related,” meaning the pregnancy could be directly tied to the cause of death. The committee found 19 of those deaths were preventable.

3 weeks ago | iowapublicradio.org | Natalie Krebs

Iowa health officials say they were already in the process of ending certain COVID-19 pandemic response programming when they were alerted this week that its federal funding would be cut. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials announced Tuesday that they are cutting $11.4 billion in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID funding going to state and community health departments.