Rachel Rood

4 days ago | ideastream.org | Rachel Rood |Aya Cathey

Local news deserts are spreading at an alarming pace, according to the 2024 State of Local News report from Northwestern, which found that 204 counties in the U.S. don't have any news outlet, and 1,500 counties only have one. When communities aren't informed, it can lead to increased polarization, decreased voting and increased government corruption.

1 week ago | ideastream.org | Ida Lieszkovszky |Rachel Rood

The Great Lakes provide fresh drinking water to more than 30 million people, power a multi-billion-dollar shipping industry, and create habitats for millions of fish, birds, and other wildlife. But the health of the Great Lakes depends on continued monitoring by a variety of federal, state and local agencies.

2 weeks ago | ideastream.org | Rachel Rood

In August, two hospitals in Trumbull County, Trumbull Regional Medical Center and Hillside Rehabilitation Hospital, announced they were closing their doors, forcing residents to travel 15 miles to the nearest hospitals in neighboring Youngstown. The hospitals had been managed by Steward Health Care, a for profit hospital chain owned by a powerful private equity firm called Cerberus Capital Management. Steward went bankrupt a few months prior.

Feb 27, 2025 | ideastream.org | Rachel Rood

Last month, Washington Post opinion columnist Alexandra Petri wrote a piece to her unborn child before her parental leave. In “Hello, baby: Here is what I need to tell you about the world,” she writes about all the things she loves about living in this moment in time, big and small, like going on walks, that catchy summer pop song and watching the seasons change.

Feb 26, 2025 | ideastream.org | Rachel Rood

Amputating a limb should be a last resort, but people in lower socioeconomic groups as well as African Americans are up to four times as likely to undergo an amputation than white Americans, according to Dr. Mehdi Shishehbor, president of the University Hospitals Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute. He has spent decades researching how to save lives through saving limbs, including his work on a new therapy that helped 76% of patients in a major clinical trial avoid amputation.