Health and Wealth

Price transparency can be hard to come by in health care. Putnam County Memorial Hospital, a small hospital in Missouri, is banking its future on having its prices out in the public.

There’s big change on the horizon for the public mental health safety net. The Excellence in Mental Health Act is being called the "biggest federal investment in mental health and addiction services in generations."

To discuss the changes, and to learn how Missouri’s mental health system has fared since federal funding was rolled back for Community Mental Health Centers, KBIA sat down with Brent McGinty, President and CEO of the Missouri Coalition for Community Behavioral Healthcare.

Imagine going to a doctor’s appointment and not knowing how to get to the office, not understanding the complicated health care system and not speaking the language of the health care provider you were seeing.

Well, this can be the case for many new refugees settling in the US, and one Columbia agency, Refugee and Immigration Services, has partnered with senior nursing students from the Sinclair School of Nursing for the past few years, to help bridge those gaps. The Health Navigation Program helps new refugees learn how to efficiently and effectively navigate the health care system.

From Friday night football games to Saturday volleyball matches, a new figure is taking a spot on the sidelines.

According to a 2015 study by the Korey Stringer Institute, 70 percent of public secondary schools nationwide have access to an athletic trainer. That total is up from 1994 when only 35 percent of high schools reported having access to an athletic trainer.

Researchers from the University of Missouri released a study tying mental health to forgiveness in older adults. By analyzing data from the Religion, Aging and Health Survey, Associate Professor of Human Development of Family Science Christine Proulx found a significant difference between how forgiveness impacts men and women's mental health.

In rural communities, finding transportation to basic health care services can be difficult. So what if instead of making people come to health care – the health care came to them?

Well, the Mobile Mammography Van through Ellis Fischel Cancer Center is working to do just that - bringing preventative mammogram screenings to rural communities.

Many Mexican migrant farmworkers are heading home at the end of apple picking season this October. Sixty-one year-old Maria Zavala is one of them.

For the past 18 years she’s made the 20-hour drive from her home in Waco, Texas to western Missouri to work in the apple orchards.  She's struggled with high blood pressure that entire time, and like most migrant farmworkers who don't speak English, she often wasn't aware of the health care options available to her.

Family Health Center opened back in 1992, and is Columbia’s federally qualified health center, which gets federal funding to assist low-income and medically underserved populations.

Over the years it has expanded to include not just medical services, but also mental health and dental services. And then, more recently, has opened two satellite clinics in rural Missouri – Salisbury and Marceline.

 In this week's show, our host Sara Shahriari explores the complicated situation around  access to affordable dental care in Missouri. Featured guests include Gary Harbison, executive director for the Missouri Coalition for Oral Health. Here is a sample of their conversation. 

Q&A: The Dental Care Landscape in Missouri

When a woman is trying to leave an abusive relationship or unsafe domestic situation, shelters offer a safe space for her to stay and get back on her feet. But leaving an abusive relationship can be difficult for any woman.

According to the National Domestic Abuse Hotline, a woman seeking help will be in and out of a shelter seven times on average, before leaving the relationship. For deaf individuals, that number doubles.

Weightlifting is a common activity used to meet many different exercise goals, from young guys looking to get “swoll” to older men working to maintain muscle.

And new research from the University of Missouri shows that stronger bones is another reason for men to hit the gym and pump some iron.

A few years ago, Dr. Pam Hinton conducted a study on the overall health of men who participate in different types of exercise.

The number of uninsured residents in Missouri and throughout the U.S. is down, according to the 2014 American Community Survey. The United States Census Bureau released the survey Wednesday as the first compilation of data since the introduction of the Affordable Care Act.

The survey showed 8.8 million fewer Americans were uninsured under the first year of the Affordable Care Act. Dr. Timothy McBride, a health economist at Washington University in St. Louis, said it's the first national report on the ACA.

During this summer’s White House Conference on Aging, the U-S Department of Agriculture announced the start of a new pilot program to increase low-income seniors’ access to healthy food. The USDA hopes to allow seniors to use food stamp benefits on grocery delivery programs, a service that could help low-income seniors remain at home rather than moving to an assisted-living facility.

US Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said lack of transportation to grocery stores is one of the biggest reasons almost 3 million seniors struggle to access healthy foods. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) can help low-income seniors afford groceries, but less than half of eligible seniors use the program.

The deaf community has its own language, culture and set of obstacles, and most hearing people will never interact with it. But Dr. Stephanie Logan was thrust into the deaf community when she lost her hearing at the age of 23.

Logan was studying psychology at the University of Georgia when she contracted spinal meningitis. In less than a week, her hearing was completely gone.