As Britney Taylor toured the Mama Bird Maternity Wellness Spa during its grand opening this spring, she reflected on the birth of her first child: a confusing and lonely experience that resulted in an unplanned cesarean section and an extended period of postpartum depression. But here in Aurora, local families and smiling doulas wandered amid […]
Rae Ellen Bichell
Email: rbichell@kff.org Twitter: @raelnb
Posted inHealth, News
A Colorado town is about as vaccinated as it can get. But it still has COVID.
By Rae Ellen Bichell, Kaiser Health News San Juan County, Colorado, can boast that 99.9% of its eligible population has received at least one dose of covid-19 vaccine, putting it in the top 10 counties in the nation, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If vaccines were the singular armor […]
Posted inEducation, Health, News
School or “Russian Roulette”? Amid delta variant and lax mask rules, some Colorado parents see no difference
This story was written by Kaiser Health News, a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. The child had just started kindergarten. Or, as her mother called it, “Russian roulette.” That’s because her school district in Grand Junction, experienced one of the nation’s first delta-variant outbreaks last spring, and now school officials have […]
Posted inCOVID, Health, News
Behind Wyoming and Colorado’s anomalous twin COVID-19 spikes despite their political differences
By Rae Ellen Bichelle, Kaiser Health News WHEATLAND, Wyo. — Brandon Graves said covid-19 arrived in Wheatland the way new movies do in this High Plains farming town: months after hitting the big cities and without much fanfare. “It kind of trickled in and it never really exploded here,” said Graves, a lifelong resident and […]
Posted inHealth, News
Delta variant surges in western Colorado as the Country Jam bands — and people — play on
GRAND JUNCTION — Dr. Rachel LaCount grasped a metal hoop at a playground and spun in circles with her 7-year-old son, turning the distant mesas of the Colorado National Monument into a red-tinged blur. LaCount has lived in this western Colorado city of 64,000 nearly her whole life. As a hospital pathologist, she knows better […]
Posted inBusiness, Health, News
A Colorado hospital charged $722.50 to push medicine through an IV. Twice.
By Rae Ellen Bichell, Kaiser Health News Claire Lang-Ree was in a lab coat taking a college chemistry class remotely in the kitchen of her home in Colorado Springs, when a profound pain twisted into her lower abdomen. She called her mom, Jen Lang-Ree, a nurse practitioner who worried it was appendicitis and found a nearby […]
Posted inCOVID, Health, News
People fly to Cortez for coronavirus vaccines, but some who live in southwest Colorado can’t reach a clinic
The airport says a lot about Cortez: The single-engine planes that fly into its one-room airport seat nine passengers at most. The city of about 9,000 is known largely as a gateway to beautiful places like Mesa Verde National Park and the Four Corners Monument. But COVID-19 vaccines have made Cortez a destination in its own right. “We had […]
Posted inCOVID, Crime and Courts, News
Durango’s COVID “cowboy” rounds up (maskless) spring break scofflaws
Bartenders were pouring Old-Fashioneds at a bar with a bullet hole straight through the wood. Servers in corsets and fishnet stockings roamed the room, passing an old piano that, twice a week, fills the building with ragtime tunes. It was a Friday evening at the Diamond Belle Saloon on the main drag in Durango. Outside, […]
Posted inCOVID, Health, News
At Colorado’s rural edges, vaccines help assisted-living facilities reopen their doors
Bingo is back in the dining room. In-person visits have returned, too, though with masks and plexiglass. The Haven Assisted Living Facility’s residents are even planning a field trip for a private movie screening once they’ve all gotten their second round of COVID-19 vaccines. Such changes are small but meaningful to residents in the Hayden, […]
Posted inCOVID, Health, News
County Line Road in Erie is a coronavirus response fault line
ERIE — Whenever Larry Kelderman looks up from the car he’s fixing and peers across the street, he’s looking across a border. His town of 28,000 straddles two counties, separated by County Line Road. Kelderman’s auto repair business is in Boulder County, whose officials are sticklers for public health and have topped the county website with instructions […]