For now, the color in the smart ink developed at the University of Colorado only turns on and off. Someday it could signal health problems like high blood sugar.
Rae Ellen Bichell
Email: rbichell@kff.org Twitter: @raelnb
Posted inEducation
How Colorado is filling gaps as last-resort schools dwindle
Experts are hopeful a new state law will lead more facility schools to open. Meanwhile, school districts are creating their own programs, and creative and skilled educators are finding ways to meet students’ needs in traditional classrooms.
Posted inEducation
Students in rural Colorado are left without options as specialized facility schools close
A new state law aims to keep the doors open at schools that accept students with intensive needs. One preteen in rural Colorado shows how the current system leaves some students bouncing between institutions far from home.
Posted inEquity, Health, News
Grassroots groups lead the way on closing Colorado’s infant mortality gap
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 […]
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 […]