Jess Mador

Rural patients and providers have raised concerns that the loss of more maternity care in northeast Georgia means fewer options.

Even at a time of unprecedented challenges to the work of public health, there is room for optimism, says former CDC Director and “disease detective” Dr. Tom Frieden, president and CEO of the Resolve to Save Lives initiative.

Grady Memorial Hospital officials are preparing for financial losses as a result of the one-two punch of federal Medicaid funding cuts under H.R. 1, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and the proposed expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act marketplace tax credits later this year.

The country’s largest nurses union says the Trump administration’s cuts to health care programs will worsen Georgians’ access to health care, especially in rural communities where hospitals and clinics already face stiff financial headwinds. 

It was another weekend of chaos and uncertainty for federal employees at the Atlanta-based United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Late Friday, the Trump administration’s firings of more than 4,000 federal workers included more than a thousand at the CDC.

It could soon get easier for Georgians with health insurance through the state’s Pathways to Coverage Medicaid program to maintain coverage.

Emory Healthcare, Grady Health System and Georgia Southern University are among the most recent recipients of grants from the state’s Opioid Crisis Abatement Trust fund.

As Georgia and much of the South see an uptick in COVID-19, there is confusion over who can -- and cannot -- get this year’s booster shots. And whether the vaccines will become widely available under current federal guidelines.  

Georgia U.S. Sens. Warnock and Ossoff are among the Democrats in Congress demanding that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. resign from his post as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. At a three-hour hearing Thursday before the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Raphael Warnock, other committee Democrats and some Republicans questioned Kennedy about his public health views and policies.

The Marietta Police Department recently started having officers take part in a horse therapy program to help their mental health and improve policing. 

On this week's episode of "Plugged In," we give an update on the CDC shooting investigation and how the incident is the latest example of increasing threats, and sometimes violence, directed at public officials and institutions.

Current and former employees of the CDC are pushing for U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to denounce vaccine misinformation they say puts scientists at risk, as investigations into Friday’s shooting at the CDC in Atlanta continue. 

The United States Department of Veterans Affairs has announced it’s on track to eliminate a total of 30,000 employees nationwide. Georgia veterans who get services through the VA and advocates worry more cuts will erode working conditions and hurt patient care, especially at the Atlanta VA Medical Center, which already suffers from delays and staff shortages.  

Georgia’s abortion law H.B. 481 took effect three years ago, following the U.S. Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision ending federal abortion protections. Atlanta abortion-rights advocates, doctors and patients say the state law continues to interfere with pregnancy care. 

Now that Republicans’ big tax-and-spending bill has become law, there will be new bureaucratic hurdles for millions of Americans who rely on Medicaid for health coverage.

Almost three years after closing to patients, Atlanta Medical Center in the Old Fourth Ward is being demolished. It’s the first phase of several years of work planned for the hospital complex that is slated to become a mixed-use redevelopment project.

Maruscsak spoke at a Senate Urban Affairs Committee hearing on Georgia’s abortion law, held to mark the third anniversary of the Supreme Court Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade abortion protections.

In Georgia, dozens of OB-GYNs have warned the state law interferes with patient care -- a problem in a state with one of the worst maternal mortality rates in the U.S., and where Black women are more than twice as likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause than white women.

Atlanta women’s health providers and abortion-rights advocates are speaking out against Georgia's six-week abortion law as an Emory University Hospital patient recently declared "brain dead" remains on life support to sustain her pregnancy.

House Republicans have proposed sweeping cuts to federal Medicaid funding and other major changes to the safety net program as part of the Trump administration’s tax breaks and spending cuts. Disability advocates and people who use caregiving services fear the proposed federal cuts would upend their care.