RALEIGH — State and local law enforcement officers will be out in force as part of the Labor Day Booze It & Lose It campaign, according to the N.C. Department of Transportation.

Enduring threads of North Carolina’s past — such as bygone industries and separate public schools for whites, Blacks and Native Americans — still affect older state residents, as harmful holdovers and even, in some cases, as positive forces

Whitney Parker has had enough.  The Snow Hill resident lives close enough to the GFL Sampson County Regional Landfill to see the daily operations from his house.  Parker said that for decades, the landfill has cast an imposing  shadow over his community and destroyed its quality of life.

Two organizations that manage behavioral health services for people on Medicaid and for some uninsured people in different areas of North Carolina have agreed to merge into a single entity that will serve more than 100,000 people across 21 counties. 

The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services recently announced plans to  accelerate the launch of Medicaid expansion  to Oct. 1, which is about three months earlier than expected.

According to research by the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, recent moves by the Biden administration to deliver high-speed internet to rural communities will do more than connect homes to the internet: It may improve rural health. Associate Professor Carrie Henning-Smith with the university’s School of Public Health said in an interview with The Daily Yonder that access to high-speed internet will affect rural health in a number of ways, including direct access as well as more indirect health outcome-affecting factors.

Jill Sergison, a certified nurse-midwife, stood amid a crowd of nearly a thousand people on May 13 wearing a rainbow-colored clinic escort vest and a white coat as Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper vetoed …

A recent study estimates that 230 billion tiny pieces of plastic the thickness of a human hair and 670 million microplastics about the size of a grain of sand flow into the Pamlico Sound from the Neuse River Basin each year. To reach that estimate, North Carolina State University and North Carolina Sea Grant researchers sampled 15 freshwater locations between Wake County to Craven County from August 2020 to July 2021.

According to Monica Christofferson, director of treatment court programs at the Center for Justice Innovation, amid an accelerating opioid crisis there has been a “huge shift” among judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement agencies away from the stigma associated with medication treatment. Simply put, “MOUD works,” Christofferson asserts.

Last August, during a routine surveillance flyover, Samantha Krop spotted something odd at White Oak Farm, a Wayne County biogas and industrial hog farm operation. In May 2022, the owners reported that nearly a million gallons of hog feces, decomposing hog carcasses and food waste seeped from a failed hog waste “digester” and spread over surrounding fields. Of the total waste amount, 10,745 gallons also entered the Nahunta Swamp. “I noticed that the …

This has been a summer of intense heat domes, record high temperatures and strained power grids feeding cranked-up air conditioners that are working overtime to cool homes, businesses and other buildings. As many North Carolina residents seek chilled shelter from stifling heat and indices expected to top 100 degrees, many in the state’s prison population are confined inside buildings without air conditioning.

The  N.C. Department of Health and  Human  Services  hopes to accelerate the launch of Medicaid expansion, potentially giving more than 600,000 low-income residents access to health insurance coverage as early as Oct. 1.

State lawmakers have repealed “Blackbeard’s Law,” a measure passed in 2015 that Fayetteville underwater photographer Rick Allen believes was an attempt to stop him from suing the state for using his videos and photographs of the notorious pirate’s shipwreck without compensation.

For years, Katie and her husband have used traditional forms of birth control to prevent pregnancy. The 28-year-old knew that if it failed, she could always get an abortion.  When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, Katie began to think she needed more protection. She recently had her fallopian tubes removed by a Charlotte doctor. 

The repeatedly delayed rollout of specialized health care plans for tens of thousands of Medicaid beneficiaries — those with complex, often behavioral health needs — has been postponed indefinitely, the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services announced Tuesday. 

In March 2022, John called the police to his home in Mecklenburg County because his 16-year-old son, Paul, was experiencing a violent behavioral health episode. “We don’t feel safe. We don’t know what to do. We really need treatment for him. Please help us,” John remembers telling hospital staff as he explained the violent episodes at home.

On a warm summer evening, laughter fills a gym furnished with red and black fitness equipment as more than 20 people attempt to grab clothespins attached to each other’s shirts.  Participants range from young teenagers to those who are starting to gray around the temples. Some have cognitive and physical disabilities and join in with the families and other members of the CrossFit community.

People should celebrate and have fun this Fourth of July, but anyone who drinks alcohol should not operate an automobile or boat. That was the message from traffic safety officials and law enforcement officers at Wednesday’s launch in Raleigh of anti-drunken driving campaigns aimed at automobile drivers and boaters.

After graduating from a medical school in the Northeast, Caledonia Buckheit came south to Duke University Hospital to complete her obstetrics and gynecology residency. She finished last June and found work in North Carolina — ready to provide comprehensive reproductive health care to patients, including abortion. Just weeks after finishing, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The June 24 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization  eliminated the constitutional right to abortion that had existed for nearly half a century.

HIGH POINT — Taylor Loyd, representing Statesville, was crowned Miss North Carolina 2023 at High Point Theater on Saturday evening. Janiya Pipkin, Miss Fayetteville Dogwood, placed in the top 15.

Recently, state lawmakers discussed this year’s  regulatory reform bill  and, despite a bevy of amendments and question marks about its effects on the environment and potential conflicts with the Clean Water Act, the bill received a favorable report and is moving on in the state Senate. 

Two longtime emergency room doctors have blown the whistle on what they say is fraudulent overcharging by HCA Healthcare, which owns Mission Health, and its medical staffing company, TeamHealth, according to a recently unsealed lawsuit filed last year.

BAMBERG, S.C. — Years before Bamberg County Hospital closed in 2012, and the next-closest hospital in neighboring Barnwell shut its doors in 2016, those facilities had stopped delivering babies. These days, there’s not even an ultrasound machine in this rural county 60 miles south of Columbia, much less an obstetrician. Pregnant women here are left with few options for care.

Many of North Carolina’s so-called rural counties bear little resemblance to the pastoral hamlets that people tend to picture when they think of rural living. In reality, the 78 counties that fall under the common statistical definition of “rural” are home to about 40% of the state’s population, and North Carolina’s rural population is — next to Texas — the largest in the U.S. 

Federal regulators have threatened to terminate Medicare funding for a psychiatric hospital in eastern North Carolina after a series of visits to the facility, which started with a complaint alleging mistreatment and sexual assault of an 11-year-old patient.