With just hours left for Congress to come up with a funding deal, government observers say a government shutdown seems likely. This will mean certain non-essential employees will be furloughed, services will cease and more.

Providing young people with the mental health resources they need is crucial, said Dan Marlowe, associate dean and chair of Behavioral Health at Campbell University, during an Aug. 24 town-hall meeting on mental health at the school.

On a Friday night in late July, Axe to Grind got a visit from the local police. Zaidoon Al-Zubaidy, co-owner of the Hamlet cafe, was presenting a local band in the back room. When he learned there were officers out front, he joked with his staff that a night out isn’t successful until the cops are called, but still, he was concerned. He had a packed house, and he didn’t want a scene. …

Arthur Durham is keenly aware of the impact that gunfire and other street violence can have on a community. As a boy growing up in Philadelphia, that was the world he lived in. His mother battled heroin addiction, and his father was absent. Now, he’s bringing the expertise he has accumulated from his childhood and work in Philadelphia and New York to Greensboro, where a new violence interrupter program is being launched.

It’s been a little more than a year since  the  launch  of the national Suicide & Crisis Lifeline number , 988, and North Carolina saw a  31% increase  in calls for support during that time.  While the national hotline isn’t exactly new, the shortened number is. The previous 10-digit number was replaced by the easier-to-remember 988 in the hope that it will become as recognizable as the universal emergency number 911. 

When a South Charlotte mom was looking for a psychiatrist to prescribe medication for her teenage daughter’s depression last year, she described sitting with her phone and going down the list of doctors listed as in network with her insurance company. Some weren’t taking new patients. Others never returned her messages. And a few said their first appointment was months away. 

A few months ago, Jemonde Taylor stood, like a proud shepherd, on a bank and looked down at a section of Walnut Creek that runs through Southeast Raleigh’s Rochester Heights community, where he s the rector at St. Ambrose Episcopal Church. As the chair of Raleigh’s Stormwater Advisory Committee, Taylor values wetlands’ vital role in flood mitigation, air and water purification, and wildlife habitat, among other things. For these reasons, he’s concerned about the potential loss of intermittent wetlands.

As state-designated advocates for North Carolina’s older residents, the  Senior Tar Heel Legislature  has a 30-year history of advocacy — and relatively limited clout in recent times. Now its leaders are working to become a more aggressive, diverse force for change in legislative sessions to come.

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.

Last month, three people died as a result of infections from a category of bacteria you’ve likely never heard of: Vibrio. It is commonly present in coastal and brackish water, especially during warmer months.

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.

State Health and Human Services Secretary Kody Kinsley volunteered at blood drives before he was old enough to donate. Then he was a regular donor in high school and some of his college years. But that was years ago. For the first time in more than a decade, Kinsley, 38, rolled up his sleeve to donate blood recently.

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.

Stoneos instead of Oreos?  Doweedos  instead of Doritos?  Law enforcement officers and federal agencies are taking steps to get these familiar-looking edibles and other delta-8 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) products out of the hands of middle and high school students.

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.

During Gov. Roy Cooper’s final full year in office, his administration will make a first-time, major push to benefit North Carolina’s fast-growing older population through new funding and changes in state operations, according to interviews with principals and state documents.

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.