HEALTH
A guide to the best coverage of maternal health and mortality in the US
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PublicSource has curated signature projects from 10 sources, local and national, to inform our readers about the imperative issue of maternal health.
HEALTH
The battle against infant mortality in Allegheny County: exploring the progress and persistent challenges
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Carissa Ashby could feel her daughter moving in the womb. She couldn't settle on a name. Baby Zoe perhaps? Nothing seemed quite right. Then, late in her pregnancy, Ashby woke up and just knew.
The Fix
The Fix: The other side of opioid addiction: Look, listen and give those of us in recovery a chance.
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Ashley Potts struggled with addiction for years before getting clean. She went back to school, eventually earning a Master of Social Work degree.
FIRST PERSON
ALS stole much from my husband, but not his sense of humor.
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We never had a break in this constantly changing landscape. The realization that he was dying, piece by piece, was horrible, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
The Fix
The Fix: My cycle of addiction was broken not by the system, but by people believing I was more than a junkie.
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Casey Mullen served 26 months in a state penitentiary for convictions related to his narcotics addiction. Today, he is a lawyer in Pittsburgh.
HEALTH
Street medicine, made in Pittsburgh: A gritty, compassionate solution to everything that’s wrong with health care.
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Editor’s Note: On behalf of PublicSource, writer Timothy Maddocks spent six days between October 2017 and February 2018 embedded with street medicine teams. He attended the 2017 International Street Medicine Symposium and interviewed more than three dozen street medicine practitioners, from Pittsburgh and beyond. Though the days are still warm as we publish this story, soon people experiencing homelessness will again be subject to severe drops in temperature. This story sheds light on how street medicine practitioners aim to help the population throughout the year and how it plays out at the most critical times.
On a gray January morning, the team from Pittsburgh Mercy's Operation Safety Net follows the hollow sound of a dog barking in the distance to the tent that they’ve been looking for. And there it is, between the Allegheny River and the gravel bike trail: a mismatched collage of older tents and tarps, faded yellow and bright orange.
The Fix
The Fix: For two Pittsburgh women, helping others deal with drug addiction starts with telling their own stories.
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Kathy and Judy, with their drastically different backgrounds, share the common experience of a life-altering addiction.
The Fix
The Fix: EMS workers are on the front lines of the opioid epidemic. Here’s how they cope.
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"It's getting our people to admit [they are struggling]. ... We've become numb to the situation because we are dealing with it on a daily basis.”
