Category: Health

We follow local stories of well-being in the Hill Country Observer, from physical and mental health to systems of healthcare and insurance and the challenges of medicine today.

  • Issue:

    Inside tales from New York’s troubled child welfare system

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    By TRACY FRISCH Contributing writer     GLENS FALLS, N.Y.Sid, a delicate-boned young woman with a tough veneer and numerous piercings, spent most of her high school years in detention. By her own account, her trip through the nether world of New York’s child welfare system began when she was 14, after she took the read more

    Inside tales from New York’s troubled child welfare system
  • Issue:

    Right-to-die debate takes new turns in Vermont

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    By EVAN LAWRENCE Contributing writer   The emotional questions raised by Vermont’s proposed death-with-dignity law have become somewhat familiar after a series of legislative debates over the past decade. Should the terminally ill be able to choose the time and manner of their deaths? Should they be able to request assistance from a doctor? Would read more

    Right-to-die debate takes new turns in Vermont
  • Issue:

    Gun shows draw controversy

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    Where critics push for limits, some fear loss of freedom By THOMAS DIMOPOULOS Contributing writer SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y.The line at the door to the City Center began forming hours before the show opened. By 10 a.m., crowds of shoppers moved about the gun-laden tables inside the exhibition hall. Outside on Broadway, demonstrators held up 26 read more

    Gun shows draw controversy
  • Issue:

    Disaster waiting to happen?

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    By TRACY FRISCH Contributing writer GHENT, N.Y.When a huge fire broke out last summer at an industrial waste processing plant in Columbia County, firefighters initially tried to quell the blaze with water. But the firefighters soon had to retreat as a series of explosions rocked the 30,000-square-foot building that was home to TCI of New read more

    Disaster waiting to happen?
  • Issue:

    Power center? Utility pushes to make Rutland the Northeast’s solar capital

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    By CRAIG IDLEBROOK Contributing writer RUTLAND, Vt.The 3-acre lot at the end of Cleveland Avenue was until recently considered unsuitable for development. The property on the western edge of Rutland was a brownfield, its soil contaminated by a coal gasification plant that occupied the site decades ago. The area is considered a blighted section of read more

    Power center? Utility pushes to make Rutland the Northeast’s solar capital
  • Issue:

    Songbird’s decline fuels climate-change debate

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    Groups seek endangered-species status for Bicknell’s thrush By CRAIG IDLEBROOK Contributing writer The fate of a little bird that spends its summers in the high elevations of the Green Mountains could soon become a new focal point in a national battle over regulating climate-changing emissions. Earlier this year, the federal government started the formal process read more

    Songbird’s decline fuels climate-change debate
  • Issue:

    EPA tries to navigate conflicting demands on Housatonic cleanup

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    EPA tries to navigate conflicting demands on Housatonic cleanup By DAVID SCRIBNER Contributing writer   PITTSFIELD, Mass.Twelve years ago this month, General Electric Co. signed a consent decree with state and federal environmental agencies under which it agreed to clean up PCB pollution in the Housatonic River, setting the stage for the dredging of 1.5 read more

    EPA tries to navigate conflicting demands on Housatonic cleanup
  • Issue:

    TCI’s history includes past fires, worker death

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    By TRACY FRISCH Contributing writer   GHENT, N.Y. The Aug. 1 fire that destroyed the TCI of New York plant in West Ghent was not the company’s first, nor was the smaller fire earlier this year in which a trailer of oily rags at the plant ignited. In the mid-1980s, fire broke out at TCI’s read more

    TCI’s history includes past fires, worker death
  • Issue:

    After a big fire, questions persist

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    Critics fault state’s limited testing after blaze involving PCBs By TRACY FRISCH Contributing writer   GHENT, N.Y. After a huge chemical fire erupted at an industrial plant in West Ghent on the night of Aug. 1, authorities advised everyone within a 15-mile radius of the site to stay indoors, keep windows closed and avoid using read more

    After a big fire, questions persist
  • Issue:

    Is privatization the cure?

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    Counties push to sell public nursing homes, citing budget pressures By THOMAS DIMOPOULOS Contributing writer William “Beaver” Watkins remembers how “it all went to hell in a hand-basket.” Two years ago, the Washington County Board of Supervisors began to consider privatizing Pleasant Valley Infirmary, the county-owned nursing home in Argyle. Watkins, the Cambridge town supervisor, read more

    Is privatization the cure?