Blake Farmer

Black patients and their families are less likely to sign up for end-of-life comfort care. To reach them, investors are starting hospice agencies run by people who look like the patients they serve.

In areas overwhelmed by COVID cases, hospitals must rely on traveling nurses to operate ICUs. Hospitals pay a premium for that temporary help, while also struggling to keep their staff nurses happy.

Congregations are figuring out how to safely meet in person now that the COVID-19 vaccine is more widely available. But vaccination remains divisive even as it allows them to come together again.

Last spring, nurses and doctors traveled to New York and other COVID-19 hot spots to help overwhelmed hospitals. But with the virus spreading everywhere, hospitals now have nowhere to turn for help.

The Trump administration has given states ways to restrict spending on the government insurance program for low-income Americans. A Biden administration would expand Medicaid coverage.

Some pharmaceutical companies are well into the final phase of clinical trials for a coronavirus vaccine. But efforts to recruit patients from minority groups are just beginning.

Many are worried that Labor Day will be like the Fourth of July and Memorial Day, when travel and celebrations fanned the flames of viral spread, especially across the U.S. South and West.

Though the denomination still considers homosexuality a sin, some leaders of the Southern Baptist Convention are telling pastors to rein in harsh rhetoric and accept that gay people are in their pews.

The proposal awaiting the governor's signature has bipartisan support, despite doctors' opposition. Critics say it could deter expectant mothers from seeking help, or even encourage more abortions.

The Kentucky Baptist Convention has found a surefire way for getting people through church doors: free guns. The church raffle events combine dinner, sermons and a Second Amendment message.