Blake Farmer

The Southern Baptist Convention offered commitments at its closely watched two-day annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif., to address sexual abuse problems kept hidden for years.

For COVID patients, ECMO is a last-ditch respiratory treatment in which only about half survive. Yet a new small study suggests many lives would still have been saved if there had been more machines.

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.

With few options for health care in their rural community, a Tennessee couple's experience with one outrageous bill could have led to a deadly delay when they needed help the most.

As Community Health Systems has downsized, what remain are like zombie hospitals – little more than legal entities still taking patients to court even though the new owners don't sue.

Republican legislators in Tennessee pushed to limit marketing COVID-19 vaccines to youth, and to restrict access. Some doctors worry it will have a chilling effect on vaccinations.

Vermont and Massachusetts lead the nation, with more than 70% of adults having had at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Southern states such as Tennessee lag far behind.

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.

Some immigrant groups are closing the ethnic gap on COVID-19 shots. For many Kurdish Americans, their fears about vaccination are entangled with their experiences in refugee camps after fleeing Iraq.

A majority of white, rural conservatives in Tennessee are open to getting the vaccine at some point, but at least 45% won't consider it. Rates in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi are also lagging.