Michaela Ramm

Effective June 1, the Cedar Rapids office of the Iowa Harm Reduction Coalition has closed its doors due to a major funding loss. The organization’s leadership will continue to offer deliveries and mobile services to clients.

Statewide, the number of patients in Iowa hospitals with COVID-19 reached 180 as of Wednesday, up from 139 patients last week. It’s the highest total seen since early March, but still far below the omicron variant surge in January.

As families grapple with the ongoing shortage of baby formula nationwide, more parents are turning to social media groups that facilitate peer-to-peer breast milk donations.

The innovation lab at St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids helped build an adaptive keyboard for Lotus Friedman, a 13-year-old from Dubuque who was paralyzed from the waist down after a skiing accident earlier this year. The ability to play her favorite game is a reprieve from day-to-day hospital life, she said.

Work is underway to “fine tune” the COVID-19 vaccines to make them more effective against emerging variants, but a strategy scientists hope to employ includes offering flu and coronavirus boosters in a single vaccine.

Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids has named Dr. Timothy Quinn as the hospital’s new president and CEO effective Jan. 1, 2023. The family medicine physician currently is executive vice president and chief of clinical operations.

HACAP Food Reservoir has partnered with area health care providers to launch Food is Medicine, a program that screens for food insecurity and provides immediate assistance to patients in need.

The state public health department has reported new COVID-19 case counts have increased again, reaching 3,847 new infections in the past seven days. Hospitalizations also continued to increase this week.

Julie Beckett fought to care for her daughter at home in the 1980s, bringing about a fundamental change to the federal Medicaid program that ultimately improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of children with complex disabilities nationwide. She died in Cedar Rapids on Friday at the age of 72.

Linn County Public Health is now offering treatment for those with hepatitis C, a liver disease that is growing in prevalence across the state. Officials are seeing a higher prevalence among those who use injection drugs, who often face barriers to care.

The state reported 3,172 new coronavirus cases in the past seven days, which is roughly triple the number of new cases reported on April 20. Six weeks ago, Iowa reported 478 new cases.

Forming good self-care habits, such as daily positive affirmations and getting plenty of rest, are important in becoming an overall happier and healthier individual. Here are some tip kids can try when practicing self-care.

After a monthslong battle with the insurance company, Jodi and John Philipp were finally able to begin clean up at their 13-acre farm in Benton County that was destroyed in the August 2020 derecho.

Community Health Free Clinic will celebrate its 20th anniversary this month, while His Hands Free Clinic will mark its 30th year in operation.

Providers at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics have seen a “significant” reduction in the number of patients experiencing mental health crises a year after officials increased the number of behavioral health consultants on its inpatient psychiatric floor.