Comparing the Economic and Social Prevalence Among Special Needs Children who received health insurance through Medicaid/CHIP

The Kaiser Family Foundation has released an issue brief (below) with an in-depth analysis comparing the economic and social prevalence among special needs children who received health insurance through Medicaid/CHIP, private insurance, a combination of Medicaid/CHIP and private insurance, or who are uninsured. The analysis from Kaiser shows that children with special needs who benefit from Medicaid/CHIP have increased health access and their families experience lower financial burden in comparison to their counterparts. In addition, financial […]

Kids with Special Needs Can Celebrate Independence This 4th of July

July 4th tends to be a quiet holiday in our house. Because of my son Liam, a non-verbal 7-year-old with autism, has many sensory issues, we avoid crowds, loud noises, parades, and festivals. He hasn’t seen fireworks since he was a baby because of his strict bedtime routine, and his compulsion to taste most everything he encounters makes me hesitate to give him a sparkler, lit or otherwise. Instead of all these traditional activities, we […]

Managing Multiple Sclerosis

Treatment Can Delay Future Attacks Most of the time, multiple sclerosis, or MS, starts mildly, with unpredictable symptoms that can seem baffling. Without treatment, the disease can worsen to the point that you can’t write, speak, or walk. MS starts when the body’s immune system slowly attacks the fatty coating around nerves. Without an intact coating, communication between nerves and the brain becomes impaired. However, it may be years before the first symptoms appear. The symptoms […]

2,000 human brains yield clues to how genes raise risk for mental illnesses

Artificial intelligence model improves prediction six-fold It’s one thing to detect sites in the genome associated with mental disorders; it’s quite another to discover the biological mechanisms by which these changes in DNA work in the human brain to boost risk. In their first concerted effort to tackle the latter, 15 collaborating research teams of the National Institutes of Health-funded PsychENCODE Consortium (link is external) leveraged statistical power gained from a large sample of about […]

Many Are Replacing Disability Checks With Paychecks

Heard on All Things Considered Scott Horsley Main Photo: Dani Izzie at her home in rural Virginia. More than a decade ago, she slipped in the bathroom and suffered a spinal cord injury that has left her unable to walk. She works as a social media manager for Spinergy, a company that makes high-performance wheels for wheelchairs. Greg Kahn for NPR During and after the Great Recession, people turned to disability rolls in large numbers […]