By Kylie Marsh for the Charlotte Post, with support from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
Broadcast version by Shanteya Hudson for North Carolina News Service reporting for the Charlotte Post-Public News Service Collaboration.

Amirah McCree planned to deliver her second child, Yara, at a hospital in Pineville. She immediately felt rushed by the all-white nursing staff.

Because delivery required an induction, McCree, a Charlotte paralegal, did her research. She knew she did not want to take pain medication, because it would make labor harder and faster. She was able to convince the nurses to go with a different induction method, but "they still felt it wasn't going fast enough."

There is growing awareness of the medical racism Black women like McCree have faced during pregnancy.

"[The nurse] literally said, 'we're here to have a baby,'" McCree said. "It scared me a little...even though I tried to advocate for myself, it still went nowhere. It was really scary because you're in a hospital bed and you can't say, 'I don't like this, I want to leave.'"

The nurses then asked McCree's family to leave the delivery room.

"When they left, it was just me, the nurses and the midwife," McCree said. The nurse then informed McCree that she'd check her cervix, and proceeded to perform an amniotomy, which is manually breaking the amniotic membrane.

"I know what a cervix check feels like. She went further," McCree said. "She swiped my fluid, and when I tried to stop her, the nurses held my hands. It was completely traumatic."

McCree never returned to the hospital, and has trouble recollecting what followed due to blocking out the memory.

In the U.S., Black women are far more likely than white women to report that health care providers scolded, threatened, or shouted at them during childbirth, research shows.

In April, the Charlotte-based nonprofit Care Ring hosted a panel discussion during Black Maternal Health Week, a national initiative geared toward tackling the high rates of death for Black mothers and their babies. There, healthcare professionals Jonisha Brown and Keyona Oni shared their stories about receiving sub-par medical care.

A 2016 survey of medical students and residents found that half held false beliefs about biological differences between Black and white people, including that Black people feel less pain. That belief is just one factor that can cause bias and lead to inaccurate treatment recommendations or clear medical neglect in patients of color.

"We recognize that there is a trust breach that has occurred in healthcare. That trust breach is present, that there is implicit bias, and certain things we took as dogma," said Noellee Clarke MD, a OB-GYN at Novant Health who is Black. "During my residency, they'd talk about the number one risk factor for preterm labor and preterm delivery, and by de facto, it was Black maternal risk.

"It was no more risk factors. The only other would have been prior history of what the condition is, but back then it was, there's a race-based system."

Implicit bias is just one piece of the larger Black maternal and infant mortality puzzle. In addition to lifelong trauma and generational distrust of the medical community, a history of neglect and malpractice are significantly more deadly for women of color.

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the maternal mortality rate for non-Hispanic Black women in 2021 was 69.9 deaths per 100,000 live births, 2.6 times the rate for white women.

Rates for Black women were significantly higher than rates for their white and Hispanic peers. The increases from 2020 to 2021 for all race and Hispanic-origin groups were significant.

In North Carolina, the maternal death rate is higher than the U.S. average. In 2021, the state's maternal mortality rate was 44 deaths per 100,000 births, according to CDC data compiled and analyzed by the investigative news organization MuckRock.

North Carolina's Maternal Mortality Review Committee's report on North Carolina reported that more than 85% of those deaths were preventable, and discrimination was the leading probable contributing factor in nearly 70% of cases.

Bias and discrimination went beyond race or ethnicity, and included weight, geography, substance use, history of incarceration, and other factors.

Panelists at Care Ring's Black Maternal Health Conference in Charlotte addressed issues relating to maternal and infant mortality in addition to implicit bias, like lack of access, poor policy, and the threat of reduced funding for programs aimed at certain demographics.

Other issues that can contribute to maternal mortality are connected to housing insecurity and intimate partner violence. Clarke explained Novant's three-tiered strategy geared toward increasing ease of access for expecting mothers.

The strategy focuses on social determinants of health, personable care and early prenatal care.

"The reality is we don't live in a vacuum," she said. "As patients and as human beings, we each interact with the world, and each patient's world looks different."

Social determinants of health include access to transportation, nutritious food, safe housing, education and community support.

In 2023, Novant reported that each month, an average of 3,000 patients screen positive for food insecurity at Novant Health medical group clinics, with 400 to 600 patients not having food on a given day.

Novant has set up partnerships to address inequities, like referring patients to the nonprofit food bank Nourish Up and providing free transportation with a community health worker to and from the food bank. It includes new and expecting mothers.

Clarke compares trying to change social determinants of health to boiling the ocean.

"It's on us as healthcare workers to help make these outcomes better for our patients," she said. "We have the ability to have influence and we can directly make a difference for our patients."

Earlier access to care is crucial, especially in a country where access to family planning care is becoming increasingly hard to find. Clarke says that's why it's important to get care as early as possible.

"We need to be more aware of our pregnant population," she said.

McCree's experience at Novant Health Ballantyne Medical Center is the opposite of Pineville.

McCree's mother and grandmother faced life-threatening complications with their third birth. Their experiences were on her mind since her son, Noah, would be her third.

"It's really scary as a mother of color to go into institutions where you know there is a prior history of being discriminated against," she said.


"It was like everyone was passing the baton. There was never a lapse," McCree said.

Nurses tried a bulb induction, where a balloon is filled with fluid to stretch the cervix to a safe diameter before the mother can push. However, the baby still wasn't coming. Having been traumatized from her previous experience, McCree refused to let Swiyyah perform an amniotomy.

While the nurses and McCree were weighing a switch to Pitocin, a pain medication that causes faster and harder contractions, Noah was born.

McCree is part of a Facebook group for Black mothers in Charlotte, where people frequently ask for recommendations on Black doctors.

"That comes from a sense of fear that if you don't have someone who looks like you, the likelihood of you being treated normal - not special, just normal - might not be given," she said.

While there are public-private partnerships meant to address historic harms to Black moms, it is still significant. As long as it exists, it will continue to sow distrust.

"I think it's hard to ask how do you remove fear from places that have created the fear," McCree said. "I think that'd be a better question for the people that created the fear in the first place."


Kylie Marsh wrote this article for the Charlotte Post.


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By Marilyn Odendahl for The Indiana Citizen.
Broadcast version by Joe Ulery for Indiana News Service reporting for the Indiana Citizen-Free Press Indiana-Public News Service Collaboration.

In a move applauded by advocates and lawmakers alike, the Indiana General Assembly will be taking a closer look at the estimated $2.2 billion in medical debt that is saddling many Hoosiers and often causing a devastating impact beyond the household budget.

“We all want to be able to care for ourselves and our loved ones, but medical debt poses undue financial hardship that prevents this from being a reality for countless Hoosiers,” Zia Saylor, researcher at the Indiana Community Action Poverty Institute, said in a press release. “It is important that lawmakers recognize the medical debt crisis we have and the urgent need for policies to address it.”

The Legislative Council included medical debt among the 22 topics that it assigned for further examination by the interim study committee process this summer and fall. On Wednesday, the council members unanimously passed a resolution that divided the topics between more than a dozen interim committees.

Initially, the Legislative Council began with 100 proposals for study topics this summer, plus 300 agency reports that presented more topics for possible review, according to George Angelone, executive director of the Legislative Services Agency. Through a “bipartisan process,” the list was whittled down to less than two dozen.

Other subjects scheduled for study include the economic value of Indiana’s public land for recreation, barriers to entering licensed professions, teaching water safety as part of the K-12 curriculum, salaries for K-12 administrators, the usage and cost of long-term-care insurance, and pollution caused by improperly discarded cables. Also, the Government Reform Task Force has been charged with reviewing the “efficiency and effectiveness” of various state boards, commissions and councils, and the Artificial Intelligence Task Force, established by state statute in 2024, will continue to examine the use of AI technology and the potential effects on Indiana residents’ constitutional rights, employment and economic welfare.

After the council hearing, Senate President Pro Tempore Rod Bray, R-Martinsville, said the work of the interim study committees are an important part of the legislative process. It allows state representatives and senators to dive into the topics and enables the public to provide input as well, which is helpful, he said. Bray and House Speaker Todd Huston, R-Fishers, serve as chair and vice chair, respectively, of the Legislative Council, which is comprised of eight members of the Indiana Senate and eight members of the House.

“Maybe it doesn’t end up in a proposed bill for the next legislative session, but people are always going to walk away with more facts and more information about that particular subject,” Bray said.

Democratic lawmakers were upbeat about the assignments to the committees. Senate Minority Leader Shelli Yoder, D-Bloomington, said the Democrats pushed topics that focused on improving Hoosiers’ lives. Many families, she said, are struggling to raise their children, care for their aging parents and stretch their wages to cover rising costs.

“That why our caucus fought very hard to make sure that this year’s study committee didn’t just check a box (but) that they had something meaningful to offer to Hoosiers,” Yoder said after the hearing. “We pushed hard for real topics, real impact and we have many successes to point to.”

‘Medical debt is no-fault debt’

For Democrats, the legislature’s decision to study medical debt is a win.

The interim study committee on the courts and the judiciary has been tasked with examining medical debt, the only topic on its agenda. As part of its study, the committee will look at financial protections for individuals through caps on monthly payments for such debt and limitations on collections or liens on property, along with restrictions on garnishment of wages. Also, the committee will focus on nonprofit and county hospitals by reviewing the definition for charitable care and the requirement to offer payment plans in addition to notices about medical bills to patients.

Speaker Huston and Sen. Fady Qaddoura, D-Indianapolis, both suggested the medical debt topic.

Huston said the topic was spurred by the many different constituents who reached out, telling their stories of the immense financial burden that overdue medical bills can be.

“We will at least take a look at it and understand it, particularly for low-income folks or people that have had some kind of… large, expensive medical procedures,” Huston said of medical debt. “How do you help them get out from behind the eight ball? We’ll take a look at that and see what the options are.”

During the 2025 legislative session, Qaddoura introduced Senate Bill 317 which sought to address medical debt by offering protections similar to those that will be studied by the committee. The measure died after it was narrowly defeated in a 26-to-23 vote in the Senate.

“We should stop penalizing people for getting sick,” Qaddoura said in a statement. “Medical debt is often unavoidable and disproportionately affects those already struggling. Our goal should be to create a path forward that lifts people up, not holds them back.”

Indiana residents are some of the most burdened with medical debt in the country. A 2022 study by the Indiana Community Action Poverty Institute, Grassroots Maternal and Child Health Initiative, and Prosperity Indiana, found that residents of the Hoosier state had the 11^th highest share of medical debt in collections nationwide, which equals $2.2 billion outstanding and was the highest among the state’s Midwestern neighbors.

Delinquent or high medical debt contributes to a number of harmful consequences, according to the report. More than negatively impacting the financial health of a household, medical debt can degrade an individual’s physical and mental health. Also, unpaid medical bills can create barriers to credit and housing and can lead to garnishment of wages, property liens and reduced access to health care services.

“Medical debt is no-fault debt,” Dave Almeida, director of state government affairs for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, said in a press release. “It’s different from other debt because no one chooses to become sick, which means that no one should have to choose between putting food on the table, paying the rent, putting the kids through college, or engaging in life-saving treatment.”

Council bypasses some committees

Six study committee created by statute were not assigned any topics, including the elections body.

The interim study committee on elections has not met since 2017. However, bills that mostly restrict voting and elections have been introduced each legislative session, culminating in a flood of legislation this year that one voting-rights advocate described as “an assault on democracy.”

Bray did not express any concern about not giving any topics to elections and other committees, including education, public policy and public safety, and military affairs.

“We had a lot of legislation in those areas this last session and sometimes you’ve got to let some of those issues bake a little while … before you have a new issue that you really have to grapple with,” Bray said.

Yoder said she was disappointed that the Child Welfare Task Force was not assigned any topics. Passed this session with strong bipartisan support, House Enrolled Act 1273, authored by Rep. Dale DeVon, R-Granger, created the 22-member task force to study child welfare topics. The law requires the task force to submit two reports in October 2026 and October 2027, but does not specify any areas or subjects that should be studied.

Sen. Andrea Hunley, D-Indianapolis, was hopeful the study committees’ examination of the issues most concerning to families, such as clean water, maternal health and medical debt, would yield some legislation addressing key concerns in the 2026 General Assembly session.

 “We also know that a single study in the interim isn’t going to fix everything,” Hunley said. “But we also know that it can spark the change that is necessary. It can be the momentum builder that we need to make sure that we’ve got the momentum going into session, so that we can have the bipartisan support necessary to pass important legislation that this is the time where that happens.”


Marilyn Odendahl wrote this article for The Indiana Citizen.


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A Pennsylvania nurse is sounding the alarm about proposed cuts to Medicaid funding now in Congress, cuts she said could jeopardize care for her son as well as millions of Americans.

The House version of the budget reconciliation bill would slash federal Medicaid spending by at least $700 billion to fund a tax-cut extension and other Trump administration priorities.

Jennifer K. Graham Partyka, a registered nurse in Northeast Pennsylvania, joined the "Fair Share for Americans" bus tour in Scranton this week. She said Medicaid is a lifeline for her 28-year-old son living with Crohn's disease.

"We were lucky, because when he was very sick, he qualified for Medicaid," Partyka recounted. "He was fully disabled until he started getting the treatments and started getting better. There's a version of that Medicaid called, like, 'Medicaid for working disabled people.'"

Medicaid covers about one in four Pennsylvanians, including 750,000 with disabilities. Partyka pointed out her son, who works full-time, would not be affected by the work requirements Congress wants to add for Medicaid eligibility. It would mean adults without children would need to work or volunteer 80 hours a month to keep their coverage. Republicans are pushing to pass the reconciliation bill by July 4 but debate could delay it.

Partyka emphasized Medicaid is one of the top five sources of payment to every hospital in the nation. With many already struggling to stay open and fully staffed, she thinks cutting Medicaid would also be disastrous for people's access to care.

"My professional experience with Medicaid is that most of the recipients of Medicaid are children," Partyka stressed. "I'm also going to share that 60% of people in nursing homes list Medicaid as their primary payer."

She added voters ultimately have the power to hold lawmakers accountable for the fallout from major budget decisions, noting many congressional seats will be up for grabs in 2026.


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Diabetes diagnoses are climbing, with about 37,000 adults diagnosed in Indiana every year, and doctors caution they are seeing more cases in younger patients.

Diabetes means the body is unable to maintain a healthy blood glucose or blood sugar level. Type 1 is caused by an autoimmune process affecting the pancreatic cells which make insulin. Type 2 diabetes means the body has reduced sensitivity to the insulin it naturally produces.

Dr. Tamara Hannon, pediatric endocrinologist at Indiana University's Riley Hospital for Children, explained why the body's response function changes.

"The pancreas can stop making enough insulin for a number of reasons," Hannon noted. "Could be genetic, the cells get damaged over time by having to work too hard, an infection, high blood fat levels, or just getting exhausted over time."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts if the rate of new diagnoses in kids and teens continues to climb, Type 1 diabetes cases would increase by about 65 % and Type 2 by about 700% by the year 2060.

There is no cure for Type 1 diabetes but its progression can be delayed with medication. For the more common Type 2, cell damage can be delayed or even reversed through weight loss, exercise, lifestyle changes and medication.

Hannon pointed out with the epidemic of childhood obesity, younger people are developing diseases traditionally diagnosed in adults, in part because of their food and beverage choices and other environmental factors. She added research shows sugary drinks in particular increase the risk for not only Type 2 diabetes, but liver disease and cardiovascular disorders.

"If you think about when you drink sugar versus when you eat foods that contain sugar, there's a different way that is absorbed and metabolized," Hannon observed. "If you drink something that's sugary, the sugar goes into your bloodstream quite quickly."

Hannon stressed the body has to mount a quick metabolic response to a rapid sugar download but the natural sugars in whole foods, like fresh produce and certain vegetables, are not absorbed by the body as quickly. According to the American Diabetes Association, 12%, or about 666,000 Hoosiers, are diabetic.


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