Health and Medicine

In an increasingly busy world, there is one constant: advances in technology making life easier.

The Community Health Care Clinic in Normal, which partners with local hospitals and colleges, understands that its patients cannot always make room in their schedules for regular visits. Director Mike Romagnoli says his clinic will test a smart phone app that will remedy this problem.

A vegetable garden that's been growing in a west Bloomington food desert has come to a crossroads.

A coalition of health advocates in McLean County has produced a study which said the most pressing health needs in the county are similar to what they were in 2016 when the group produced its first report.

The Illinois Department of Public Health has fined a Bloomington nursing home $25,000 for letting a 49-year-old woman with dementia wander away from the facility in stockinged feet.

Four eye care practices are just weeks away from moving into their newly merged operation on Bloomington's east side.

People have been leaving rural midwestern areas for decades. And it’s not just population loss. Often fresh food sellers move away too. There might be hope, though.

WSIU and Illinois Newsroom reported this story as part of a weeklong series from public radio stations around the state focusing on the potential impact of marijuana legalization.

Since February, patients in Illinois have been able to swap their opioid prescriptions for marijuana. And many are doing just that.

They’re part of a program designed to let patients who might not qualify for the state’s regular medical marijuana program exchange an opioid prescription, like Oxycontin, for weed.

A nationwide EpiPen shortage is nearing its one-year mark, leaving many fearing the risks of anaphylactic shock.

Illinois lawmakers are being asked to decide whether nurses are dangerously overworked — and what to do about it.

Nurses want limits on how many patients they’re assigned. They argue it would improve patient outcomes and workplace safety. But opponents counter a “one size fits all” approach will not work.

Illinois lawmakers in the House voted Tuesday to raise the age to purchase cigarettes and other tobacco products from 18 to 21.  Last year, the proposal made it to the governor’s desk, but then-Gov. Bruce Rauner vetoed it. Supporters of the change are more optimistic this time.  

A mental health triage center is on pace to open this spring in the building housing the McLean County Health Department on West Front Street in downtown Bloomington.

Illinois nurses are calling on state lawmakers to restrict the number of patients under their care.

Neurosurgeon Ann Stroink of Bloomington said she makes a trip to Washington nearly every month. She's a volunteer advocate for her professional groups, not a professional lobbyist.

Dr. Don Arnold’s home office overflows with medical textbooks, old anatomical prints and six pages of a recommendation letter from his first application to medical school - framed and hanging on the wall.

“It says I have very unique and viable talents that would serve me well, but on paper a very poor academic record,” he says. “So this is code. For those who don’t know. Nobody’s going to outwardly tell you not to take a person, but this is how they write it in code.”

A new study by the American Lung Association says Illinois is not doing enough to reduce tobacco use.