public health
March 24, 2022 -
Despite the urgency of the climate crisis, electric utilities across the South — including Duke Energy, Florida Power & Light, and Dominion Energy — are working in concert with fossil fuel interests to promote policies that discourage consumers from installing rooftop solar systems. Will regulators let them get away with it?
January 24, 2022 -
Drug overdose deaths are climbing nationally and across the South, driven in large part by street drugs contaminated with fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid. Many of these deaths could be prevented by allowing drug users to test their supply for fentanyl's presence, but some states still ban testing strips as paraphernalia.
December 17, 2021 -
Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi are among the states with the lowest vaccination rates. Grassroots organizations there are partnering with public health officials to battle misinformation and distrust in rural, Latino, and Black communities — but elected officials in those states aren't making their jobs any easier.
September 29, 2021 -
Governors and legislatures across the South have banned public schools from requiring masks to prevent the spread of the deadly coronavirus. The bans have been successfully challenged in lower courts, but appellate courts overturned some of those rulings. Federal courts in several states are taking up the question of whether mask mandate bans violate the rights of students with disabilities.
March 23, 2021 -
The organizer who pioneered politically transformative get-out-the-vote efforts in Georgia is now using that existing infrastructure to get some of the state's most vulnerable residents vaccinated against COVID-19.
August 13, 2020 -
As Black people continue to be victimized by police brutality, they are also dying disproportionately from COVID-19. The common thread is racism.
June 1, 2020 -
Several chronic health conditions that disproportionately affect residents of Southern states are now considered potential risk factors for severe illness from COVID-19. As the country moves toward reopening, public health experts fear the pandemic could wreak havoc on vulnerable communities across the South.
