The pandemic has muted what the public hears about the still-raging opioid crisis, its desperation and deaths hovering like a silent virus. In Shelby County, 416 people died of opioid overdoses in 2020, 73 more than in 2019, itself a record year.
A local health economist, with decades of experience examining health disparities, has received national funding to explore the effects of poverty on physical and mental well-being. Shelley White-Means, Ph.D., a professor at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), will lead an 18-month, approximately $300,000 project at Cherokee Health Systems to test if the… Read More
When it’s time to vaccinate school-age children and their teachers across Shelby County for the COVID-19 virus, teachers will be the first to get the vaccine.
Pfizer and Moderna have started COVID-19 vaccination trials for children.WMC Action News 5 has learned that LeBonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis wants to join the effort. Going to school and taking part in normal activities are both crucial to a child’s development and success in life. Medical experts said vaccinating kids against COVID-19 is the… Read More
The roll out of COVID-19 vaccines has been slower than expected, which public officials say is the result of a limited national supply chain. Chief Operating Officer for the City of Memphis Doug McGowen says Shelby County is ready to administer as many doses as the state of Tennessee can send.
Those grieving remembered them in color, wearing mint green for 10-year-old Jadon Knox, pink for 6-year-old Ashlynn Luckett and blue for 16-year-old LeQuan Boyd. Their lives, snuffed out by shootings over one January weekend in 2020, were celebrated in crowded churches with overflowing pews.
The UK variant by mid-March could be the most dominant strain in the nation. Locally, scientists at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center are sequencing the virus identified by processing labs as looking similar to the UK strain.
Dr. Penny Asbell of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center at Memphis’s Hamilton Eye Institute explains the purpose of a $300,000 grant that the institution received from Research to Prevent Blindness.
