The judge said a 2022 law that prevented pharmacists from contacting patients about the efficacy of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine was unconstitutional.
Suzanne King
Suzanne King is The Beacon’s health care reporter and has covered the beat since November of 2023. Previously she covered the telecommunications and technology industries for The Kansas City Star and the Kansas City Business Journal. She also covered local government, crime and education at newspapers in western Massachusetts and upstate New York. She grew up in Missouri and has lived in Kansas City for almost 30 years. Suzanne holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Boston University and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia.
Posted inHealth
Massive cuts to federal health care grants alarm Kansas City’s public health community
The grants paid for public health basics like vaccines for children, infectious disease tracking, community health work and funding for mental health and addiction treatment.
Posted inKansas City
Trump administration’s cuts cancel food deliveries to Harvesters
The food bank, which provides food to pantries and other hunger outreach groups in Missouri and Kansas, will not get scheduled shipments of milk, eggs, chicken and canned goods.
Posted inCivic Engagement
Kansas City’s struggling refugee resettlement agencies cut staff and turn to the public for help
Two months after Trump abruptly stopped funding refugee resettlement work, local agencies are fighting to pay refugees’ rent and provide new arrivals with other promised help.
Posted inHealth
LGBTQ+ youth in Missouri and Kansas face higher suicide risk
In Missouri and Kansas, almost four in 10 young people who identify as gay or transgender have seriously considered suicide in the past year, and 15% have attempted it. That’s according to a new survey by The Trevor Project, which asked 18,000 people ages 13 to 24 across the country questions about issues like depression […]
Posted inState Government
Transgender Kansas Citians face growing restrictions and mounting fear
Suzanne Wheeler and her wife don’t want to leave the Kansas City area, their eight adult children and their seven grandchildren. They don’t want to walk away from their friends, their community and their support system. But they are making plans nonetheless. The middle-aged transgender couple already bought property in Portugal, where transgender rights are […]
Posted inLabor
Thousands of IRS workers in Kansas City brace for layoffs amid federal government purge
On a day when dangerously cold weather forced the Internal Revenue Service to close its downtown processing center, hundreds of probationary employees are on notice that their jobs are likely going away. Following days of uncertainty for Kansas City’s federal workforce, IRS employees learned in a Feb. 18 video message that their jobs would be […]
Posted inHealth
Hospital mergers come with one inevitable: Bigger executive paychecks
Bigger bonuses, higher executive salaries and a few eye-popping retirement payouts. That’s how St. Luke’s Health System closed the books on its final year as a nonprofit independent hospital chain, according to recent tax filings. The $2.5 billion hospital system, which merged with St. Louis-based nonprofit BJC Healthcare at the start of 2024, paid one-third […]
Posted inLabor
Nearly 30,000 federal workers in Kansas City brace for layoffs
Almost 30,000 federal employees in the Kansas City area are caught in the chaos that has defined President Donald Trump’s return to the White House. So far, the Trump administration has reinstituted a policy making it easier to fire federal employees. It has ordered remote workers to return to the office. Federal agencies have been […]
Posted inHealth
Threat of federal funding freeze panics KC’s nonprofit health care community
For Wil Franklin, chief executive of KC CARE Health Clinic, Tuesday began with a blizzard of texts and emails. A sweeping plan to freeze federal grants and loans affected $5 million that his community safety-net clinic relies on. The online portal that community health clinics across the country use to access federal money was suddenly […]