Health

Michigan is in the midst of a growing opioid abuse crisis. We talk with two medical professionals who see the opioid crisis firsthand.

Current State’s Katie Cook has a conversation with NPR Science Correspondent Shankar Vedantam about his NPR podcast Hidden Brain.

What are the signs of someone thinking about committing suicide and how can we prevent it?  Current State’s Brooke Allen talks with a local woman about her struggle with depression and the area director from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

An MSU professor says if your spouse is happy, you will be healthy. Current State’s Brooke Allen follows up on the research with MSU researcher Bill Chopik.

What do roller coasters have to do with kidney stones? If you haven’t seen the recent news articles talking about the preliminary findings of MSU professor emeritus David Wartinger, then you might not know, but Dr. Wartinger joins us to explain his discovery.

Rescuing a victim of human trafficking is always an emergency, but experts say one of the hardest places to spot those victims is in a hospital emergency room. One health care organization in Genesee County will use a state grant to develop better ways of identifying and treating human trafficking victims. We talk with two members of the Genesys Health System.

The first case of Lyme disease this year has been detected in Washtenaw County. What does that mean for us here in Ingham County? We talk with MSU Entomologist Howard Russell.

It’s not easy to tell an elderly parent that it’s time for them to stop driving. We talk with Wynn Esterline of Home Instead Senior Care in East Lansing about the “Let’s Talk About Driving” program.

Medical marijuana has been legal in Michigan since 2009, and there’s currently an effort to legalize it for recreational use, but local governments across the state have struggled to create consistent laws to regulate cannabis. We talk with an advocate who envisions a national organization to set those standards.

On Sunday, a new church held its first public meeting in Lansing. The First Cannabis Church of Logic and Reason is an agnostic group of followers bound together by their common enjoyment of marijuana. Current State’s Kevin Lavery takes us inside.

We hear from two critics of the state’s efforts to remediate dangerous lead levels in homes. They say Michigan should roughly quadruple spending on a remediation program in the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

We talk with MSU entomologist Dr. Michael Kaufman about the threat of the Zika virus in Michigan.

For six decades, Lansing’s Sparrow Hospital ran a nursing school near its main campus on Michigan Avenue. For the past 95 years, the alumni of that school have held a reunion. Tomorrow, that legacy comes to an end. Current State’s Kevin Lavery talks with a retired registered nurse from the Sparrow Nursing School Class of 1960.

There’s a growing call to do something about the proliferation of medical marijuana dispensaries in Lansing. We talk with an proponent of a marijuana moratorium and ordinance in Lansing, city councilwoman Carol Wood, and the owner and CEO of one of the city’s newest dispensaries, Michael Mayes of Greenwave.

Melissa Mays has been one of the busiest and most vocal activists in the Flint Water Crisis. Current State speaks with her about how she and her city are doing two years after her family’s health issues began.