Story Archives of 'Poverty'

During his first official visit to China last week, President Obama said that the U.S. and China are not altogether dissimilar. Obama then returned to a country duking it out over health care reform, a conundrum that China knows all too well.

China is the world’s largest Communist country with 1.4 billion people who get head colds, and risk heart disease and cancer. The Chinese government has a standing commitment to providing health care for its citizens, a pledge now strained by China’s economic boom. While millions of Chinese have a better standard of living than they did five years ago, quality of medical care can’t keep up, leaving millions in need.

In addition, Chinese doctors are treated and paid like public servants, leading to a dangerous shortage of physicians in a country that’s quickly evolving into a world superpower.

Steven Mufson is a member of the Washington Post Foreign Service and he wrote about China’s deteriorating health care system for The Washington Post, and joins us with mre.

The Washington Post: In China, too, a health-care system in disarray

(Photo by lanchongzi via Flickr/Creative Commons)

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc broke ground when her award-winning book Random Family: Love, Drugs,Trouble and Coming of Age in the Bronx was published in 2003. She spent more than a decade closely observing three generations of a Puerto Rican family to create an intimate portrait of street life that was anything but pretty.

Random Family was a New York Times bestseller and was recently named one of The 50 Books for Our Times by Newsweek magazine. Tomorrow afternoon, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc and two of the subjects of Random Family will travel to ConVal High School in Peterborough, NH for a day-long workshop with New Hampshire students. It’s part of the MacDowell Colony’s Community Outreach Program in the schools, and we’re catching up with Adrian Nicole LeBlanc before the workshop. We also spoke with Jill Lawler, an English teacher at ConVal, about what her students are learning from random family.

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc Q&A: Journalism for the long haul

As the weather gets colder, social service agencies across the state have found a growing need for warm clothing among the people they serve.

The state's Food Bank distributes donated food to shelters and soup kitchens across the state.

But there's no such central repository for donated clothing.

Students at UNH in Manchester are trying to solve that problem...and get college credit at the same time.

For the third year in a row, they've organized the Warmth from the Millyard clothing drive.

Associate Professor Kate Hanson teaches the UNH Community Leadership Program.

She describes the students' efforts to NHPR's Mark Bevis.