Jack Rodolico

When Jack O'Connor was 19, he was so desperate to beat his addictions to alcohol and opioids that he took a really rash step. He joined the Marines.

"This will fix me," O'Connor thought as he went to boot camp. "It better fix me or I'm screwed."

After 13 weeks of sobriety and exercise and discipline, O'Connor completed basic training, but he started using again immediately.

"Same thing," he says. "Percocet, like, off the street. Pills."

New Hampshire will receive a big influx of federal dollars to treat addiction and mental illness.

The state will get up to $30 million a year for five years total. And for example, this year it would mean about an added 25 percent on top of what the state has budgeted for mental health and addiction.

That's a big gain for the state says Steve Norton, the executive director of the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Services.  But the devil's in the details: like how the money will be spent and how any new services will be evaluated.

A new University of New Hampshire study suggests practicing football without helmets can lead to less head trauma.

Last Friday, Linda Horan sat in front of a bank of reporters in the back room of a medical marijuana dispensary in Portland, Maine. She was beaming.

"My god, I’m over the moon – completely over the moon," she said.

At the Democratic presidential debate in Manchester last night, Genera Clay was one of a few hundred Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton supporters dancing with placards – as much to support their candidates as to stay warm on this cold evening. Hours before Saturday night’s debate was set to start, these supporters were penned in by a metal fence, and a big flood light lit up the lawn.

Clay was annoyed the Sanders campaign had been blocked out of a crucial voter database as a punishment for the data breach – a move that temporarily hobbled his campaign.

The state is asking the federal government for more flexibility in establishing rural health clinics.

If approved by the feds, the policy will broaden what it means to be a rural health clinic in New Hampshire. The state has 14 federally-approved rural health clinics, which are located in areas with high poverty rates and not enough healthcare providers. These clinics receive more generous reimbursements from Medicaid and Medicare.

For most of us the highlight of Thanksgiving is the food. So this year we thought we’d hear from people who cook for a living—professional chefs—and see what their Thanksgiving meals and traditions look like.

Brady Sullivan Properties is a step closer to defending itself before a jury. Forty tenants are suing the property owner and landlord for lead contamination at Mill West, a luxury riverfront apartment complex in Manchester.

The federal government is investigating the City of Concord for not providing accessible voting machines for people with certain disabilities during local elections. The city may have violated federal law.

Guy Woodland used his cane to find his way into a voting booth in Concord Tuesday morning. Woodland is blind.

"I have a non-valid driver’s license," he told a poll worker, "which you’re probably happy to know."

Here’s how Woodland would like to vote: on his own, with no help.

The family of a man who died at Lakeview Neurorehabilitation Center is suing the company, which has all but shut down operations in New Hampshire.

The family filed suit against Lakeview and its medical director in Merrimack County Superior Court, claiming neglect and wrongful death, among other things.

The New Hampshire chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union released a report today that details the practice of judges jailing poor people who can’t afford to pay fines – a practice that’s illegal.

At a recent town meeting in Madison, just south of Conway, a tiny room was packed: five zoning board members sat at a table in front of the police chief, frustrated neighbors and attorneys for a company called Becket Family of Services. The mood was tense. This was the third meeting like this one, and the prior two ended in stalemates.

It was nearly a year ago that widespread abuse at Lakeview Neurorehabilitation Center in Effingham came to light. Now, Lakeview is shutting down.

The facility is a treatment center for people with brain injuries and intellectual disabilities. And as New Hampshire faces a future without Lakeview, families and state regulators are deciding where to send people with highly challenging behaviors. 

Ohio Governor John Kasich wraps up a three-day swing through New Hampshire today, his first stretch of campaigning since officially joining the race for the Republican presidential nomination this week.

In front of crowds in Nashua and the Seacoast, Kasich’s stump speech was essentially an annotated version of his life story -- a  weaving together of what he calls his record of working across party lines with a personal history rooted firmly in the middle class.

Shaghaf Mohammed has seen too much in her 11 years. Her family fled Iraq in 2013. And when they left, they never could have guessed the battle they’d face in their new home in Manchester. Shaghaf’s four-year-old sister, Aleel, is sick with lead poisoning.

Last year, New Hampshire settled a class action lawsuit that alleged the state was violating the civil rights of people with mental illness. In the settlement, the state agreed to spend $30 million over four years to beef up services for those individuals.

Now, one year into the deal, a report from a court-appointed monitor says the state hasn’t yet hit the benchmarks it agreed to.

Bad news first

The national death rate from knee replacement surgery is about one in a thousand. But patients are three times more likely to die if they have their knee replaced at a hospital that doesn’t perform that surgery frequently.

Now three leading healthcare systems, including Dartmouth-Hitchcock, are putting restrictions on their surgeons.