A cloud of dust spread over the Little Village neighborhood when the Crawford coal plant smokestack was imploded Easter weekend in 2020. Tyler LaRiviere/Sun-Times Thousands of Little Village residents are eligible for payments after a federal judge approved a more than $12 million class-action settlement Monday for the botched implosion at a former coal plant that left the community blanketed in dust in 2020. Hilco Redevelopment and its subcontractors consented to the settlement, which will thwart potential future lawsuits from those residents covered by the agreement. Planning for the i ..read more

According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, from 2018 to 2020, Black women were three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related medical conditions than white women. stock.adobe.com Recently, West Side United and Lurie Children's Hospital partnered to launch the West Side Healthy Parents and Babies program. The program provides expectant and new parents with free support from pregnancy to the first-year postpartum, connecting them to resources such as doula or lactation consultant services, and helping them navigate the health care system. To announce the program and to c ..read more

The HeartMate 3 is a mechanical pump designed for patients with end-stage heart failure and manufactured by Thoratec Corp., a subsidiary of Abbott Laboratories of North Chicago. Known as a left ventricular assist device, the HeartMate 3 helps the main pumping chamber of the heart pump blood to the rest of the body. The device can be used by patients awaiting a heart transplant or for long-term therapy. The device is powered by a cable that is attached to the pump and exits the body through a surgical opening and connects to a controller and batteries or other power source, according to the ..read more

Sun-Times file A Joliet mother has been charged after her 12-year-old daughter died Wednesday, days after ingesting heroin and fentanyl. Officers responded about 8:30 a.m. Sunday to a home in the 1500 block of East Washington Street after her mother, Colette Bancroft, called police to report that her daughter was unresponsive in a second-floor bedroom, police said. The girl apparently ingested an unknown amount of heroin and fentanyl, which was found in her mother’s purse in the bedroom, police said. She was identified as Mya King by the Will County medical examiner’s office. Officers gave ..read more

After a year and a half of negotiations, two strikes and a federal labor board complaint against the company, the first contract for Howard Brown Health union employees is going up to a vote April 29, according to union representatives. Pat Nabong/Sun-Times file After a year and a half of negotiations, two strikes and a federal labor board complaint against the company, the first contract for Howard Brown Health union employees is going up to a vote April 29, according to union representatives. Voting on the tentative three-year contract will end May 1, according to a Howard Brown Health ..read more

Cook County resident John Cook is one of 200,000 residents whose medical debt has been eliminated via a Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle-led program that used $12 million in federal funds to erase up to $1 billion in medical debt. Jim Vondruska/Chicago Sun-Times Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Monday stood alongside Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle — the architect of the country’s first medical debt relief program involving a local government — to push for a statewide effort to eliminate $1 billion in medical debt. Beginning with a $10 million appropriation for the fiscal y ..read more

Prisoners’ rights advocates demonstrate outside the Environmental Protection Agency’s downtown Chicago headquarters Monday before delivering a petition asking the agency to address allegations that water in Illinois prisons is unsafe to drink. Zubaer Khan/Sun-Times Brian Harrington remembers the water in prison. Sometimes it was brown, or maybe it had black particles. Sometimes it smelled bad, he said. “You would wake up, and it smelled like a sewer,” he said. Harrington was 14 when he was sentenced to 25 years for murder. He served just over half that time before Gov. J.B. Pritzker gran ..read more

An adult in Cicero has developed measles, the second known case in suburban Cook County. AP file A Cicero adult has contracted measles, marking the second case in suburban Cook County this year. The first measles case in suburban Cook County was confirmed in late March and was linked to an outbreak that started at a migrant shelter in the Pilsen neighborhood. These are the first cases of measles reported in Chicago since 2019. The Cook County Department of Public Health said there is no known connection between the Cicero measles case and the Chicago migrant shelter. Statewide, there are ..read more

Healthcare workers protest outside the American Medical Association’s board of trustees meeting Sunday in River North. They demanded the association call for a cease-fire in Gaza. Provided Dozens of healthcare workers protested the American Medical Association’s board of trustees meeting Sunday, once again demanding the organization call for a cease-fire in Gaza. It was the fourth protest by Chicago Healthcare Workers for Palestine at the health association’s River North office since October 2023, which were held alongside weekly vigils late last year. Speakers condemned a “double standa ..read more

Racism that contributes to health inequities among Black women still plague public health in 2024, Illinois’ lieutenant governor writes. The state’s Birth Equity Initiative will help. adobestock.com Decades since giving birth to my oldest daughters, I still remember being called "sweetheart" during a prenatal ultrasound — by a white, male doctor I had met minutes before. An already nerve-wracking procedure became a dismissive exchange. I, a grown woman seeking intimate care, was no one’s "sweetheart," nor did I deserve to be minimized in such a vulnerable setting. As I prepared to bring ..read more