April Dembosky
April Dembosky is the health reporter for The California Report and KQED News. She covers health policy and public health, and has reported extensively on the economics of health care, the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act in California, mental health and end-of-life issues. Her work is regularly rebroadcast on NPR and has been recognized with awards from the Society for Professional Journalists (for sports reporting), and the Association of Health Care Journalists (for a story about pediatric hospice). Her hour-long radio documentary about home funeralswon the Best New Artist award from the Third Coast International Audio Festival in 2009. April occasionally moonlights on the arts beat, covering music and dance. Her story about the first symphony orchestra at Burning Man won the award for Best Use of Sound from the Public Radio News Directors Inc. Before joining KQED in 2013, April covered technology and Silicon Valley for The Financial Times, and freelanced for Marketplace and The New York Times. She is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and Smith College.
-
Pain medications commonly used in labor present medical and mental challenges for pregnant women recovering from opioid addiction. -
Covered California, the state's health insurance exchange, will exclude hospitals from insurance networks if they don't reduce their numbers of C-sections, back scans and opioid prescriptions. -
California's legislature will soon take up a bill requiring doctors to screen new mothers. Many doctors oppose the idea, and similar laws elsewhere haven't increased the number of moms treated. -
A package of mental health bills in California aims to make it easier for new moms to get help and to build awareness among more health workers of postpartum mood disorders. -
Cremated loved ones were in some of the thousands of homes incinerated by wildfires in October. Archaeologists and search dogs are now looking for lost urns and human cremains among the rubble. -
Fire victims are putting up Christmas trees in lots where their homes used to be in Santa Rosa, Calif. The working-class neighborhood was razed by the Wine Country fires earlier this year. -
California is spending $111 million on advertising its ACA exchange — and 30 percent of its media buy on Latinos. But the messages are basic and educational in light of the ACA being under attack all year. Will a message of just "We're here, we're open" resonate with Latinos?
-
Since the Trump administration slashed outreach funds and shortened the enrollment period to sign up for Affordable Care Act plans, local groups struggle to get the word out to Latinos and others. -
Wildfires that spread quickly in Northern California meant that hospitals had to evacuate on the fly. One woman in the middle of childbirth tells her story. -
With contractions four and five minutes apart, Nicole Veum started to see and smell smoke at a Santa Rosa, Calif., hospital.
