Health

North Carolina has one of the best networks of free clinics in the country.  Support from funders like the Blue Cross Blue Shield Foundation has helped take care of some of the state’s neediest patients; those who don’t qualify for Medicare of Medicaid.  Warren County – northeast of Raleigh – is home to one of the busiest free clinics in North Carolina.  But funding cuts have resulted in less service at a crucial time in the nation’s health care fight.

Researchers at Duke University are using a flaw in an HIV vaccine in order to develop new formulas to fight off the virus. 

Thousands of employees at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem will be affected by several cost-cutting measures. The hospital is planning to freeze some hiring, reduce retirement contributions and ask employees to voluntarily take furloughs.

When Alex McKeithen was a junior at Davidson College in the late '80s, his life changed. He was visiting Paris and studying art when one day he found himself stripping naked in public and proclaiming himself the seventh angel of the apocalypse. It was the beginning of an undiagnosed episode of bipolar disorder, and that experience is the focus of his memoir, "The Seventh Angel" (Lorimer Press/2012).