Health & Wellness News

Lehigh Valley Health Network teamed up with Spirit Halloween for their annual Halloween party. More than 200 children came to celebrate.

Easton Area Neighborhood Center has selected Alison Czapp, a local food and antipoverty advocate, as the new executive director of their organization.

Ryan Stehlik, a longtime patient of Shriners Children's Philadelphia, will represent the hospital this weekend at the Shriners Children's Open, a PGA golf tournament in Las Vegas, Nevada.

An IV shortage due to hurricanes in the south has B.Braun ramping up production. The Allentown company is hiring more employees to produce more medical equipment amid the shortage.

In their seventh annual event, Beards for Breasts raised thousands of dollars for cancer patient support programming via an auction where the prize was the chance to shave men's beards at an Easton pub on Oct. 15, 2024.

Congresswoman Susan Wild held a roundtable on reproductive rights. She hosted a panel of women in Allentown to share stories of pregnancy loss and IVF success.

The Lehigh Valley's two health networks both add cardiac CT scanners to underserved areas. St. Luke's unveiled theirs in Schuylkill County, while and LVHN began using the new equipment in Montgomery County.

Dozens of former patients of Lehigh Valley Health Network’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit reunited with their prior caregivers Sunday.

People in Florida are picking up the pieces of their lives as not one but two hurricanes batter the coast in as many weeks. Red Cross volunteers from the Lehigh Valley continue to lend a helping hand.

The Watson-Batts School of construction is partnering with St. Luke's to offer better health outcomes through workforce development. The school teaches young entrepreneurs and business owners about how to grow their businesses.

Lessons in hands-on healthy eating — and growing food locally — are in the near future of some younger students in Lehigh County.

At a Miller-Keystone Blood Center event in Allentown on Wednesday night, Sofia Groves thanked blood donors whose generosity helped save her life.

The funding, through the Livable Landscape program, was unanimously approved at the county council’s June 18 meeting.

Legislators worked to establish penalties for xylazine use and trafficking in an attempt to lessen its presence in Pennsylvania's illicit drug supply. Some say doing so made way for a new, unclassified veterinary tranquilizer to take its place — medetomidine.

The tax and spending plan drew praise from Republicans for lowering taxes and funding border security, but Democrats condemned it for slashing Medicaid coverage and raising the deficit.

Nearly a year after the Biden administration designated xylazine as an "emerging threat" to the United States, Gov. Josh Shapiro classified it as a schedule III drug, making unauthorized possession a crime in Pennsylvania. Experts say the move has partly served to clear the way for new illicit substances to enter the drug market.

Proposed federal budget cuts would impact programs such as the free summer meal program for children in the Allentown School District.

The $2.75 million payment to the federal government resolves allegations that a pharmacy technician stole controlled substances on about 40 occasions and the health network failed to institute proper controls.

Despite not being approved for human consumption, veterinary tranquilizers are infiltrating the illicit drug supply in Pennsylvania. Harm reduction specialists and health care professionals say these overdoses can't be approached solely with naloxone, the opioid overdose reversal drug.

A generous donation from a Lehigh Valley native and others funds free swim lessons for children and adults in the River Crossing YMCA's Safety Around Water, or SAW, swim education program.

The bill would limit the manufacture, sale, distribution and use of firefighting foam containing PFAS, also known as forever chemicals, beginning in 2026.

Xylazine, an animal-grade tranquilizer that's not approved for human use, has taken Pennsylvania's illicit drug supply by storm. Known on the streets as "tranq," it accounted for almost 1 in 4 overdose deaths in Pennsylvania by 2023. Last year in Lehigh County, it was a contributing cause of death in 20 of the 112 deadly overdoses, or 17.9 percent of cases.

The funding comes from the commonwealth’s Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure program, a cooperative agreement with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Known as "tranq" on the streets, an animal tranquilizer named xylazine infiltrated drug supplies throughout Pennsylvania since 2019. Its presence in the Lehigh Valley has grown, with deadly consequences.