Sofi Gratas covers rural health and health care for GPB. She joined GPB in June 2022 as a Report for America Corps member. Based in Macon, her coverage area includes Middle and South Georgia. Her focus is on the crisis facing rural communities that consistently rank near the bottom nationwide in health and health care. Sofi is a 2020 graduate of the University of Georgia's Grady School of Journalism. Prior to joining GPB, she worked at the Red and Black and WUGA.
Georgia’s Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities is partnering with a Macon-based provider to open a health care center specifically for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, or IDD.
By converting to a Rural Emergency Hospital, existing rural hospitals commit to changing their model of care, with a focus on emergency medicine, in exchange for subsidies from the federal government.
Despite limited state funding, sheriffs in central Georgia are planning a multi-county co-response program, the first of its kind in the region, to address what they call a crisis-level need.
In August, the FDA approved the first vaccine for pregnant people that protects newborns against infections from respiratory syncytial virus, one of the leading causes of hospitalizations among infants and young children.