community voices test

Commentary: More than 100 current patients and all possible future eligible patients stand to lose palliative care when PeaceHealth closes its outpatient palliative program.

Commentary: Insurance reimbursement levels and rising costs across all service lines led to PeaceHealth’s decision to end its comprehensive outpatient palliative program and restructure to continue to “provide the essential components of the program.”

Commentary: Just as in 1970, we are at another major reckoning point in our relationship to our home planet.

Commentary: Whatcom agencies are moving forward on affordable fiber-optic broadband for all.

Commentary: There are many reasons people become homeless — can it be prevented? Unequivocally, yes, says one close observer. Housing and income play into the complex causes.

Commentary: Kidney donation was simply “the right thing to do”: a donor tells her story.

Commentary: Jo Ann, who with her dog, Mouse, moved from her RV to a tiny-home village, suffered a massive stroke which paralyzed her entire left side.

Commentary: Shutting down Southeast Alaska’s troll fishery will not stave off the decline of local orca and salmon populations — but it will have devastating effects on hundreds of fishing families and businesses.

Commentary: There are many good reasons for protecting the Skagit River headwaters; high on the list is the ongoing health of the larger Skagit watershed, a defining element of the region’s geography and cultural heritage.

Commentary: Three years after the Summer of Racial Reckoning, a divided populace still grapples with damaging and sometimes deadly effects of racism, and with how to talk about the issues.

Commentary: It takes a community to raise and harvest an oyster.

Commentary: Constant worries about being attacked or robbed are in the past for a woman who has found housing — for now — in a tiny home village.

Commentary: Proper disposal of food waste is something every household can do to limit climate change, advise teens engaged in climate action.

Commentary: Bellingham’s challenges are in recruiting and retaining police officers, not lack of funding.

Commentary: Meet Sandy Hart, who may have one of the most interesting jobs in Bellingham.

Commentary: Knowledge and awareness of the challenges Indigenous peoples face are good; what matters is action.