Child Care

Johnson County and Iowa City are putting American Rescue Plan dollars to work on the child care crisis by paying workers more.

The child care gap across the country is more than 30%, meaning the need for quality child care far outweighs the supply — and it's worse in rural areas.

Many children from toddlers to teens are dealing with social and emotional challenges because the pandemic. This hour we’ll talk about how kids have been affected and how kids, parents, teachers and caregivers are coping.

This year, the state expanded the number of children a daycare worker can oversee at a given time. The idea was to give more flexibility for providers and add more child care slots for towns in need. But that additional capacity doesn’t appear to have solved the labor side of the equation.

Three members of the first Idea Accelerator Iowa City cohort studied the child care workforce crisis by implementing a short-term test of a $4 an hour raise for participating child care workers.

Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a bill into law Thursday that will relax some staffing regulations for Iowa child care centers.

Mother's Milk Bank of Iowa Director Jean Drulis and UnityPoint Pediatrician Dr. Katie Halyko join the conversation. Then, Charity Nebbe talks with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks about her latest novel, Horse.

The annual County Health Rankings rated Dallas County as the healthiest county in Iowa, and Montgomery County as the least healthy.

It’s been two years since the first cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in Iowa, and the pandemic has had a drastic impact on Iowans’ lives and the state’s health care system. That's as Iowans settle into a new normal of living with and monitoring the virus.

In Iowa, the rate of maternal death is rising. At the same time, the number of birth centers and OB/GYNs is falling. Some advocates argue midwives could be part of the state's solution.