Public Health
Public health used to be plumbing — quiet, technical, taken for granted. Since 2020 it has become a political stake. We track the boards, the budgets, and the fights over who decides.
Issue
Public Health
Since the pandemic, public health itself has become a partisan battleground.
Stories
Armed at Her Doorstep: What Ohio Did to the Woman Who Ran Its Pandemic
Armed protesters gathered outside the Ohio health director's home in 2020. She resigned that June, and she was not the last public-health official pushed out.
04 July 2026
The Job Nobody Watched Until It Ran the Whole State
What Ohio's health director can actually do, how one 2020 order used that power, and how much of it the legislature took back afterward.
04 July 2026