Kara Leigh Lofton
Kara Leigh Lofton is the Appalachia Health News Coordinator at West Virginia Public Broadcasting. Previously Kara was a freelance reporter for WMRA, an affiliate of NPR serving the Shenandoah Valley and Charlottesville in Virginia. There she produced 70 radio reports in her first year of reporting, most often on health or environmental topics. One of her reports, “Trauma Workers Find Solace in a Pause That Honors Life After a Death,” circulated nationally after proving to be an all-time favorite among WMRA’s audience.
Kara is also a photographer and writer, whose work has been published by Kaiser Health News, The Hill (the news outlet and blog serving Congress), Virginia Living, the Augusta Free Press, and Sojourners, among other outlets. A large body of her work has appeared on the news website and in the magazines of Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, from which she graduated in 2014.
Prior to and during her university years, Kara had stints living internationally, spending months in Morocco, Spain, Turkey, and England, with shorter visits to Zambia, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and a half-dozen countries in western and central Europe. In the fall of 2015, she toured Guatemala (using her conversational Spanish), where she reported on its woefully underfunded health system. In her spare time Kara Leigh enjoys reading, practicing yoga and hiking with her two loyal dogs.
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In one year, from 2017 to 2018, tobacco usage among American youth skyrocketed by almost 40 percent. The culprit? E-cigarettes. The trend reverses... -
In the United States, breastfeeding rates are lower among low-income women and higher among high-income women. This is despite research that shows... -
Infants should be exclusively breastfed for the first six months after birth, says the American Academy of Pediatrics, citing research that says... -
Across most of central Appalachia, the population is declining as young people leave to find work. Those who stay, are rapidly aging. In West Virginia,... -
A new study found that when pregnant moms quit smoking during pregnancy – especially early in pregnancy – their babies are less likely to be born preterm. -
A new study has found visits to rural emergency departments increased by more than 50 percent from 2005 to 2016 with the most dramatic usage changes... -
In the next installment of our occasional series Windows into Health Care, health reporter Kara Lofton spoke with hospice nurse Lori Carter. Carter has...
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West Virginia University researchers have found that suicide rates are higher among some Medicaid-insured youth than those with private insurance. The... -
Several studies have shown that being exposed to light at night can throw off our biological rhythms. A WVU neuroscientist is now exploring whether... -
This story is part of an ongoing series examining aging in Appalachia. You can read more here. As we grow old, many of us will find we need help with...
