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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A new study has found that Medicaid expansion through the Affordable Care Act led to a profound impact on diagnosis and survival rates of colorectal...
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The percentage of West Virginia adults aged 60 and older is growing more rapidly than any other part of the population. And most of them, like 91-year...
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We all know that exercise is good for physical health, but a new study has found that it may also help you focus, pay attention and achieve goals as you...
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A new study has found that older adults who weren’t sedentary did better on thinking and memory skills tests. Exercise didn’t have to be complicated –...
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Age-related hearing loss is associated with conditions such as cognitive impairment and dementia. A new study has found it may have one more association...
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A new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Report found that across the United States, drug overdose deaths involving opioids continue to increase...
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A dozen fifth-graders from Valley Elementary School in Fayette County have been exploring radio in a youth reporting project with health reporter Kara...
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Almost all major holidays around the world revolve around eating special foods together. And for many people, food and the act of preparing certain...
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A new study from Duke Medical Center has found that just three days a week of moderate aerobic exercise may improve thinking skills in older adults with...
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A new study has found that cardiology patients with opioid use disorders have more complications, longer hospital stays and costlier surgeries. The...