Before the pandemic, Alisha had a marketing job at a cosmetics company and spent her free time exercising, baking and going out with friends. Since getting COVID at the end of 2020, she has been dogged by chronic fatigue and other long-term symptoms that prevent her from working or even walking to the end of her block on most days. Many of her outings involve commuting to doctors’ appointments like this one via Uber.

Dr. Joanna Fried’s first client of the day on a recent hot June morning in East Harlem was a woman sitting on the curb in a wheelchair under a heavy blanket, which she pulled over her head when she saw Fried approach from across the street. As a psychiatrist with Janian Medical Care, a group that describes itself as the largest provider of psychiatric services to homeless and formerly homeless New Yorkers, Fried’s work is often an exercise in patience.

In communities across the state, New Yorkers are expected to simultaneously lose health coverage and jobs as a result of the new spending bill — but nowhere more so than the Bronx, according to analyses from Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office and state hospital groups.

Home health aides in New York are fighting to end the industrywide practice of getting paid for just 13 hours of a 24 hour shift. The courts are on their side, but home care agencies, the state and even the union that represents them have sought to maintain the status quo.

St. Ann’s Corner of Harm Reduction in Longwood is working to open the first overdose prevention center in the Bronx – but the plan is facing delays amid the quest for community buy-in and funding.

To afford therapy on top of her rent and other expenses, Miller has had to get creative. She has started taking gigs walking dogs, babysitting, and cat-sitting to supplement her income. The alternative medicine practitioners who Miller says also contribute to her peace of mind--a bodyworker and an herbalist--have agreed to accept help with marketing and logo design in exchange for their services. But with her therapist, bartering is not an option.

When the de Blasio administration 
announced its HealingNYC initiative in March to lower the death toll from opioid overdoses, Police Commissioner James O’Neill lauded the plan, saying “We can’t arrest our way out of this problem.” But the police department will be getting millions of dollars a year to do just that, according to a city budget document.

Long before Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the Compassionate Care Act in July 2014 legalizing medical marijuana, the buyers club was on a mission to bring relief to sick patients. The club has weathered changing marijuana policies, arrests and even a gunpoint robbery.