Rebecca Smith
Health ReporterRebecca Smith is an award-winning reporter and producer for the KBIA Health & Wealth Desk. Born and raised outside of Rolla, Missouri, she has a passion for diving into often overlooked issues that affect the rural populations of her state – especially stories that broaden people’s perception of “rural” life. She created a conversations-based journalism project, Missouri Health Talks, in 2016 that empowers people throughout the state to share their stories of access to healthcare – in their own words.
She has degrees in both Journalism and Chemistry from Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri, and often says health reporting is the perfect marriage of individual’s stories and reporting on science.
You can reach her at smithbecky@missouri.edu or 573-882-4824.
-
There’s a new little library in downtown Columbia, but this new addition is providing people with something different – free art supplies.
-
A roundup of regional headlines from the KBIA Newsroom.
-
A roundup of regional headlines from the KBIA Newsroom.
-
For 14 years, the Saturday Morning Breakfast Café has been providing breakfast and a warm place to congregate for Columbia’s unhoused residents. KBIA’s Anna Colletto has been speaking with volunteers and attendees for the past few weeks and sat down with KBIA’s Harshawn Ratanpal to share some behind-the-scenes insights.
-
Several Missouri communities were recently awarded grant funds from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to address opioid overdoses and neonatal abstinence syndrome in rural communities.
-
Kari Utterback is a senior planner at Columbia/Boone County Public Health and Human Services – focusing on coordinated entry and homelessness. She spoke about some of the resources unsheltered and unhoused Columbians have this winter, as well as about some of the roots causes of homelessness in our community.
-
KBIA’s Rebecca Smith sat down with Dr. Logan Frank, the director of breast imaging for Ellis Fischel Cancer Center, to discuss how mammogram recommendations have changed and why this preventative health measure still matters.
-
Art can be a powerful tool, helping people combat the stressors of everyday life while creating something beautiful in the process. KBIA’s Laine Cibulskis has the story of how one man in Ashland is using art — and the local community he’s found around it — to foster connections and get some much-needed support.
-
Paige Spears has been incarcerated in the Missouri Department of Corrections for nearly 35 years. He was given a life sentence plus 30 years for an armed robbery he committed in 1988 – where no one was physically injured. He spoke a little about how he’s changed while being incarcerated and what he hopes to accomplish if he’s released.
-
Flu shots are available at the 18th annual Adair County Health Department drive-thru clinic on Wednesday.