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.
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According to the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, more than 150 students dropped out of Columbia Public Schools in the 2022-2023 school year. So, one local group is opening a new center in town that will support kids in traditional and some not so traditional ways.
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A roundup of regional headlines from the KBIA Newsroom.
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A three-year grant awarded to the University of Missouri by the USDA will help train health and social workers on adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs.
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Many in northern Missouri remain without power as Macon Electric crews worked through the night, and warming centers have been set up across the region for anyone needing shelter.
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Incarceration can have a lasting impact on people, which makes community on the outside even more important. KBIA’s Rebecca Smith caught up with some former juvenile lifers on a cool, breezy day in August.
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Paige Spears has been incarcerated in the Missouri Department of Corrections for nearly 35 years. At the age of 26, he was given a life sentence plus 30 years for an armed robbery he committed in 1988 – where no one was physically injured. He’s now 62.Betty Cummings is his mother, and still lives in Ferguson, Missouri. She’s now 87-years-old and spoke about how the many years of Paige’s incarceration have impacted her.
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This month, the American Cancer Society expanded its lung cancer screening recommendations to yearly, low-dose CT scans for those aged 50 to 80 who formerly or currently smoke and have a 20 or greater "pack year" history. KBIA’s Rebecca Smith spoke with Dr. Sebastian Wiesemann and Dr. Vipul Bhanderi from Ellis Fischel Cancer Center about these new recommendations.