health

A new study finds deployment-related factors like combat experience or days deployed have little or no influence on suicide rates.  KRCC's Andrea Chalfin has more from one doctor who's researching suicide in the military.

Every Saturday morning, Shirley Epstein puts on her walking shoes and heads to a tree-lined park to join dozens of friends, and her doctor, for a long walk.

Epstein’s walk with her doc is taking place in Denver. But it’s part of a program being replicated across the state – from Grand Junction to Pueblo to Fort Collins to Greeley – as a national effort to “Walk with a Doc” has caught on among medical professionals and hundreds of their patients in Colorado.

August is National Immunization Awareness Month, so for this month’s Healthy Conversation, we’re talking vaccinations.  KRCC's Andrea Chalfin is joined by Lt. Col. Diane Heinz of Evans Army Community Hospital at Fort Carson, and we begin by talking about what back to school means for vaccines.

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Summertime means fun in the sun, and in Colorado, that fun is often year-round.  So is the need to protect ourselves from harmful effects of sun exposure.  For this month’s Healthy Conversation, KRCC's Andrea Chalfin is joined by Major James Twede, Chief of Dermatology at Fort Carson.  They begin by talking about why the sun can be so damaging.

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In 2012, the U.S. military’s suicide rate surpassed combat deaths. Clinical Psychologist Craig Bryan has made suicide prevention his mission. This January, Dr. Bryan’s research brought him to Colorado Springs’ Fort Carson, where he was conducting his second study on mental health treatments. KRCC’s Andrea Chalfin sat down then to talk about his research–and how the very characteristics that make an effective soldier can also lead to increased suicide risk.