Patty Wight
Patty is a graduate of the University of Vermont and a multiple award-winning reporter for Maine Public Radio. Her specialty is health coverage: from policy stories to patient stories, physical health to mental health and anything in between. Patty joined Maine Public Radio in 2012 after producing stories as a freelancer for NPR programs such as Morning Edition and All Things Considered. She got hooked on radio at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine, and hasn’t looked back ever since.
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Community Health Options is dropping elective abortion coverage in 2017. The insurer says the move will save money. Advocates for abortion rights say it's a step backward for women's health. -
Expensive versions of prescription opioids that are tougher to cut, crush and inject are less likely to be abused, legislators hope. But some doctors call the bill well-meant, but ill-advised. -
A judge in Maine has denied the state's request to keep nurse Kaci Hickox in quarantine. Hickox returned from treating Ebola patients in West Africa just over a week ago. Maine's governor sought to keep her confined to her home.
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Gabrielle Nuki hopes to be a doctor someday. So when the 16-year-old found out that she could work as a fake patient helping to train medical students, she jumped at the chance. -
The typical jack-o'-lanterns that don front stoops this time of year pale in comparison to their multihundred-pound brethren: the giant pumpkin. Every year in Damariscotta, Maine, people hollow them out, climb inside and race them. -
At a yard sale over the weekend, the Good Shepherd Parish in Saco, Maine, sold the remnants from three closed Catholic churches. It was a way for parishioners to say their last goodbyes and carry away keepsakes along with their memories.
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Needhams are a traditional Maine candy made with chocolate, coconut and an unlikely state staple: potatoes. Maine's official state treat is the whoopie pie, but many still look fondly on the coconutty goodie their grandmothers used to make. -
A worldwide shortage has made the U.S. the primary source for the baby eels known as elvers. Last year, fishermen saw prices climb to nearly $1,000 a pound, and this year they doubled. -
Pat Gallant-Charette wants to swim across the English Channel in August. On top of her job as a nurse, the 60-year-old grandmother from Westbrook, Maine, follows a rigorous training schedule that includes one- to 10-hour swims along the crashing waves of the cold ocean shore. Gallant-Charette almost crossed the Channel once before, but currents kept her at bay just a mile and a half from the finish. This time, she's convinced she'll make it. Independent producer Patty Wight sends this audio postcard.
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Crystal White has a booming business selling cloth diapers, in part because of the way she sells them: diaper parties. Similar to Tupperware parties, parents can touch, see and feel the diapers as well as learn how to get over the "ick" factor. White can also thank consumer belt-tightening from the recession for renewed interest in cloth. But the down economy has made it harder for her to grow her business in other ways.
