Blake Farmer
Blake Farmer is WPLN's assistant news director, but he wears many hats - reporter, editor and host. He covers the Tennessee state capitol while also keeping an eye on Fort Campbell and business trends, frequently contributing to national programs. Born in Tennessee and educated in Texas, Blake has called Nashville home for most of his life.
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Medicaid enrollment swelled during the pandemic. And some states are being especially aggressive at policing their rolls. -
Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin's cardiac arrest brought new attention to automated external defibrillators. Many schools have one, but now some are making sure they know how to use it.
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The clinics have popped up all over the country, but doctors still don't know the best way to treat these patients, whose symptoms can vary dramatically. -
Activists are campaigning against clinics that offer care for transgender teenagers. Some families worry that will only fuel efforts to ban gender-affirming care in their state. -
When rural hospitals go out of business, they're frequently gone for good. But now, some comebacks are a welcome sign for communities that have been without easy access to health care.
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A probe found troubling lapses in the country's organ transplant system. Blood types mismatched, diseased organs accidentally transplanted and donor organs lost or damaged in transit. -
At the Southern Baptists annual meeting, church leaders made modest commitments to address sexual abuse, after a recent bombshell report detailed how the denomination silenced sexual abuse survivors.
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A report this week about sexual abuse by Southern Baptist ministers shocked evangelical congregations. Former members partly blame the church's refusal to allow women into leadership roles.
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FEMA has a pool of cash set aside to reimburse burial costs — even retroactively — to the families of COVID victims. But clerical challenges and slow outreach have stymied the application process. -
ECMO machines became a last-ditch treatment for COVID. But only half of the patients who got ECMO survived, raising questions about whether this expensive and hard to access treatment is worth it.
