Myeloma center given $1.8M gift
The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences' Myeloma Center received a $1.8 million gift, the health system announced last week.
The bequest from The Paula and Rodger Riney Foundation will help fund multiple myeloma research.
Rodger Riney, a former founder and chief executive of the brokerage firm Scottrade, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2015 and has become an advocate, a news release said.
UAMS' Myeloma Center is one of the academic medical center's research and treatment programs. It's part of the system's Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute.
Multiple myeloma is a type of cancer of the white blood cells.
Beans gets recall by Randall Foods
Randall Foods has voluntarily recalled beans sold in Arkansas and several other states because of manufacturing issues that could pose a health risk.
All Randall-branded beans are part of the recall. The beans were sold in glass jars with tan labels at the top.
During the beans' processing, a device that measures temperature wasn't working, a news release said. That could create conditions that lead to spoilage or food-borne illness.
Virus-shots race disparities logged
Vaccination rates for Black and Hispanic people in Arkansas are still behind the rate of shots for white people, a new analysis from health policy nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation shows.
The data, drawn from federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures through mid-May, say the vaccination rate for whites in Arkansas is about 25%. That's the percentage of that group that has received at least one shot.
For Black people, it was much lower, at 19% of the group who've been inoculated. About 24% of the state's Hispanic people got shots, the review also showed.
The lags compared with white people parallel national trends, where smaller percentages of Black and Hispanic people had been vaccinated in nearly every state.
However, two of Arkansas' neighboring states, Louisiana and Mississippi, bucked the trend. They showed higher vaccination rates among Black and Hispanic residents than among whites.
Nearly a third -- 32% -- of Arkansas' Asians were vaccinated, according to the analysis.
Some state vaccination efforts have targeted the Marshallese communities, and Arkansas has a smaller number of Asian residents overall.