Author

Renuka Rayasam, KFF Health News

Renuka Rayasam, KFF Health News

Renuka Rayasam, senior correspondent, joined KFF Health News in April 2022 from Politico, where she wrote for the magazine, covered Texas policy and politics, and helped launch a daily COVID-19 briefing called “Nightly.” She has worked for the Austin American-Statesman and U.S. News & World Report. She also spent six years freelancing from Berlin, Germany, where she wrote for a variety of newspapers and magazines including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal. She has a master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University and a bachelor’s in German and political economy from the University of California-Berkeley.

Police blame some deaths on ‘excited delirium.’ ER docs consider pulling plug on the term.

By: and - October 6, 2023

The way Sheldon Haleck’s parents see it, the 38-year-old’s only crime was jaywalking. But that March night in 2015, after Honolulu police found him behaving erratically, they pepper-sprayed him, shocked him with a Taser, and restrained him. Haleck became unresponsive and was taken to a hospital. Before his parents could get from their home in […]