Meet Sara Pequeño, the newest member of the NC Opinion team
From McClatchy and North Carolina Opinion editor Peter St. Onge:
Pequeño joins NC Opinion team
The combined editorial boards of the Charlotte Observer and News & Observer are thrilled to welcome Sara Pequeño to the North Carolina Opinion team.
Pequeño will pursue columns and enterprise reporting and serve as a member of the editorial board. She’ll be based in Raleigh but write about all of North Carolina. She’s a thoughtful reporter and a graceful writer, and she says she plans to use her platform to cover social issues and local politics with empathy and a passion for progressive ideas.
Prior to joining our opinion team, Pequeño worked as the digital content manager at INDY Week, an alt-weekly newspaper based in the Triangle. There, she focused on Orange County and the University of North Carolina system, but she occasionally stepped into other beats focused on social justice and state-level politics. As part of the INDY Week newsroom, she won Green Eyeshade and N.C. Press Association Awards for the paper’s coverage of Black Lives Matter protests, and she received an honorable mention at the 2021 Association of Alternative Newsmedia awards for her story on one man’s experience as an undocumented migrant living in a church during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Pequeño, 24, graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2019 with Bachelors of Arts in media and journalism and political science. In college, she wrote for The Daily Tar Heel and interned at Our State Magazine, and spent a week reporting on the Venezuelan migrant crisis in Medellín, Colombia in 2019 through the journalism school.
Born in Winston-Salem and raised in Mount Airy, Sara loves her home state and wants it to be the best it can be. Her life and those around her have shaped her personally and professionally, and she hopes to continue her work with empathy and nuance. She will continue to do strong reporting centered on the Triangle, but all N.C. readers should contact her with stories you want to tell at spequeno@newsobserver.com.
Expand Medicaid for new moms
As a board-certified neonatologist actively engaged in the care of women and children for more than two decades, I have firsthand knowledge of the impact access to health care has on outcomes for mothers and newborns.
Trained in suburban Atlanta, I am also keenly aware of the disparate health outcomes for women and newborns of color. Women of color over 30 years of age are four to five times more likely than white women to die of pregnancy related causes.
Heart disease and hypertension, which disproportionately affect women of color, contribute to this risk that continues into the postpartum period and is frequently under recognized by both the mother and healthcare community, with sometimes catastrophic outcomes.
We know the health of the mother and newborn have lasting impacts on the population health of our communities.
The proposed N.C. Senate budget included a plan to extend Medicaid for new mothers from 60 days to one year. The N.C. House’s version did not. All new mothers deserve access to quality health care before, during, and well after pregnancy.
The N.C. General Assembly should vote to extend Medicaid for new mothers to one year. It’s the right thing to do.
Dr. Terri Phillips, Raleigh
NCSU’s decision on athletes
When the NC State baseball team was removed from the College World Series due to an outbreak of COVID-19, the athletic leadership claimed at the time they could not mandate vaccines for players and thus had little control over risk of exposure/infection.
As an avid Wolfpacker, I felt at the time that this was a cop-out, since a coach can certainly tell a team that only vaccinated players will practice, travel, and play with the team.
A few days ago, the N.C. State athletics department announced that only athletes and staffers who are vaccinated will be able to travel to away games.
Too bad this wisdom was missing earlier this year.
Brooks Raiford, Cary
This story was originally published August 31, 2021 at 1:42 PM.