Utah State News Service

By Shayne Bair Two Richmond business owners have launched an employer-owned medical center to provide healthcare for their employees. The new center opened Wednesday as one of Utah’s first employer-owned medical centers. The facility is expected to provide low-cost healthcare to the employees of two of the town’s largest businesses, Casper’s Ice Cream and Lower Foods. “It is going to save money for our employees, because we buy them a membership to come here,” Casper’s owner Paul Merrill said. “So now they don’t have to pay towards their deductible when they are coming here.” Lower Foods owner Alan Lower believes the new clinic will save his company money by reducing workers’ compensation claims. “In the workers’ comp world, it is all about minimizing your claims and not having people sit home longer than they need to,” Lower said. “This place will allow us to get our employees back on the job faster, and at a fraction of the cost.” The facility will contract wi...

By Natalie Draper  For weeks, Brad Orme had been telling his grandmother he didn’t believe superheroes. That belief was challenged on Saturday, though, when the four-year-old attended The Family Place’s Superhero Training Academy at Playgrounz in Logan. Brad, living as Captain America for the day, went to the event with his grandmother, Jennie Orme. When Orme asked her grandson how long he had been waiting for the “hero party” he said, “I’ve been waiting for 100 days!” Being excited and being a believer, however, are two different things; he still insisted that heroes were imaginary. At the party, kids of all ages dressed up as Spiderman, Wonder Woman, members of The Incredibles and   other heroes. They also   made masks, conquered an "American Ninja Warrior" obstacle course, engaged in tug-of-war with the Hulk, beat Batman in a Frisbee toss and collected sought-after autographs. Britney Bird, the event coordinator, said the annual superhero event has a...

By Shanie Howard A Utah State University researcher believes his team might have found a potential vaccination for Zika virus. Justin Julander, an associate professor with the university’s Institute for Antiviral Research, has been working on Zika with funding from the National Institute of Health and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since December. Now, he said, he’s ready to publish some of the team’s findings. “We’ve identified several anti-viral agents and a few vaccines that are effective in treatment and prevention of Zika,” said Julander, who plans to submit a paper about the discoveries by the end of this week. Up to this point, these vaccinations have only been tested on mice, and would still need to undergo clinical trials before being distributed to those infected or at risk of infection. It’s not the first time a potential vaccine has been identified. Clinical trials got underway for one possible inoculation on Tuesday in Baltimo...

By   Ayanna Likens Cache County is scrambling for salt to clear the roads — and the money to pay for it. After facing nearly non-stop snowstorms, Matt Sprague, a snow plow driver, said this is the first year the county has run out of salt. “We have been going through more salt this year than any other year,” Sprague said. “The plow drivers have been working 18-hour days to find more salt and to clear the roads.” Steven Thomas, another snowplow driver for Cache County, said there is not enough salt in Northern Utah bays. As a result, drivers have been making a four-hour-round-trip drive to Grantsville just for salt. “We are out of salt all the way to Ogden,” Thomas said. “Because of the shortage, keeping up with the snow has been a challenge this winter season.” Cache County Council members said they used up their entire annual salt budget in the first month of the year. “We never expected this to happen, so we are taking money from different places to fund the salt,”...

By Jessica Dryden An anti-abortion organization is working to introduce "healthy relationship education" to students in Cache County. Leaders from The Center for Pregnancy Choices, a "life-affirming" organization that provides support for individuals facing unexpected pregnancies, said they have been in contact with officials from the Logan and Cache County school districts about enrolling students into their program. “We rely on God for help, and we have good communication with Logan and Cache County schools,” center director Valerie Byrnes said. “They like the message we offer.” That message: Relationship Education and Leadership, or REAL, an abstinence-focused curriculum package developed by the Denver-based Center for Relationship Education. “Lack of healthy relationship education is a problem,” said Katie Harris, a volunteer at the Logan pregnancy center and certified sexual risk avoidance specialist, a designation bestowed upon her by the National A...

By Eddie Collins  The concentration of fine particulate matter in the air reached a high of 102.6 micrograms per cubic meter on Friday — a level of unhealthiness that even those in often-smoggy Cache County haven’t experienced in a long time. “I don’t think we’ve had levels that high in probably 12 years,” said Josh Greer, the air quality program manager at Bear River Health Department. “Best way I can categorize it is definitely unhealthy; doesn’t really matter who you are.” The levels of particulate matter 2.5, which is responsible for the decreased visibility and general toxicity of the ambient air, were nearly triple the Environmental Protection Agency’s standard for allowable concentration. PM2.5 is particularly dangerous due to its ability to penetrate deep into a person’s lungs, causing serious health issues for anyone with prolonged exposure, especially to high concentrations. “We have roughly 100,000 vehicles here that fill up the narrow, deep valley with p...

By Abby Bart  Utah author and historian Rebecca de Schweinitz will appear at the Orem Public Library on Thursday at 7 p.m. to discuss the role of children in the Civil Rights era as part of the library’s Black History Month series. De Schweinitz, a history professor at Brigham Young University and author of  If We Could Change the World: Young People and America’s Long Struggle for Racial Equality , was a consultant on the creation of the newest American Girl doll. The doll, named “Melody,” is a young African American girl living in Detroit, Michigan, during the Civil Rights Movement. “I’m planning to talk a little bit about the time period of the story, and especially what it was like for children living in this era,” de Schweinitz said. She plans to read a few excerpts from Melody’s story, as well as “talk about some of our hopes for the Melody project.” Orem Public Library event coordinator Marilee Clark said the library’s staff hopes to re...