ATHLETIC TRAINERS: PROTECTING HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETES

trainer-sidelines (Bowman, SHNS) -- Getting hurt is part of playing sports, but SHNS has found that the level of sideline medical care available to more than 7 million high school-age student athletes varies widely across the U.S. Only about a third of more than 18,000 private and public high schools in the U.S. with sports programs have a professional athletic trainer regularly assigned to practices and games. 950.

trainer-health (Bowman, SHNS) -- In many high schools, athletic trainers wind up being primary care providers to for students in and out of sports and often extend their expertise on sports injuries into the surrounding community. 600.

trainer-parents (Bowman, SHNS) -- Youth sports safety advocates say the first thing a parent should ask about a new school or team: "Who's going to take care of my child if he or she gets hurt?" 550.

trainer-saves (Bowman, SHNS) -- A sampling of high school athletic trainers' favorite stories about their work. 550.

trainer-schools (Bowman, SHNS) -- Key points parents can use to grade scholastic sports safety. 250.

trainer-method (Bowman, SHNS) -- An explanation of the analysis used in the project. 250.

trainer-bodyparts (Bowman, SHNS) -- A chart showing the 10 most common athletic-related injuries to body parts among high-school teenagers.

trainer-sports (Bowman, SHNS) -- A chart showing sport-specific injury rates.

trainer-injuries (Bowman, SHNS) -- A chart showing the most common types of athletic-related injuries among high-school teenagers.

edtrainers (Dale McFeatters, SHNS) -- If your local high school doesn't have a full-time professional athletic trainer, it should, but barely a third of America's high schools do. 400.

MURDER MYSTERIES

MURDER-HOW-TO -- SHNS has broken down unsolved homicide figures for every county and police department in America. The data show wide variances in clearance rates across the country. You can use the data to localize this story and ask chiefs of police and veteran homicide detectives why their departments have above- or below-average homicide clearance rates. This data is available at http://www.scrippsnews.com/projects/murder-mysteries/database.

MURDERMYSTERIES (Hargrove, SHNS) -- The percentage of killings that go unsolved has risen alarmingly in recent years. Nearly 185,000 killings went unsolved from 1980 to 2008 and have become an unprecedented mountain of cold cases, according to a Scripps Howard News Service analysis of fatal crimes using computer records provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 1,200.

MURDER-ANALYSIS (Hargrove, SHNS) -- Some homicides are much more likely to go unsolved than others. The deliberate killing of men, members of racial and ethnic minorities and young adults are much less likely to be solved than other kinds of homicides, according to FBI files. 600.

MURDER-COLDCASE (Wolf, SHNS) -- Almost five years after his son was murdered, Bruce Shipe admitted something to his wife, Jan, for the first time: There are moments when he ponders becoming a vigilante and taking justice into his own hands. 680.

MURDER-METHODS (Hargrove, SHNS) -- Criminology scholars and Department of Justice researchers in recent years have identified some important procedures proven to assist local police in identifying offenders in homicide cases. A look at current "best practices" based upon new research. 800.

MURDER-NOREPORT (Lucas, SHNS) -- Some of the nation's largest police departments fail to tell the FBI how many homicides they solve each year, exempting them from public scrutiny or criticism over their efforts to solve fatal crime. 700.

MURDER-POLL (Hargrove and Lucas, SHNS) -- At least one adult in every nine personally knows the victim of an unsolved homicide, according to a survey of 1,001 adults conducted by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University. These people are more critical of the job police do to investigate murder. 560.

MURDERCHART1 (SHNS) -- A year-by-year count of how many homicides have gone unsolved since 1980.

MURDERCHART2 (SHNS) -- A state-by-state count of how many homicides have gone unsolved since 1980.

MURDERCHART3 (SHNS) -- The percentage of homicides in which police identified the suspect to the FBI, based upon the kind of victim or apparent motive.

MURDERCHART4 (SHNS) -- A year-by-year look at the homicide clearance rate from 1965 through 2008.

EDMURDERMYSTERIES (Dale McFeatters, SHNS) -- Too many Americans are getting away with murder. 390.

KILLER ROADS

KILLERROADS (Hargrove, SHNS) -- More than 100 people die every day on America's killer roads. The routine act of driving has become the riskiest thing most Americans do. Yet sometimes the deadliest roads seem disarmingly safe -- a small country lane winding gently through rolling hills or a perfectly straight superhighway stretching across a vast desert landscape. 1,000.

KILLERROADS-FIX (Hargrove, SHNS) -- Can the public help fix America's killer roads? There currently is no nationwide method for Americans to file complaints or to make traffic-safety suggestions, although federal officials have considered the problem in the past. Scripps Howard News Service has a form that allows anyone in the United States to file a report on an unsafe driving condition at www.scrippsnews.com/killerroads/complaintform. 300.

KILLERROADS-SAFE (Hargrove, SHNS) -- What can Americans do to keep from becoming a road-kill statistic? Advice from top experts, starting with the basics: Don't drive drunk, don't speed and always use seat belts. 400.

KILLERROADS-TOP20 (Hargrove, SHNS) -- Here are the 20 most dangerous county roads based upon a Scripps Howard News Service study of 562,712 fatal vehicle accidents reported to the U.S. Department of Transportation from 1994 to 2008. 200.

KILLERROADS-CAUSE (Hargrove, SHNS) -- A state-by-state analysis of the percentages of all fatal accidents from 1994 to 2008 in which drinking or speeding were reported as well as the percentage of deceased persons who were not wearing a seat belt. 200.

KILLERROADS-TYPE1 (Hargrove, SHNS) -- Here are the kinds of roads upon which 627,433 American perished from 1994 to 2008. 100.

KILLERROADS-TYPE2 (Hargrove, SHNS) -- Here are the percentages of fatal accidents involving drinking or speeding according to the type of road. 100.

EDKILLERROADS (Dale Mcfeatters, SHNS) -- An editorial about the findings of the Killer Roads project, can be used to complement this package. 350.

QUICK LABS

LABS-TESTING (Bowman, SHNS) -- As Americans struggle to take charge of their health care -- and hold down their medical costs -- a growing number are bypassing the doctor and going right to the source for diagnostic tests. 1,250.

LABS-OPTIONS (Bowman, SHNS) -- Consumers have an array of choices for getting medical tests. 340.

EDLABS (Dale McFeatters, SHNS) -- A growing number of Americans are bypassing doctors and going directly to online and storefront labs for diagnostic testing. 340.

WILD HOGS

WILDHOGS (Wolf and Bartz, SHNS) -- America's wild hog population is exploding and spreading across the country, more than doubling in size and range in the past 20 years. Two decades ago, somewhere between 500,000 and 2 million wild pigs roamed the United States in 17 states. Now the population numbers between 2 million and 6 million in 44 states. 1,250.

WILDHOGS-FIXES (Wolf and Bartz, SHNS) -- Experts have several suggestions for how to stop the spread of wild hogs. 300.

WILDHOGS-NUMBERS (Wolf and Bartz, SHNS) -- Details on the numbers of wild hogs across the country. 480.p>

WILDHOGS-WHERE (Wolf and Bartz, SHNS) -- Which states the hogs have settled in, and whether the populations are established, emerging or sparse. 220.

EDWILDHOGS (Dale McFeatters, SHNS) -- The United States has a population problem and it's not people. It's hogs. Wild hogs. 350.

FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS

DEBTCOLLECTION (Wolf, SHNS) -- More Americans are complaining that debt collectors are using shady and possibly illegal practices to hound them for payments, a Scripps Howard investigation has found. Complaints this year to federal authorities about unscrupulous debt collectors are on pace to be more than 6 percent higher than two years ago. 1,050.

DEBT-LEGAL (Wolf, SHNS) -- Bad debts have become big business. Companies are packaging and selling their overdue accounts, spawning a booming $60 billion secondary debt market. But government officials and consumer watchdogs question the industry's often-shoddy recordkeeping, and say overly aggressive collectors sometimes break the law when going after old debts. 1,100.

DEBT-MARKET (Wolf, SHNS) -- As the debt-collection industry files hundreds of thousands of lawsuits each year to recover unpaid bills, it's banking on a simple fact: The vast majority of those sued will never appear in court to defend themselves. 1,100.

DEBT-NCO (Wolf, SHNS) -- Four hundred million times a year, employees of a little-known company called NCO dial the telephone "just to talk." NCO's hope: A simple chat will convince people to pay old debts. "We have to strike a bond with someone," said the company's CEO, Michael Barrist. 750.

DEBT-SURVEY (Wolf, SHNS) -- Forty percent of Americans report that debt collectors have threatened them or their families with violence, otherwise harassed them or called at inappropriate times, according to a Scripps Howard survey. A 1977 federal law, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, prohibits debt collectors from engaging in such actions. 575.

DEBT-YOURRIGHTS (Wolf, SHNS) -- When the debt collectors come calling, know your rights. Collection companies are governed by the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, a federal law. 725.

EDDEBTCOLLECTION (Dale McFeatters, SHNS) -- Thanks to a stubbornly persistent recession, millions of Americans find themselves saddled with debt that they can't repay or can repay only with such difficulty it discourages them from even trying. 375.

NURSING HOME RATINGS

NURSINGHOMERATING (Bowman and Hargrove, SHNS) -- A statistical analysis of the federal government's first-ever ratings of nearly 16,000 nursing homes reveals an uneven level of quality across the nation and shows how complicated it is to find a good nursing home. 1,100.

NURSINGHOME-HOWTO (Bowman, SHNS) -- Ideally, selecting a nursing home should be a careful, deliberate process carried out by a patient and family members who already have a good sense of the patient's wishes. In reality, families often have 48 hours or less to explore nursing-home options when a loved one is about to be discharged from a hospital -- the most typical path to nursing-home care. 810.

HOMECHECKLIST (Bowman, SHNS) -- Ten things to consider in nursing home care. 590.

EDNURSINGHOME (Dale McFeatters, SHNS) -- Medicare's nursing home ratings only a start when evaluating a home. 390.

DEAD WRONG: WHAT'S REALLY KILLING AMERICA

DEATH-DIAGNOSIS (Hargrove and Bowman, SHNS) -- Hundreds of thousands of death certificates filed every year in the United States are wrong, meaning we don't really know what's killing Americans. The erroneous death certificates cause medical researchers to look at the wrong health threats, and mislead people to the real diseases that run in their families. Results of a seven-month investigation into federal mortality records. 1,300.

DEATH-AUTOPSY (Hargrove and Bowman, SHNS) -- A first-of-its-kind study has found that younger, well-educated and wealthy people are more likely to be autopsied when they die. More men than women are autopsied. And blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans are more likely to be autopsied than whites. 1,300.

DEATH-DIAGSIDE (Bowman, SHNS) -- Completing the document that marks the end of every American's life can take extraordinary amounts of time and persistence for both funeral providers and medical professionals. The quality of training on how to document death varies considerably. 400.

DEATH-POLL (Nunez and Hargrove, SHNS) -- A significant number of Americans distrust what's written on death certificates -- those official documents that report when, where, how and why people die. A survey of 946 people by Scripps Howard News Service and Ohio University found that 26 percent doubt official cause of death for someone they know personally. 900. With DEATHPOLL-CHART1 and DEATHPOLL-CHART2.

DEATH-HOWTO (Bowman, SHNS) -- If you're not sure that the true cause of death of a loved one has been determined and properly recorded on a death certificate, what can be done? 500. With DEATH-HOWTOSIDE

DEATH--HEARTCHART (SHNS) -- State-by-state chart showing varying averages for deaths blamed on coronary disease.

DEATHAUTOPSYCHART (SHNS) -- State-by-state chart showing the rate at which deaths are autopsied.

EDDEATH-DIAGNOSIS (McFeatters, SHNS) -- Editorial: A Scripps Howard News Service study of revealed a disturbing conclusion: Our knowledge of what's killing Americans is not terribly accurate, which greatly complicates the cause of prevention. 400.

DEADWRONG-AUTOPSY (Hargrove and Bowman, SHNS) -- Amid widespread concern over the accuracy of death records, medical experts are calling on Congress to do something unprecedented: define what legally constitutes an autopsy. "From the public health standpoint, absolutely, we could use standards for autopsies," said Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch of the National Center for Health Statistics. 900.

DEADWRONG-SIDE (Hargrove and Bowman, SHNS) -- Dan Close wishes his family had insisted on an autopsy after his father, 69-year-old Darrell D. Close, died last year. Emergency medical technicians and police were summoned to Darrell Close's home in Wichita, Kan., after family members found him unresponsive. "It was a shoddy deal. The doubts raised in the Close case are common. 550.

EDAUTOPSY-FIX (McFeatters, SHNS) -- Strange as it may seem to a layperson, there is no legal definition of what constitutes an autopsy. 400.

DEAD WRONG: WHAT'S REALLY KILLING NEW YORK

DEATH-FRAUD (Hargrove, SHNS) -- A six-month investigation by Scripps Howard News Service found that tens of thousands of New Yorkers died in recent years with the wrong cause on their official death certificates. 1,200.

FRAUD-SIDE (Hargrove, SHNS) -- The problems with New York's death records are nothing new. They were mentioned in a newspaper article way back in '72 -- that's 1872. 200.

FRAUD-METHOD (Hargrove, SHNS) -- A closer look at how the SHNS investigation was done. 200.