Criminalizing pregnant women and new mothers for drug dependency problems leads to poorer health outcomes while disproportionately punishing low-income women of color, argues maternal health advocate Emily Eckert.
New Orleans restarted its public school system a decade ago after Hurricane Katrina. But addressing the lingering trauma and stress faced by the city's children is a huge ongoing challenge.
In California, fines up to $125,000 per preventable mistake have not made a significant dent in the number of medical errors. Despite recent gains, the number is still higher than when the state’s program began nine years ago.
This story was produced as a project for the California Health Journalism Fellowship, a program of the Center for Health Journalism at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
In the U.S., social welfare benefits tend to impose tight restrictions on recipients. But in Manitoba, low-income pregnant women can receive a no-strings-attached cash boost. Research suggests it leads to healthier babies.
The harm from misleading media messages about health care is very real. But by putting a human face and voice to these harms, we can begin to correct some of these wrongs, explains HealthNewsReview.org's Gary Schwitzer.
Media coverage of unaccompanied minors has subsided in the past couple of months, although immigration hearings and deportations continue. Meanwhile, what do we know so far about the quality of health care provided to such minors?
As a reporter who was born and raised in China, I had a hard time trying to figure out what my health insurance options were when I came to Los Angeles for graduate school. What was Obamacare? What was Covered California? The challenges go beyond language barriers.
What's driving some residents in Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley to seek out health care in Mexico? It turns out it's not just a question of money or cultural familiarity, as Barrett Newkirk reports.
“Dollars that were intended for a wide array of medical services started being gobbled up by just one drug,” said Charles Bacchi, president of an industry trade group.
