Fran Smith
Writer, Editor, Consultant
Writer, Editor, Consultant
Contributing editor, Center for Health Journalism. Independent journalist, author, editor and communications consultant who helps people (including other writers) to tell their stories. My articles on health and medicine have appeared in hundreds of newspapers and dozens of magazines, including National Geographic, Psychology Today, O: The Oprah Magazine, Forbes, Prevention and Redbook. My most recent book, Changing the Way We Die, was an Amazon best seller and a winner of an Independent Book Publishers Award. Written with my friend and longtime colleague Sheila Himmel, the book examines the evolution of hospice from a movement for compassionate end-of-life care to a profitable and troubled industry. Before venturing out as a freelancer, I worked for years as a newspaper reporter and editor and was part of a Pultizer Prize-winning team at the San Jose Mercury News.
Infectious disease specialist Dr. Mary T. Caserta explains what we know so far about the novel coronavirus in kids.
“Locking up guns away from children really does keep them safe,” said Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research.
Several states are now leading the way to ensure doulas are available to the low-income and underserved women who need them most.
The first national study of the impact of lunch reforms led by Michelle Obama finds they didn't increase waste or drive up costs. But the nutritional value of the food did go up.
Legal scholar Andrea Freeman views the fraught history of breastfeeding disparities through the astonishing story of America’s first surviving identical quadruplets.
A stream of studies over the past five years has explored the direct and indirect health effects of climate change and the special risks for children. An exhaustive new analysis in The Lancet amplifies those findings.
Before she began her transition three years ago, Dallas Ducar struggled with depression, anxiety, substance abuse and the profoundly unsettling sensation “that things did not feel real.”
It’s a story of official missteps, misinformation and confusion — and public anxiety about teen sex.
Too often, a woman and her doctor have to guess whether a drug is safe, because very few studies have looked at the effects of medications during pregnancy.
The suicide rate for boys ages 15 to 19 jumped dramatically in 2017, reaching its highest point in a generation.