Mental Health & Trauma

As California faces a statewide shortage of physicians, there’s one area that will be hit especially hard: the large collection of cities, suburbs and rural areas that make up Southern California’s Inland Empire.

Why does Indiana have so many cases of child abuse and neglect? Only six states had more in 2016, and they all had much higher populations.

Judith Lewis Mernit’s reporting on harm reduction in rural California was supported by the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2018 Impact Fund.

Why don't some addiction treatment centers in California offer medication-assisted treatment or MAT?

If rural America has become the new “inner city,” then nowhere is this more apparent than in educational systems.

Harm reduction seeks not to shame people who use drugs into giving them up, but simply to provide them with the tools and support to improve their health.

"What I heard, over and over again, were stories of physical violence in juvenile residential programs."

A new reporting project will examine child abuse deaths and near-deaths over a five-year span to gain a better understanding of how poverty contributes to child abuse across Alabama.

The Central Valley's Kern County reported a 30 percent rise in overdose deaths from 2016 to 2017, bucking the statewide decline in fatal overdoses.

"I am often asked why public health should care about the role of the court and who sits on it. The answer is simple: Court rulings can support or overturn policies that dramatically affect the public’s health."