Insights

National Drug Court Month is almost over, but how many who could benefit from this unique aspect of the legal system actually know about this option? With May being National Drug Court Month, drug courts across the nation have been celebrating their successes in the hope of spreading awareness.

Oklahoma is one of only a handful of states that require physicians to check a patient’s prescription history before prescribing potentially addictive drugs. How did Oklahoma enact this requirement when so many other states, such as California, have tried and failed?

Annie Brewster started Health Story Collaborative to give patients a voice, and to bring the human side of illness back into the practice of medical care and recovery. Research suggests that the way we narrate stories of illness can have a profound impact on our mental health.

It's easy for the headlines on health stories to go way beyond what the study itself actually supports. That happened this week in coverage of new research on how physically active preschoolers are. It serves as a good reminder to acknowledge any given study's limitations.

In April, the governor of Oklahoma signed a bill that requires doctors to check a state-run database of patients and prescriptions before writing a new prescription for addictive medications. That makes the state a national leader in efforts to track such prescriptions and curtail abuse.

Rampant consolidation among hospitals and doctors' practices was the theme of our Tuesday webinar with guests Paul B. Ginsburg of USC and Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times. Here's a recap of what they had to say on how the trend is shaping U.S. health care, and what might be done in response.

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With Biomonitoring California, state health and environmental officials have hit an early milestone in their efforts to discover which industrial chemicals are making their way into the bodies of residents. Research has shown that chemical exposure can seriously disrupt cellular function over time.