Insights

<p>If there's nowhere or way to exercise, how can we expect people to get physical activity?</p>

<p>With the help of a National Health Journalism fellowship, I will be working on a series of stories that focus on food and immigrants in rural Minnesota. In particular, the stories will examine the social, economic, cultural and psychological factors influencing food consumption practices among Minnesota’s newest rural immigrant communities.</p>

<p>About 70 percent of the state’s more than 50,000 Native Americans live in Multnomah County, home to Oregon’s largest city, Portland, and have rates of health problems from infant mortality to AIDS that far exceed the general population.</p>

<p>Teens are taking birth control pills younger than ever, the impact of a national debt default on Medicare and Medicaid, salmonella-carrying frogs and more from our Daily Briefing.</p>

<p>From tainted water to failing septic tanks, some Californians live in communities without the most basic infrastructure and services. How do these conditions affect their public health?</p>

37 years ago, at the very tail of the civil rights movement, my community health center (CHC) was established in Oakland to fill an unmet and urgent need. A growing population of immigrants were settling in downtown Oakland and had few choices for health care. Community surveys conducted by local leaders confirmed that residents received significantly less health care than the rest of the population largely due to a shortage of providers and limited English proficiency. And so a group of volunteers and students opened a make shift clinic with a volunteer doctor and an optometrist available for two days a week. As demand grew this little clinic expanded hours and added staff one at a time. Almost four decades later, the clinic has grown to 40+ doctors seeing 20,000 patients who speak any of 10 different languages.

<p>I've been a health reporter for a number of years and, in the past few have focused increasingly on issues of cost and quality. I am still amazed at how opaque these issues are and how reluctant the medical community is to talk about them. Often, when I ask about quality I'm met with incredulity. How dare I question the medical care provided?</p>

<p>Why are Hispanic teens in Connecticut having more babies despite a national drop in teen pregnancy rates? Magaly Olivero is launching a reporting project with the Connecticut Health Investigative Team to find out.</p><p><!--StartFragment--> <!--StartFragment--></p>

<p>When investigative health journalist Marshall Allen told me that my anti-FOIA stance seemed counterproductive, I listened. Here's his compelling argument.</p>

<p>Journalist Kate Long's home state faces staggering health problems, prompting her project to explore West Virginia’s rising tide of chronic disease and obesity and the considerable efforts by its residents to reverse it.</p>