Insights

<p>What you can learn from a great investigative series on the lack of parks in one Southern California region and what that means for residents' health and well-being.</p>

<p>A vaccine success story, making money of Medicare patients, cholera on the rise in Haiti and more from our Daily Briefing.</p>

<p>In late 2009, I read an article in O magazine about a Binghamton, New York, community that’s gone without a neighborhood supermarket for more than 15 years. That sparked my interest in communities, fresh food and what happens to people’s health when they eat what is merely convenient and/or affordable.</p>

<p>The health coverage law Massachusetts passed in 2006 became a model for the national Affordable Care Act. But there is widespread recognition that attempts to expand coverage will fail unless the US figures out how to reduce rising health care costs. My project focuses on efforts to lower health care spending in Massachusetts, efforts that are putting the state, once again, in the national spotlight.</p>

<p>As a National Health Journalism fellow, I will be examining the obstacles to healthy eating for low-income black families in Boston. Specifically, I will focus on the obstacles of food pricing, food access, and the “business of unhealthiness,” the web of market incentives that drive individuals towards unhealthy food choices. In addition, I will also examine the creative solutions local activists devise to overcome these barriers to a nutritious diet.</p>

<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>