Our fellows and grantees produce ambitious, deeply reported stories in partnership with the Center for Health Journalism on a host of timely health, social welfare and equity topics. In addition, the center publishes original reporting and commentary from a host of notable contributors, focused on the intersection of health and journalism. Browse our story archive, or go deeper on a given topic or keyword by using the menus below.
<p>Prescription drug abuse is growing nationwide, but West Virginia was one of the first places hit by the problem. When I picked this topic, I didn't realize how complex it was. The drugs are widely available. Doctors are struggling to treat pain with effective medications without supplying drug abusers. And prescription drug crimes have proven difficult to prosecute.</p><p>This is the first in a four-part series examining prescription drug abuse in West Virginia.</p>
<p>In a state that prides itself as one of the healthiest in the nation, the people of western Salt Lake City face geographic health disparities that are daunting to overcome, including higher pollution and asthma rates.</p>
Children who are raised in foster care often lose touch with their biological relatives. A new federal law requires states to help these children find their birth families.
She’d slept one night in the Mission District under a bush, and woke in the dark when someone grabbed her ankle. Four men held her down and raped her. Now, almost three months later, she spoke in a flat, detached voice like this was somehow normal, just another blank to be filled in like her cough, or whether she had an allergy, her eyes drifting all around the room.
<p><!--StartFragment--></p><p>Eight weeks without food. Five days without water. Three minutes without air. In the world of survival math, breathing is at the top of almost every equation. But here in the L.A. Basin, we inhale much more than life-sustaining oxygen, drawing in a mix of ozone, carbon
<p>The central California community of Kettleman City sits next to one of the largest toxic landfills in the country. Some residents think landfill toxins are to blame for air, water, and health problems, including a cluster of birth defects.</p>
<p>Racial disparity in baby death rates is not a new subject. It's a complex, insiduous, and, at times, inflammatory, issue. In my corner of the world, there are communities where the baby death rate is nearly three times the national norm.</p>
<p>Two communities, one urban, one rural, trying to improve the health of residents</p>
Awareness of the risks to children from not having a stable home also means that parents who are already desperately trying to juggle the demands of managing a life without an address, or a stable food supply, or often a phone, are also frantically trying to do what’s best for their kids, often under mind-blowingly stressful circumstances.
