Does a forthcoming ban on smoking in public housing promote the health of residents or amount to "nannying the poor"? Reporter Jennifer Bihm looks into the issue.
Chronic Disease
Star Apartments in L.A.'s Skid Row is a dazzling vision of what homeless housing can look like. But it's not the model the city is banking on to meet its huge need for supportive housing for the region's 45,000 people without homes.
Diabetes impacts nearly 10 percent of Americans and people of color are twice as likely to be diagnosed. Another 8 million have not been diagnosed and millions more are considered pre-diabetic. Why have diagnoses increased so quickly? And what might offer promise in slowing its spread?
Obamacare enabled a wave of residents in California’s Central San Joaquin Valley to get health insurance, but finding doctors has been a recurring challenge for many. Is there any relief on the horizon?
Toxic stress can have a devastating effect on children's health, with consequences stretching out over a lifetime. Nancy Cambria offers a primer on the science behind our emerging understanding of the toll chronic stress is taking on young lives.
In the final installment of Patty Wight's series on poverty and obesity, she looks at the power of social stigma and bias around weight, and the lasting effects they can have on a child.
In the fourth part of Patricia Wight's series exploring the link between childhood poverty and obesity, she visits an elementary school in Portland that has developed a creative way to get kids moving. Within minutes of the school doors opening, 16 kids are in the gym, ready for indoor soccer.
As schools across the country step up efforts to provide more nutritious foods to all children, they’re also focusing on ways get them interested in trying them. And it can be particularly important for kids from low-income families, who often lack access to nutritious food at home.
Tiffany Krastins stopped receiving food stamp benefits this past September. But with a family of six, money is still tight. “Eight-hundred dollars a month to feed six people, it breaks down to about $1.53 per meal,” she says.
“Dollars that were intended for a wide array of medical services started being gobbled up by just one drug,” said Charles Bacchi, president of an industry trade group.