The concept of "toxic stress" has rapidly gained currency in recent years to explain the damaging effects sustained stress and instability can have on young children. Reporter Daisy Rosario is exploring how such stress impacts underserved communities, and how it might be addressed through services.
In Texas, alarmingly high rates of babies have been born with syphilis. It's since become clear that one of the causes is lack of sufficient prenatal care among some communities. The women receiving the least amount of proper medical care are often the ones who need it the most.
A cluster of serious birth defects in central Washington state has led health officials on a search for the cause. Experts believe a lack of folic acid may be partly to blame, but efforts to fortify common Hispanic foods such as corn masa have languished. Fellow JoNel Aleccia investigates.
Speaking to child welfare experts around the country in the course of reporting, I’ve become convinced that people on both sides — the families in the system, and those charged with carrying out its rules — believe improvements to this country’s approach to child welfare are urgently needed.
If you are a Californian having a baby for the first time, choose your hospital wisely. You might even wish to move. A recent report from the California Hospital Assessment and Reporting Taskforce revealed alarming discrepancies in outcomes for low-risk pregnancies at high-performing and low-perform
Last year we did a story on infant mortality in Rochester, NY. A few experts we talked to said toxic stress was one possible reason that babies born to black and Latina mothers died at such a high rate.
Despite Wendy Davis' filibuster, Texas lawmakers passed strict new abortion regulations in 2013. Here's what one reporter on the front lines learned from covering the changing landscape of women’s health and abortion in the Lone Star State.
Low-income Mexican immigrants might be healthier than the overall U.S. population on some measures, but that health advantage fades as immigrants adjust to life in the U.S. That in turn can have worrying consequences when it comes to Latina birth outcomes.
Unyque Jackson started kindergarten in Oakland. Her parents divorced when she was five. And Unyque moved to the San Joaquin Valley where she lived in her father’s house and was raised by her grandmother.
Candida KingBird, 38, has lived a decade with diabetes and has five children, the last of whom nearly died from problems related to the disease after a cesarean section. Read about her journey through a difficulty, risky sixth pregnancy.
