Children & Families

In more than 30 interviews over six months with children, teachers, mental health professionals and parents, a reporter explored how parental migration from the Caribbean effects the well-being of children throughout their lives.

“Have a plan, but expect to ditch it,” a news mentor drilled into my head 25 years ago. “If you’re well prepared but open to wherever the story leads you, the journalism gods will reward you.”

The stopgap bill approved by Congress this week will extend funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program for a few more months. That's far from what the program's supporters were hoping for.

This article was produced as a project for the Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism, a program of the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism. It's the fourth in a series of stories exploring how the Trump administration's immigration policies are affecting the physical, mental and emotional

Immigrant parents struggle with the future — and try to protect their US-born children from the terrible truth.

A mysterious cluster of rare, fatal birth defects has devastated families in three rural counties in Washington state. JoNel Aleccia of The Seattle Times shares key lessons from how she reported her award-nominated fellowship series.

A psychiatrist who has studied migrant and refugee children around the world points to one powerful protective factor against tremendous adversity — social connections.

Earlier this week, Harvard researchers released a study that makes a downright gloomy prediction: Nearly six in 10 of today’s children will be obese by age 35, if current trends continue.

"After scouring several large surveys of teens for clues," researcher Jean Twenge writes, "I found that all of the possibilities traced back to a major change in teens’ lives: the sudden ascendance of the smartphone."

For a reporter who found signs of hopelessness in one Kern County community after another, childhood trauma turned out to be the unifying theme, handed down from one generation to the next.