Washington state health officials say they’ll start telling families who’ve lost babies to a devastating birth-defects cluster about genetic studies aimed at decoding possible causes.
Children & Families
For her three-part series on the health effects of rising violent crime in Merced County, reporter Ana Ibarra interviewed victims and family members struggling with pain and raw emotion. Here she shares a few of the reporting lessons she learned along the way.
Every year, thousands of kids appear before Arkansas judges, having broke laws that apply only to children. The courts are expected to treat them differently from children who commit adult crimes. Yet hundreds of these kids end up in the same lockups as those who've raped, robbed and murdered.
Victims of childhood sexual abuse are far more likely to become obese adults. New research shows that early trauma is so damaging that it can disrupt a person’s entire psychology and metabolism.
Washington state Medicaid officials are changing the rule for coverage of vitamins that contain folic acid — a change that may reduce the risk of birth defects like those seen in an ongoing cluster in Central Washington.
Washington is among 33 states that don’t have active birth-defects surveillance systems to track problems. It took an astute nurse to raise warnings about a cluster of rare and fatal defects in Central Washington.
The Food and Drug Administration will review a long-delayed petition calling for the voluntary addition of folic acid to corn masa to prevent neural-tube defects such as those seen in Washington’s cluster.
Parents. Teachers. Psychologists. Psychiatrists. Pediatricians. Therapists. Social workers. Students. State leaders. Nonprofit executives. They had come to discuss the mental health of Southern Nevada’s children, seeking answers to the question of how the state can do better.
More than 40 mothers have lost babies to a rare and deadly birth defect in three counties in central Washington state since 2010, but the cause remains unknown. Why haven’t health officials and lawmakers done more to find answers?
Detroit has the highest rate of asthma among young children in America’s 18 largest cities, a problem that experts link to urban ills that could affect their health and learning for the rest of their lives.