Last week, columnist William Heisel criticized the new California Healthcare Compare's website for how it rates hospitals on childbirth, noting that the tool focused too heavily on C-sections and breastfeeding. This week, he offers five indicators that would give potential patients a fuller picture.
The idea that childhood trauma and adversity can become embedded in the body and shape one's health decades later is not new. But a recent study throws the idea into stark relief: Even when psychological distress disappears by adulthood, the elevated risk of chronic disease remains.
When it comes to getting kids into health coverage, the numbers have never been better. By the first quarter of 2015, the percentage of kids without insurance was less than 5 percent. But despite the gains made in improving children’s coverage, big challenges remain on the horizon.
Kids in poorer families eat more fast food more than their peers, right? Not necessarily, as new data from the CDC show. The idea that poverty status isn't directly correlated with fast food intake may be heartening, but it doesn't mean low-income kids are consuming equally nutritious food.
With several GOP presidential candidates supporting parental choice for childhood vaccines, CNN would have done better by asking the candidates how they propose balancing individual choice with public health, rather than allowing Donald Trump to spread more misinformation about autism and vaccines.
A study published in JAMA Pediatrics this week found that black children with appendicitis are less likely to receive any pain meds for moderate pain — and less likely to receive opioid painkillers for severe pain — compared to their white peers. How can this be happening?
Decades ago we made our criminal justice policies tougher, but in a way that turned out to be neither just nor equitable. As the prison population has soared, we've come to realize our justice system is also terrible for your health. And the forces driving lockups and bad health are often the same.
Rhode Island’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families is struggling to cope with an influx of neglect and abuse cases and has run into financial trouble. Reporter Kristin Gourlay explores how a national "home visiting" program aims to keep families from entering the system in the first place.
Rhode Island doesn’t have enough foster families to meet a growing need. That’s one reason the state's child welfare agency places a higher percentage of kids in group homes than almost any other state. Officials acknowledge the problem, but recruiting new foster families has been tough.
Rhode Island’s child welfare system is under the microscope. Gov. Gina Raimondo has called for a complete overhaul, saying the Department of Children, Youth, and Families has not only been mismanaged, but has failed the children and families it’s supposed to serve.
