Community & Public Health

When I set out early this year to uncover gaps in mental health care services in one Bay Area county, I was utterly unprepared for just how deep the problems ran.

The practice of harm reduction seeks not to shame people who use drugs into giving them up, but simply to provide them with the tools to improve their health.

As California faces a statewide shortage of physicians, there’s one area that will be hit especially hard: the large collection of cities, suburbs and rural areas that make up Southern California’s Inland Empire.

Obesity is a major problem in Merced County, especially for children. So why is the local school district’s menu full of unhealthy items such as hot dogs and breakfast pizza?

Molly is one of the recipients of the 2018 Impact Fund, a program of USC Annenberg's Center for Health Journalism....

Mobile health workers say their contact with residents of a homeless encampment in the Coachella Valley dropped after the camp was bulldozed.

Why does Indiana have so many cases of child abuse and neglect? Only six states had more in 2016, and they all had much higher populations.

In underserved areas such as California's San Joaquin County, access to care can be difficult at best.

Judith Lewis Mernit’s reporting on harm reduction in rural California was supported by the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2018 Impact Fund.

An Idaho native helping to lead the effort to bring more health care to lower-income residents gave a blunt assessment: “It’s a tragedy if we lose,” he said. “If we win, we make history.”