Community & Public Health

This story was produced as part of a project for the 2017 California Data Fellowship, a program of the USC Center for Health Journalism.

A yearlong effort to obtain basic Medicaid provider data in L.A. was rebuffed. Some health care leaders shut their doors gently. Others slammed them shut.

Thanks to climate change, the health hazard posed by extreme heat is growing. And practical solutions aren't meeting the challenge so far.

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. 

“Children get the best care possible, no doubt,” says the head of the Sickle Disease Foundation of California. “It’s when that child becomes an adult — that’s when they fall into a black hole.”

In states such as New Mexico, many kids are put into treatment foster care who should never be there. The programs, run by private companies, vary widely in quality and safety from state to state.

In East St. Louis, the school district is helping parents get back on their feet.

Syringe exchanges and overdose kits aren’t always reaching poor and rural Californians, but advocates of the harm reducation approach are trying to make that happen.

Black youth are less than 27 percent of Louisville’s youth population, but they represented more than 75 percent of the youth bookings in Louisville’s secure detention center last year.