Community & Public Health

How is gang violence damaging children? To help answer that question, a reporter for the Orange County Register is following a family in Santa Ana, Calif. that has been touched by gang violence.

Across the country, in big cities and small towns, kids attend schools so close to busy roads that traffic exhaust poses a health risk.

Can a revamped community hospital overcome a history of dysfunction and place residents of South Los Angeles on a path to better health and lower rates of chronic disease?

Can games with prizes and incentives get kids moving more? Two programs in the U.S. and U.K. show early promise.

Hopkins reported this story with the support of the Dennis A. Hunt Fund for Health Journalism and the National Fellowship, programs of the University of Southern California Center for Health Journalism.
Other stories in the series include:
America’s super polluters
The invisible hazard afflicting th

Whether it's Taco Bell’s Naked Chicken Chalupa or the Flamin' Hot Cheeto Bagel, media coverage of stunt foods “only normalizes extreme levels of salt and sugar in food and alters our taste buds to promote addiction,” argues Dr. Monya De.

The solution lies not in building more psychiatric facilities, but in providing effective treatment and supports in the least restrictive setting, says Dr. Fred Osher.

Massachusetts started sending email warning alerts to drug prescribers in 2013. But while some measures of drug abuse dropped in the following years, it’s hard to give credit to the alerts.

Banks tend to be very good at alerting you to potential credit card fraud. Can drug tracking programs do as good a job at flagging risky prescription scenarios?

When Erin Borrego was 15, she and her classmates started experimenting with opioid painkillers. It started with pills called Percocet and Lortab, but she quickly moved on to injecting heroin.