Community & Public Health

When it comes to addressing disorders of the brain, the medical toolkit is weak. But new mapping projects underway could gradually change our ability to treat many common brain disorders.

New models in Britain and the U.S. take a larger view of the forces that shape people’s health. That’s because sometimes a patient needs an air conditioner more than a hospital bed.

When an anonymous source informed The Detroit News that the Detroit Medical Center was improperly sterilizing surgical equipment, health care reporter Karen Bouffard started digging.

The U.S. has moved decisively toward fluoridation in water, which shows that it’s possible to move out of an area of doubt and confusion and into an era where good science is accepted and basic public health measures are taken.

A data-driven look at opioid addiction in San Diego found that old assumptions about addiction hotspots were outdated. Reporter Leo Castaneda shares this and other field lessons he learned along the way.

In the largely rural Central San Joaquin Valley, a reporter tracking efforts to expand access to health care in the wake of Obamacare finds that "many of the most effective outreach tools at play involve very little technology."

Will a diagnosis of “prediabetes” motivate meaningful lifestyle changes among patients, or simply lead patients and providers to use medications rather than refocus on aggressive lifestyle changes?

The Los Angeles Department of Health Services will start approving hepatitis C drugs for active IV drug users. Until now, the department had withheld approval for anyone who had not been drug-free for at least six months.

In California’s Central Valley and rural north, more than a dozen hospitals have closed since the early 2000s. The closures often limit care options and inflict economic misery — some communities never recover.

Physicians are often terrible at heeding their own advice. "Among a trio of lung specialists I once knew, only one was not a chain smoker himself," writes Dr. Monya De. How does this happen?