Community & Public Health

In the first presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, health care scarcely came up. Yet it remains among the most urgent issues facing Americans. Insurance premiums continue their upward march, out-of-pocket costs are soaring and insurance exchanges keep shrinking.

A program that creates market incentives to encourage drug makers to target rare pediatric diseases seemed like good policy at first. But evidence of the program's effectiveness is missing.

Football fan culture is changing, writes contributing editor William Heisel, as the consequences of repeated hard collisions become common knowledge. "Knock his block off!" the old refrain went. Or maybe don't?

Too often, people experience death in ways deeply at odds with how they'd wish to live out their final days. In a recent webinar, a policy expert and journalist shared ideas for how the U.S. healthcare system navigates the end of life.

A reporter who was on the scene shortly after the terror attack in San Bernardino follows up with the victims and first responders over the following year to understand how the event impacted their mental health.

"There exists a class of hyper-polluters — the worst-of-the-worst — that disproportionately expose communities of color and low income populations to chemical releases," researchers write in a 2016 paper.

Experts believe they won't get the upper hand on the disease until they persuade enough people that a healthy diet and regular exercise can prevent it or minimize its damage if it has already struck.

“With limited resources, these communities were able to significantly improve their outcomes,” says Natalya Verbitsky-Savitzy, a research statistician for Mathematica.

Diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes when she was 11 years-old, Carolina takes three types of insulin and four other medications every day. Diabetes experts say the family's situation is fairly common.

For residents of California's vast rural areas, where nine hospitals have closed in the past decade, a cancer diagnosis can be especially frightening. Here's why.