Southern California's Orange County has a reputation as an affluent playground, making the county's food insecurity stats all the more surprising. That kind of juxtaposition between a locale's perception and reality can make for powerful stories that grab audiences and start conversations.
Prescription painkillers like OxyContin have flooded the market. They're incredibly addictive, and once people are hooked, the habit gets expensive. More and more are turning to the cheaper alternative, heroin. And now, more people die every year from accidental opioid (painkillers and heroin) overd
Up to a million undocumented immigrants in California are expected to remain uninsured after the ACA is fully implemented in 2019. One California community is trying to meet some of the unmet health needs by partnering with community health centers and hosting a physician’s assistant once a week.
Awareness of just how damaging toxic stress and childhood adversity can be for a child's health and life prospects is growing. While leading experts call for bold new treatments, what approaches are already showing promise in reversing the effects on young bodies and minds?
One of the recurring themes in early childhood research is that early is rarely early enough. Positive back-and-forth interactions between kids and caregivers are key to building budding brains, while their absence can lead to kids who suffer the longterm effects of what experts call "toxic stress."
Akron, Ohio's Accountable Care Community has brought together a coalition of partners to reduce the number of residents suffering from chronic disease and treatment costs. Similarly, nonprofit hospitals elsewhere can do much more to improve the health of entire communities.
A reporting trip that set out to investigate the causes behind a mysterious childhood cancer cluster turned into a valuable lesson in embracing a truer kind of complexity — not the twists and turns of a mystery novel’s plot, but the unpredictable emotions that guide real people’s lives.
We all love firing up our cellphones to write a text or a tweet, or maybe to engage in a quick game of Candy Crush. But could we turn to the tiny glowing screens to get healthier, too?
Alzheimer’s disease caregivers, usually elderly spouses or working adult children, face higher risk of physical and mental health problems such as anxiety, depression and heart problems. Stressed caregivers are 63 percent more likely to die within four years compared to non-caregivers.
When I tackled the topic of loneliness as a 2013 National Health Journalism Fellowship project, I honestly didn't think it would be hard to find people who were lonely so that I could write about the issue. I was right and wrong.
