As wells ran dry in the drought-stricken Central Valley this summer, a public health crisis went less noticed. The Fresno Bee's Andrea Castillo decided to focus her reporting on East Porterville, where nearly half the town's 7,500 people have dry wells.
The federal Food and Drug Administration has agreed to review a long-delayed petition to fortify corn masa flour with folic acid, a move advocates say is crucial to preventing devastating birth defects like those seen in an ongoing cluster of cases in Washington state.
Before joining NAM, Viji Sundaram worked variously at India-West, a national weekly newspaper for the South Asian community in the U.S., the Cape Cod Times, the Providence Journal and the New Bedford Standard Times, covering topics ranging from health to immigration to crime to social issues.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Brie Zeltner and Rachel Dissel are putting the issue of lead poisoning in children back on the map, publishing a deeply reported series of stories on the issue this week. The ambitious project is worth a closer look.
In a town whose problems already include air pollution, water contamination and poverty, the California drought has spurred a growing health crisis, worsening respiratory conditions and burdening those with other illnesses, such as 49-year-old Manuel León.
Kids in poorer families eat more fast food more than their peers, right? Not necessarily, as new data from the CDC show. The idea that poverty status isn't directly correlated with fast food intake may be heartening, but it doesn't mean low-income kids are consuming equally nutritious food.
There was a striking case of news convergence earlier this week: the annual KIDS COUNT report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation emphasized high rates of childhood poverty, and a new JAMA Pediatrics study issued alarming new results on the effect of poverty on young brains.
A new study on tuberculosis in wake of the devastating 2010 Haitian earthquake offers a number of health policy lessons that hold true far beyond the tiny island nation. The country's robust approach to HIV testing is one of them.
The East End community in Lexington, Kentucky has long had its struggles. Nearly two decades ago, officials unveiled major new plans to revamp a neighborhood suffering from high crime, housing shortages, poor schools and other urban ills. But the plan didn't go as expected. What happened?
An epidemic of neglected tropical diseases is bubbling just beneath the surface in the United States, trapping the impoverished in a cycle of sickness and poverty. In Texas, infection with the cysticercosis tapeworm is now a major cause of epilepsy among poor residents.
