Advocates have been urging the FDA to allow corn masa to be fortified with folic acid for years, with the goal of curbing rare birth defects among Hispanic children. The FDA hasn't budged so far, but that could change as the agency reviews new research.
Like many streets in Houston’s Greater Fifth Ward, Worms Street offers the perfect environment for the spread of tropical diseases. Many of these infections aren’t new, but rising temperatures and poverty create a perfect storm for their spread.
“In many African American communities, mental health issues have a history of being undertreated and underdiagnosed.” That was the beginning of the host intro for my radio series on mental health care within African American communities, and a focus sentence that led me throughout my reporting.
A complaint filed this week alleges that California is engaging in unlawful discrimination by paying some of the lowest reimbursement rates in the country to the state’s Medicaid providers. As some coverage pointed out, the notion that low rates are limiting access to doctors is “not unfounded."
In too many states, you cannot get access to death certificates without being a next of kin, an attorney, or a law enforcement official. Frankly, that's absurd. Here are two examples from recent headlines that show why death certificates can prove so useful.
Most large Florida school districts are moving away from suspending children for nonviolent misbehavior — part of a nationwide consensus that harsh discipline falls unfairly on black kids and leaves struggling students too far behind. The Pinellas County School District is an outlier.
In West Oakland, Rev. Donna Allen is trying to make sure church members understand that it’s not just faith that they can lean on when facing mental health problems. Alameda County has invested more than $1 million to help groups bring mental health services to underserved communities.
A reporting project on the rising incidence of diabetes among Indian communities finds virtue in taking an explanatory approach. "Linking our cuisine to impactful statistics and studies, I hoped, would grab the reader’s attention," California Fellow Parimal Rohit writes.
Notions of personal failure and our collective ignorance of what it’s like to live on $8.60 a day help explain why 20 states have not covered the very poorest, and why Medicaid as we know it could disappear.
San Francisco’s success with early treatment and access to preventive drugs seems to have made a dramatic impact. That raises the question: Can efforts that work among white gay men also work for Fresno’s undocumented immigrants or injection drug users?
