Heroin addiction grabbed the national spotlight recently after famed actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died on Super Bowl Sunday. He was almost certainly not alone that day — about 100 Americans die every day from drug overdoses. Can anything be done to stop this?
When Covered California reports its health insurance enrollment figures each month, one worrying statistic consistently jumps out –- the low number of Latinos signing up. This became the top news story out of the exchange in January, overshadowing the overall positive numbers.
I was a bit surprised by how readily this new physician I visited agreed to prescribe more pain medication for me. My previous experience before I was a cancer patient was that doctors were unwilling to prescribe highly addictive drugs — but they weren’t palliative care doctors, like him.
For the 47 million Americans dependent on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the bad news keeps on coming. Cuts in November might be followed by billions more as Congress considers legislation.
By 2012, when I started my fellowship project, several journalists -- in Philadelphia and nationally -- had written extensively about the “built environment,” food deserts and healthy food access. For my project, I looked to answer the question: “What else in a neighborhood matters to health?”
The U.S. locks up more individuals per capita than any other country in the world. We have 2.2 million people behind bars – up 500% from 30 years ago. This situation raises important questions for policy makers, and it’s a rich area for journalistic exploration.
Two experts respond to evidence about the potential risk for a patient without a history of addiction to become addicted to opioid pain killers.
Reporting on Health Contributing Editor William Heisel set off a spirited discussion this week on Twitter on the risk of addiction to opioid pain medicine. What are the implications for chronic pain management and treatment?
Virginia houses approximately 30,000 inmates annually in state prisons, making the Department of Corrections the most expensive agency in Richmond, with a billion dollar annual budget. It spends $160 million on healthcare, but critics say that care is inadequate.
Duane Middleton died shortly after a routine colonoscopy. Then his life insurance provider denied his wife any benefits, a decision later held up in court. So how could three judges conclude that Middleton's death didn't qualify as an "accident"?
