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During the covid pandemic, gun marketers told many Americans they needed firearms to defend against criminals and protesters. Then firearm deaths mounted rapidly in racially segregated and low-income neighborhoods, according to federal data.
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The Education Department’s civil rights office often intervenes when students face discrimination based on race, sex, religion, or disability and their families can’t resolve complaints locally. Parents fear the effort to gut the federal agency will leave them with nowhere to seek justice.
Firearm violence is killing Americans at the scale of a public health epidemic. The suffering is concentrated in Black neighborhoods damaged by segregation, disinvestment, hate crimes, and other forms of racial discrimination.
KFF Health News senior correspondents Fred Clasen-Kelly and Renuka Rayasam discuss how government decisions undermine Black health.
The United States has made almost no progress in closing racial health disparities despite promises, research shows. The government, some critics argue, is often the underlying culprit.
John Parker was in first grade when he was struck by a pickup truck driving on Durham’s Cheek Road, which lacks sidewalks to this day. Neighborhoods with no sidewalks, damaged walkways, and roads with high speed limits are concentrated in Black neighborhoods, research finds.
For years, federal lawmakers have failed to deliver the money needed to fix derelict public housing, leaving tenants — mostly people of color and families with low incomes — living with mold and gun violence that has had lasting health consequences.
Gun violence is the No. 1 cause of death for children and teens in America. Vivek Murthy says the toll extends beyond deaths, as survivors deal with “a lifetime of physical and mental health impacts” and those who witness shootings become traumatized.
New Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley is promising to change how the agency reclaims billions of dollars it wrongly pays to beneficiaries, saying the existing process is “cruel-hearted and mindless.”
Federal officials have long warned that restraint and seclusion in schools can be dangerous and traumatizing for children, but school districts often fail to report incidents as required by law.
The Social Security Administration is reclaiming billions of dollars in alleged overpayments from some of the nation's poorest and most vulnerable, leaving some people homeless or struggling to stay in housing, beneficiaries and advocates say.
Mandy Cohen, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, earned praise for her leadership and communication as the face of North Carolina’s response to covid-19. People in the state’s most vulnerable communities tell a more complicated story.
As politicians bash privately run hospitals for their aggressive debt collection tactics, consumer advocates say one North Carolina family’s six-figure medical bill is an example of how state attorneys general and state-operated hospitals also can harm patients financially.
With little or no income, disability applicants are seeking Social Security early retirement benefits even though it could cost them tens of thousands of dollars in future income, lawyers say.
In a nation with one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, imprisonment speeds the aging process, research shows. Some experts complain the federal government isn’t collecting or releasing data that could identify disease patterns and prevent deaths.
The First Step Act was supposed to help free terminally ill and aging federal inmates who pose little or no threat to public safety. But while petitions for compassionate release skyrocketed during the pandemic, judges denied most requests.
The United States is suffering from a severe shortage of affordable housing. But elected officials have done little to fix a problem that puts many Americans at greater risk for sickness and shortens lives.
Some doctors and medical practices voluntarily give rebates on a bill if an injury occurs during a procedure, while others will not, an expert says. Here’s how patients can respond.
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