The independent source for health policy research, polling, and news.
821-840 of 3,731 results
The gay community is disproportionally affected by the monkeypox outbreak, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says public health efforts should prioritize gay and bisexual men. But in the South, some LGBTQ+ advocates fear that this is not happening consistently. They say they are having to take matters into their own hands in the absence of a coordinated response from state governments.
Shortly after birth, babies are pricked in the heel so their blood can be tested for life-threatening conditions. States generally save leftover blood from those samples, and parents and privacy experts are concerned that information could be used without consent years later.
California and New York would be the first states to require anyone under 18 to obtain prescriptions to purchase over-the-counter weight loss products, which some research has linked to eating disorders.
With fears of a winter surge looming, government agencies have authorized and encouraged vaccination with a newly formulated booster. But the science to support that decision remains inconclusive.
KHN and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
Doctors and health officials say more children in the state are growing up with wildfire, which can cause stress, depression, anxiety, and other lasting trauma. Experts say there are ways to help kids stay calm.
A federal judge in Texas — the same one who tried to strike down the Affordable Care Act as unconstitutional in 2018 — has ruled against some of the ACA’s preventive benefits, including the requirement that employers cover medication to prevent HIV. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs tries to make abortions slightly more available to veterans and their dependents. Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, Sarah Karlin-Smith of the Pink Sheet, and Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also this week, Rovner interviews KHN’s Lauren Sausser, who reported and wrote the latest KHN-NPR “Bill of the Month” installment.
California state Sen. Richard Pan, who spearheaded some of the country’s most ambitious vaccine mandate legislation, is leaving office this year because of term limits. A pediatrician, he plans to practice medicine full time but has not ruled out a future run for office.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has tapped Mary Wakefield to help “reset” the agency after its public failures handling the covid pandemic. Those who know Wakefield say her high standards and problem-solving skills make her a good fit for the job.
KHN and California Healthline staff made the rounds on national and local media this week to discuss their stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
The National Weather Service is now gauging heat risk in a way that better suits Colorado as summers in the Centennial State get hotter and longer.
The omicron variant has proved adept at finding hosts, often by reinfecting people who recovered from earlier bouts of covid. But whether omicron triggers long covid as often and severe as previous variants is a matter of heated study.
A new report from the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a National Public Health System calls for a major overhaul of the way the U.S. organizes, funds, and communicates about public health, particularly in the harsh spotlight of the covid-19 pandemic. In this special episode of KHN’s “What the Health?” host Julie Rovner and KHN’s correspondent Lauren Weber interview the commission’s chair, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, former commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, about how to fix what ails public health.
Dashboards that rely on positive covid test results reported to local health departments no longer paint a reliable picture of how covid is spreading in an area. Some experts say wastewater surveillance is the most accurate way to measure viral activity. Meanwhile, some wastewater labs face funding shortfalls.
As public libraries morph into support hubs for homeless people with mental illness or addiction, librarians are struggling to reconcile their shifting roles.
People in jails and prisons are particularly vulnerable to the fallout from the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade.
Public health officials and resettlement groups across the U.S. have used community organizers to encourage newly arrived refugees and other vulnerable people to get vaccinated against covid-19. In a Georgia city that is home to many refugees, the vaccination rate is higher than in the state, county, and surrounding communities of similar socioeconomic status.
Los Angeles County is getting 60% fewer doses of monkeypox vaccine than officials expected, after the FDA said every vial could be split into five shots.
Know-how gained through the covid pandemic is seeping into other public health areas. But in a nation that has chronically underfunded its public health system, it’s hard to know which changes will stick.
Nonprofit federally funded health centers are a linchpin in the nation’s health care safety net because they treat the medically underserved. The average profit margin is 5%, but some have recorded margins of 20% or more in three of the past four years.
© 2026 KFF