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Cities and towns are again in deep waters this summer trying to hire enough lifeguards to open their public pools. Many are proceeding with sensitivity to issues of race and ethnicity.
Cardiovascular disease is the biggest killer of older Americans, with Black and Hispanic people at higher risk. Despite medical advances, researchers say, disparities are expected to worsen in the coming decades.
There is no direct evidence that screening women in their 40s will save lives, yet modeling suggests expanding routine mammography to include them might avert 1.3 deaths per 1,000. Highlighting the risk of false positives, some specialists call for a more personalized approach.
State lawmakers have recently been debating whether and how to stiffen punishments for dealers, while Gov. Gavin Newsom is targeting fentanyl trafficking and distributing more naloxone. The problem, experts say, is one with no easy or clear answers.
Infant mortality rates across the South are by far the worst in the U.S. A look at South Carolina — where multimillion-dollar programs aimed at improving rates over the past 10 years have failed to move the needle — drives home the challenge of finding solutions, especially in rural communities.
The profound and painful loss — 80 million years of life, compared with the white population — is a call to action to improve the health of Black Americans, especially infants, mothers, and seniors, researchers say.
A study of roughly 2,700 shootings in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia found that racial disparities in gun injuries and deaths widened during the covid-19 pandemic. Researchers looked only at assaults, excluding accidents or incidents of self-harm.
Carolina Reyes, a physician who specializes in high-risk pregnancies, says providers and health systems have a role in tackling systemic racism. She’s also married to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
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.
An EEG can help diagnose conditions like epilepsy, sleep disorders, and brain tumors. But a design flaw and outdated Eurocentric practices make the test less effective on thicker, denser, and curly hair types, potentially excluding or deterring some people from getting screened.
Researchers found that, while a University of California medical training program has diversified the system’s pool of medical students, there’s not enough long-term data to know whether graduates return to practice where they’re needed most.
Fresh produce prescription programs are getting a boost in Montana as a way of helping people with chronic conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure. The approach may be a model for other rural states to promote healthy eating in food deserts.
American women are more likely to deliver their babies prematurely than women in most developed countries. It’s a distinction that coincides with high rates of maternal and infant death, billions of dollars in costs, and even lifelong disabilities for the children who survive.
With their brains still developing and poor impulse control, teens who carry firearms might never plan to use them. But some do.
The federal government wants to change the way health insurers use prior authorization — the requirement that patients get permission before undergoing treatment. Designed to prevent doctors from deploying expensive, ineffectual procedures, prior authorization has become a confusing maze that denies or delays care, burdens physicians with paperwork, and perpetuates racial disparities. New rules may not be enough to solve the problems.
Many Black patients also try to be informed and minimize questions to put providers at ease. “The system looks at us differently,” says the founder of the African American Wellness Project.
Today’s public service announcements on gun safety feel somewhat sanitized. It’s time to act with the same kind of visceral public campaign that helped de-glorify smoking. Would filmmakers commit to making action movies without guns, just as filmmakers stopped making smoking glamorous in films?
California has enrolled into Medi-Cal more than 300,000 older immigrant adults lacking legal residency since May, but the state doesn’t know how many more might be eligible. Community workers are now searching for them.
Washington state regulators found formaldehyde, lead, and arsenic in lipstick, powder foundations, skin lotions, and hair products marketed to and popular with women of color. Now legislators there are seeking to ban the products and, like at least a dozen other states, make up for lax federal rules.
Just outside St. Louis, a cemetery for children sits on a hill. A wooden, weather-worn sign welcomes mourners to “Baby Land.” The gravediggers who made the special spot work quietly in the shadows.
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