Public Health

Each time over the past decade or so that New York state increased its tobacco tax — now at $4.35 per pack of cigarettes — calls to the state’s Quitline spiked. And as high as the state tobacco tax went, in New York City, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg hiked the tax even more. “I was so […]

The goal is lofty and expansive: to cure, prevent or manage all known diseases by the end of the century. Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, pediatrician Priscilla Chan, announced last month that they planned to invest $3 billion over 10 years to begin tackling everything from Alzheimer’s disease to the Zika […]

Houston-based Legacy Community Health Services, a federally qualified health center, is trying hard to fight the Zika virus. It’s screening pregnant women and following federal guidelines to test people at risk. But despite best efforts, there’s a problem, says Legacy’s chief medical officer, Dr. Ann Barnes. Women who could be infected usually have to wait […]

Louis Casanova is playing cards with a friend on the back deck of a recovery house in Philadelphia’s northern suburbs. He’s warm and open as he talks about his past few years. He started using drugs like Xanax and Valium during his freshman year of high school, and at age 18, Casanova turned to heroin. About […]

As Zika skipped into Puerto Rico and then Florida this summer and threatened to spread northward, an uncoordinated patchwork of mosquito control offices — funded by state health departments, county governments and special tax districts — stretched their budgets in the campaign to track and eradicate mosquito breeding grounds. Though the populations of the two species […]

Retaining the ability to get up and about easily — to walk across a parking lot, climb a set of stairs, rise from a chair and maintain balance — is an under-appreciated component of good health in later life. When mobility is compromised, older adults are more likely to lose their independence, become isolated, feel depressed, […]

Mammograms are said to cut the risk of dying from breast cancer by as much as 20 percent, which sounds like an invincible argument for regular screening. Two Maryland researchers want people to question that kind of thinking. They want patients to reexamine the usefulness of cancer exams, cholesterol tests, osteoporosis pills, MRI scans and […]

The health law prohibits insurers from discriminating against people with serious illnesses, but some marketplace plans sidestep that taboo by making the drugs that people with HIV need unavailable or unaffordable, complaints filed recently with the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights allege. The effect may be to discourage people with HIV from buying […]

It’s been a wild ride for kratom lately. Since Aug. 31, when the Drug Enforcement Administration announced its intention to classify the plant as a Schedule I substance, a group of kratom vendors filed a lawsuit against the government to block the move, angry advocates took to social media in protest and scientists questioned whether they […]