Public Health

For years, California has used a limited number of categories to map out health trends among Asian ethnic groups. People of Taiwanese descent may have been folded into the Chinese demographic group in identifying death, disease and pregnancy rates. Fijian people were lumped into the category of “other Asian.” But thanks to a new law, […]

At his home in Haverhill, Mass., Colin LePage leafs through newspapers he shows to middle-schoolers to educate them about the dangers of drugs. (Martha Bebinger/WBUR) This story is part of a partnership that includes WBUR, NPR and Kaiser Health News. It can be republished for free. (details) On the final day of June 2015, Colin […]

The Food and Drug Administration is investigating repeated problems with a portable compressor for artificial hearts that may have played a role in the death earlier this month of a 57-year-old Orange County, Calif., man. Officials at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where the man’s artificial heart was implanted, said they believe the apparent […]

Researchers have discovered a piece in the puzzle of how the Zika virus spreads in human cells and neutralizes the body’s defenses. A study by scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine answered a fundamental question posed by biologists: What happens when the virus enters a human cell? Zika infections lead […]

AUSTIN — Peggy Wall, a family nurse practitioner at a local community health center, treats many women in their 40s, who already have a family and find themselves confronting an accidental pregnancy. Many, she says, wish they had taken preventive steps after their last child was born and could be good candidates for getting an […]

Nurse practitioner Kim Hamm talked in soothing tones to her 14-year-old patient as she inserted a form of long-acting contraception beneath the skin of the girl’s upper arm. “This is the numbing medicine, so you’re going to feel me touch you here,” she said, taking the teen’s arm. “Little stick, one, two three, ouch. And […]

Yana Shapiro is a partner at a Philadelphia law firm with an exhausting travel schedule and two boys, ages 9 and 4. When she feels run-down from juggling everything and feels a cold coming on, she books an appointment for an intravenous infusion of water, vitamins and minerals. “Anything to avoid antibiotics or being out […]

Television is making me anxious about sex — more anxious than usual. I keep seeing scary ads featuring young people asking their parents why they didn’t get the vaccine to protect against the human papillomavirus — HPV. If you’re unfamiliar with HPV, it’s a sexually transmitted infection that has been linked to various cancers, including cervical […]

Dr. Zoe Maher has never been busier. In addition to being a trauma surgeon and a new mom, she’s spent the last year and a half talking to hospital patients and community groups across Philadelphia about a study she’s confident will save more adult gunshot and stab wound victims. On a recent Saturday morning, Maher […]

PAWTUCKET, R.I. — Dustin French, 29, had four drug overdoses in the span of a year. “I was dead on arrival to the hospital,” he said of his last heroin overdose, which happened in April. “I woke up … and I didn’t feel like myself. I could tell this time I was really dead.” Now, he […]