Public Health

Adding folic acid to foods like cereal and bread — long considered one of the most successful public health interventions to prevent birth defects — may be a less effective strategy than once thought, according to a provocative new study from Stanford University. In 1998, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration required folic acid, a […]

https://kffhealthnews.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/05/zika-eloy-xf_0.mp3 Earlier this year, Katy Mallory’s husband, Dan, traveled to Mexico for business. That itself is not typically a big deal, but Katy is pregnant with twin girls, and Mexico is among the countries where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say mosquitoes are actively spreading Zika, a virus that’s been linked to severe birth defects. Dan […]

We’ve made great progress treating people who are infected with HIV, but if they get cancer they’re less likely to get the care they need, a recent study found. Researchers examined treatment for a variety of cancers, including upper gastrointestinal tract, colorectal, prostate, lung, head and neck, cervix, breast, anal and two blood cancers. With […]

A new label on some of the steaks in your grocery store highlights a production process you may have never heard of: mechanical tenderizing. This means the beef has been punctured with blades or needles to break down the muscle fibers and make it easier to chew. But it also means the meat has a […]

Mosquito control is serious business in Harris County, Texas. The county, which includes Houston, stretches across 1,777 square miles and is the third most populous county in the U.S. The area’s warm, muggy climate and snaking system of bayous provide an ideal habitat for mosquitoes — and the diseases they carry. The county began battling […]

Struggling with long wait times, the Veterans Affairs Health Care System is trying something new: a partnership with the CVS Pharmacy chain to offer urgent care services to more than 65,000 veterans. The experiment begins today at the VA’s operations in Palo Alto, California. Veterans can visit 14 “MinuteClinics” operated by CVS in the San Francisco […]

When Sean Meyers was in a car accident on a November evening three years ago, he was flown by air ambulance to the emergency department at Inova Fairfax Hospital, in Northern Virginia. With his arm broken in four places, a busted knee and severe bruising to his upper body, Meyers, 29, was admitted to the […]

California falls significantly short of a new recommendation by an influential group of pediatricians calling for every school in the United States to have at least one nurse on site. Fifty-seven percent of California’s public school districts, with 1.2 million students, do not employ nurses, according to research from Sacramento State University’s School of Nursing. The […]

BALTIMORE — At home, parents try to keep their children on a regular sleep schedule, with the evening bedtime transition marked by rituals like reading stories, flipping on night-lights and getting tucked in with favorite stuffed animals. But that difference between night and day blurs in hospitals — making it more difficult for young patients […]

In a sunny patch of grass in the middle of Indianapolis’ Crown Hill Cemetery, 45 people recently gathered around a large blackboard. The words “Before I Die, I Want To …” were stenciled on the board in bold white letters. Sixty-two-year-old Tom Davis led us through the thousands of gravestones scattered across the cemetery. He’d […]