"We want people to come away with a different sense of what constitutes a health story,†says Michelle Levander, a veteran journalist and founding director of the fellowships. “We focus on health as it plays out in the community, as opposed to the medical research arena. We’re trying to broaden journalists’ perspective and encourage fellows to think critically about where ill health starts.â€

"Teen suicide is a very real issue today in the United States. Until now, we've known very little about how much or how little suicidal teens use healthcare services. We found it particularly striking to observe such low rates of healthcare service use among most teens in our study," said lead author Carolyn A. McCarty, PhD of Seattle Children's Research Institute, and research associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine. The study, "Adolescents With Suicidal Ideation: Health Care Use and Functioning," was recently published in Academic Pediatrics.

The new nonprofit group, called Enroll America, plans a state-by-state effort to publicize the expanded availability of health coverage and to help state leaders put in place procedures to simplify enrollment

Overall, there has been an increase in funded school nurse positions in the U.S. in the last decade. But the numbers vary significantly by state, and some districts have no school nurses at all.

The portion of Americans living in poverty last year rose to the highest level since 1993, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, fresh evidence that the sluggish economic recovery has done nothing for the country’s poorest citizens.

Is the key to turning around the obesity epidemic as simple as determining what caused it in the first place? This article goes into the potential effects that policy could have on influencing better food and lifestyle choices to combat the obesity epidemic.

Should the ban on HIV/AIDS organ donation be lifted to provide those with existing HIV increased access to organs?

Three hundred and fifty thousand: That's a conservative estimate for the number of offenders with mental illness confined in America's prisons and jails. In fact, the three largest inpatient psychiatric facilities in the country are jails: Los Angeles County Jail, Rikers Island Jail in New York City and Cook County Jail in Illinois. What can be done?

According to a new analysis, the United States now ranks 41st in the world in terms of neonatal mortality, the death rate of infants less than one month old. The rate is higher in the United States than in, among others, Cuba, Slovakia, Croatia and all of Western Europe and Scandinavia.

Do you know how much sugar is in your favorite drink? About half of Americans drink sugary drinks daily -- and low-income people consume more of them than people with higher income.

Highlights of a Philadelphia community-based program aimed at educating Spanish-speaking residents on health issues.

As best practices and evidence-based practice continue to gather attention, data collection is increasingly seen as a key element in improving care.

This article looks at some trends in eating out, particularly in the fast food sector in the US, which seems poised for change, following the introduction of mandatory calorie labelling this year

"Our study not only demonstrates that there is a racial disparity in acute stroke treatment rates in this predominantly African-American urban population, but identifies two important underlying reasons: African-Americans do not get to the hospital early enough for treatment and they have a greater number of medical reasons for not receiving treatment," says Chelsea Kidwell, MD, director of the Georgetown University Stroke Center.

Alarmed by a shortage of primary care doctors, Obama administration officials are recruiting a team of “mystery shoppers†to pose as patients, call doctors’ offices and request appointments to see how difficult it is for people to get care when they need it.

The Ohio Senate has added an amendment to the proposed state budget at the request of the Ohio Restaurant Association that would ban local municipalities from regulating the ingredients fast food-type eateries can use to prepare foods. "With what the Cleveland City Council did, it just made us think that this might be the beginning of a trend in Ohio and we knew that would be bad for the restaurant industry," Mason said.

This study documents an association between an objective measure of the social environment and sexual orientation–related disparities in tobacco use. These results highlight the need for structural-level interventions that reduce smoking behaviors in LGB youth.

The results of this study of 241 parents found that parental asthma coaching intervention increased outpatient asthma monitoring visits (although infrequent) but did not decrease ED visits.

An asthma self-management program led by peer leaders is a developmentally appropriate approach that can be effective in assisting adolescents with asthma in improving their attitudes and quality of life, particularly for males and those of low socioeconomic status.

To find the free-meal programs in your area, go to the clickable map at https://oh.cnpcares.com/summer/SfspFoodServByCnty.asp

Typically when we think of disparities, we think racial or gender, perhaps economic, but an article in today's New York Times point to the disparities in care that affect people with disabilities. A disturbing look into how the most defenseless in our society are often treated by those who are hired and paid to care for them.

Upstream Public Health, a Portland based nonprofit, recently released a health impact assessment report detailing the benefits of House Bill 2800. The bill, if funded, would create a program reimbursing school districts for buying Oregon food, and a competitive grant program that would fund food, agriculture and nutrition-based activities in schools.

Released by the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse (NDIC).

Kaiser Permanente's initiative is based partly on established clinical guidelines for diet, exercise and medical treatment. In addition, Kaiser solicited ideas from its individual clinics with a high percentage of patients whose blood pressure was under control, and used the most effective strategies. Read more here.

he health center, which is expected to open later this year, will house two primary-care doctors. There will be computer stations for the public and a fully equipped kitchen where a dietitian can lead cooking classes. It also will have space set aside for educational programs that target those with chronic conditions, such as diabetes and hypertension.

This article by Jerry Large from the Seattle Times considers a variety of factors in the reasons behind health disparities.

"This report shows that even higher-income, uninsured families are struggling to meet the high costs of health care," Sherry Glied, assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at Health and Human Services, said in a statement. "No family should bear the burden of being one illness or accident away from bankruptcy."

Accountable care organizations (ACOs) are "formal collaborations of health care professionals who agree to assume responsibility for providing a specific and potentially comprehensive set of health care services to a defined population." Should patient stakeholders have a say? of at least 5000 Medicare recipients

A thought-provoking letter to JAMA exploring the correlation between crime and health disparities.

According to a University of Alabama at Birmingham study published April 26, 2011, online in Cancer, the journal of the American Cancer Society, researchers found that 80 percent of blacks were willing to spend all of their personal finances to extend life, while 54 percent of whites, 69 percent of Hispanics and 72 percent of Asians were willing to do so.

Nabila El-Bassel, Ph.D., and colleagues from the National Institute of Mental Health Multisite HIV/STD Prevention Trial for African-American Couples Group, tested how well an intervention would work that addressed multiple health-related behaviors in African-American heterosexual couples in which one partner was HIV-positive and the other was not.

Without a concerted effort to increase minority representation in medicine as educators, researchers as well as providers, the disparity between providers and consumers of care will worsen—with very negative consequences on Americans' health and health care.

What are lunches like at your kids’ schools? Do you pack them a lunch, or do they eat what’s served in the cafeteria? Are you satisfied with the nutrition they receive, and if not, what would you change?