#healthcare-disparities

#healthcare-disparities

"This argues for the need to sustain such policies and shows that it is possible to right the wrongs retroactively, which is a powerful idea," said Kenneth Michelson, MD, MPH, associate professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Emergency Medicine and a co-author of the study.

Kaiser Permanente has been steadily shrinking its local office presence in recent years, contributing to quieter streets and struggling small businesses in the city's core.

Congress has kept key drug assistance funding at $900.3 million annually since 2014. New enrollments for state programs jumped 30% from 2022 to 2024, in part because states cut off pandemic-era Medicaid assistance. As of January, at least 18 states have pulled back their Ryan White AIDS Drug Assistance Programs, known as ADAPs, in some way.

Pregnancy is the only condition where Florida courts have ruled that a patient can be forced to undergo unwanted treatment. Even a state prisoner on a hunger strike has more rights to make medical decisions.

A child born this morning in Britain can expect to be in good health only until they are 61. The last 20 years of their life will be blighted by illness: dodgy hearts, painful joints, an inability to get about. Our healthy life expectancy has been dropping for years; it is now the lowest since 2011, when records began.

Dunbar provided more than curative medicine. It also offered preventive care, professional training and organized advocacy. It was led largely by members of W. E. B. Du Bois' "Talented Tenth," a cadre of educated and socially conscious Black Americans who advocated for marginalized Black Americans. Their efforts provide lessons for advancing health equity today.

Nearly 90% of the land in the United States is rural and about one in five people, or some 60 million, live throughout it according to the U.S. Census.

Because of budget cuts, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health has ended clinical services at seven of its public health clinic sites. As of Feb. 27, the county is no longer providing services such as vaccinations, sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, or tuberculosis diagnosis and specialty TB care at the affected locations, according to county officials and a department fact sheet.

In light of the systemic dismantling of America's public health agencies, these moves essentially create a shadow infrastructure to maintain some of what is being lost. While this is a promising development, it does nothing to stop a troubling trend that has been emerging for some time: The country is quickly becoming fragmented along partisan lines when it comes to public health.

Doctors told us my grandson wouldn't live past three months, but they didn't know Elijah was capable of. Today he's 7 years old, stubborn as ever and fighting every day to prove them wrong. Elijah was born with cerebral palsy. Caring for him is a full-time, all-hands-on-deck operation that includes in-home nurses, physical and occupational therapy, school support and a small pharmacy's worth of medications.

Health Minister Sylvia Jones says about 275,000 people have been attached to primary care so far in the first year of the government's plan. More than half of that progress is due to moving people off the Health Care Connect wait list.

Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

February is a time to honor Black history, resilience, and progress. It is also a moment to confront an uncomfortable truth: in New York City, equity in health, family stability, and community well-being is still shaped by race and zip code. For too many Black families, structural inequities continue to limit access to care, not because of individual choices, but because of where people live and how our systems are designed.

If you're smoking three packs of cigarettes a day, should you expect society to pay when you get sick?" He added that while Americans would always have the right to "eat donuts all day," nevertheless, "should you then expect society to care for you when you predictably get very sick at the same level as somebody who was born with a congenital illness?

The most significant immediate change arrived Jan. 1 with the expiration of enhanced premium tax credits, which help defray the cost of monthly premiums for Americans enrolled in plans sold by health insurance exchanges such as Covered California. RELATED: Bay Area Affordable Care Act policyholders brace for price hikes With Congress not renewing these subsidies, which arrived in 2021 and are in addition to the initial income-based credits made available under the Affordable Care Act, enrollees will see their payments increase significantly this year.

Adult literacy advocate Toni Cordell recounts the story of feeling comforted when her doctor told her that her medical concern could be solved with an easy surgery. She agreed to proceed without asking further questions and didn't understand the medical consent forms because she didn't read well. At a follow-up office visit a couple of weeks after the procedure, Cordell was shocked when the nurse asked, "How are you feeling since your hysterectomy?"

In 2026, the US healthcare system is changing. Enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies have expired, causing premiums for marketplace plans to spike - and pricing some families out of health insurance entirely. President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act will reduce coverage for some patients with Medicaid and funding for hospitals, especially those in rural areas. Costs for Medicare and private insurance are also rising: Employer-based healthcare premiums have increased by 9%, the largest rise in more than a decade.

For all cancers, the five-year survival rate more than doubled since the mid-1990s, rising from 17% to 35%. This also signals a 34% drop in cancer mortality since 1991, translating to an estimated 4.8 million fewer cancer deaths between 1991 and 2023. These significant public health advances result from years of public investment in research, early detection and prevention, and improved cancer treatment, according to the report.

Bronx residents are more likely to experience systemic challenges that impact pregnancy, from living below the poverty line to limited access to healthy food and prenatal education. Yet the most preventable cause of maternal deaths is discrimination during hospital care. The maternal mortality rate is twice as high if the mother is Black, when compared to white moms. Over 71% of mothers who died during childbirth in the Bronx, were Black and Hispanic, according to the 2021 Health Department report.

Black people in the U.S. aren't just more likely to have HIV - they're more likely to be criminalized for it. Black Americans accounted for about 38 percent of new HIV diagnoses and 39 percent of people living with HIV in 2023, according to a report from the Williams Institute, despite making up around 12 percent of the population. Black women had the highest HIV diagnosis rate at 19.6 per 100,000, which is about 11 times the rate for white women at 1.8 per 100,000.

The issue is particularly critical right now for people who have insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. Prices for those plans have skyrocketed this year after Congress failed to extend critical tax credits. Without those credits, monthly premiums for ACA plans have, on average, more than doubled. Early data on ACA enrollments for 2026 not only suggests that fewer people are signing up for the plans, but also that those who are enrolling are often choosing bronze plans, which are high-deductible plans.