public health

President Nixon called for an "all-out offensive" against drugs and addiction. The U.S. is now rethinking policies that led to mass incarceration and shattered families while drug deaths kept rising.

Pathogens can blossom from an outbreak into a pandemic because they "exploit our interconnectedness and expose our inequities and divisions," the World Health Organization's leader says.

A non-profit syringe needle exchange program in Palm Beach County says the pandemic has played a role in the spike in drug overdose deaths.

Epidemiologist Dr. Camara Phyllis Jones says race is merely "the social interpretation of how we look." This social reality is important because different racial groups have different health outcomes.

"The pandemic illuminated inequities that have existed for generations and revealed for all of America a known, but often unaddressed, epidemic impacting public health: racism," Walensky said.

CPR from a bystander can double or triple a person’s likelihood of survival following a sudden cardiac arrest. But not everyone knows the steps. A measure under consideration this session would make training a requirement for graduation.

Despite the progress in vaccinating Americans, there's concern about the threat posed by COVID-19 variants. The White House is urging not to "let down our guard."

The Biden team wants to swiftly vaccinate people of color and others most vulnerable to COVID-19. But health centers are learning that speed and achieving racial equity don't always go hand in hand.

A lingering mistrust of the medical system among many Black people is rooted in the infamous 20th century U.S. study of syphilis that left Black men in Tuskegee, Ala., to suffer from the disease.

COMMENTARY Uruguay determined, long before the U.S.'s premier health agency, it was safe to re-open schools during the pandemic – and made it work.

A new study suggests reopening schools may be safer than previously thought, at least in communities where the coronavirus is not already spreading out of control.

Science writer Robin Marantz Henig has written about dangerous emerging pathogens for 30 years. But none of what she learned could shed light on her own confusing encounter with this virus.