public health

Levine leads the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.

Francis Collins has served longer than any other director of the National Institutes of Health since 1971. He tells NPR he did not anticipate the culture wars taking over scientific fact.

An estimated 300,000 people were held in solitary confinement in the U.S. at the height of the pandemic. Advocates are pushing to limit the practice, citing lasting harm to prisoners' health.

More than 500 companies submitted applications for 6.5 million vaping products to the FDA. The agency ruled on some of them but did not yet make a decision on products made by Juul.

A mild flu season last year means fewer folks are immune to strains starting to circulate now. Scientists predict 100,000 to 400,000 extra U.S. hospitalizations with the deadly flu virus this year.

With the global pandemic still in the spotlight, more than 200 leading health journals say climate change is an even more urgent threat.

A leaked CDC document compared it to the highly contagious children's disease. Data does not support this claim. Nonetheless, the variant is one of the world's most contagious respiratory diseases.

Some public health experts are also parents of little kids, and have to strategize to keep those too young to be vaccinated safe from getting or spreading the delta variant. Here are their tips.

In an NPR interview, William Burns says he has appointed a senior officer who led the hunt for Osama bin Laden to head the investigation into ailments that has afflicted U.S. officials worldwide.

The highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus is spreading fast and driving new cases and hospitalizations. Here's what you need to know to keep yourself and your kids from getting sick.

More than 93,000 people died of a drug overdose in the U.S. last year, according to new CDC data. Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids accounted primarily for the rise, which the pandemic exacerbated.

Life expectancy fell by nearly two years between 2018 and 2020, largely due to COVID-19. Declines were most pronounced among minority groups, including Black and Hispanic people.