The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has long been a key source of funding for medical research, but it wasn’t until 1986 that the agency formally established a policy of including women in clinical research. For decades, women received drugs and therapies that had been tested only on men, even though the same diseases can affect men and women differently,...

The criminal trial of former Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship concluded its fourth week. Chris Blanchard the former president of Massey Energy’s Performance Coal Company was the prosecution’s witness for the entire week. The Upper Big Branch mine was part of the Performance Coal Company subsidiary. The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward Jr. provides updates...

When it comes to immunization rates in the United States, the story is a mixed one. Among children, we’ve absolutely excelled. In fact, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers the nation’s childhood vaccination rate as one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century. But when it comes to American adults — 50,000 of...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released the first nationally representative estimates of electronic cigarette use among U.S. adults, finding that more than 12 percent had ever tried the aerosol nicotine products in 2014. So, as is the unfortunate case with many emerging and potential public health threats, it seems like e-cigarette...

The anti-poverty group Oxfam America wants consumers to help poultry workers. Oxfam is calling on consumers to use their purchasing power to demand better working conditions for the 250,000 individuals who work in US poultry processing plants. The target of their demands? The four firms that control about 60 percent of the poultry market: Tyson, Pilgrim’s,...

The US spends far more on healthcare than other advanced countries, but we have worse health outcomes. Ideally, we could slow the growth of healthcare spending and improve outcomes by investing in prevention, creating incentives for providers to give high-value care, and eliminating care that’s unnecessary or harmful. While many of the efforts to achieve...