When people seek mental health treatment in Washington, insurance companies are supposed to cover that care just like they would physical ailments.

Instead, people often find that coverage denied — and they aren't always told why.

A bill moving through the state Legislature aims to change that.

House Bill 1432 would require all insurers in ...Read more

BALTIMORE — It will likely be weeks before public health agencies know the full extent of measles exposure in Virginia and Maryland following the discovery of an infected person living in Howard County, officials said.

The Maryland Department of Health reported Sunday that an unidentified patient tested positive for the highly contagious ...Read more

The U.S. educational landscape has been drastically transformed since the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered school campuses five years ago.

Access to high-quality teachers and curriculum developed by teachers is shrinking, for example. Likewise, there has been a loss of emotional support for students and a decline in the school use of ...Read more

John Sullivan, chief medical officer of St. Clair Health System, spent 33 years in the Navy. And when he thinks back to this week five years ago, he likens the early COVID-19 days to a military deployment.

"I still get a little PTSD talking about this, honestly, thinking back on that week," he said. "We were scared for our own lives, working ...Read more

Birds in the United States can be affected by avian flu, also called H5N1 bird flu or avian influenza. But can it affect your family?

Bird flu is caused by avian influenza type A viruses, including the avian flu type A(H5N1) that is the most recent strain circulating in our country. The virus is known to infect birds around the world.

...Read more

In the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was full of questions.

Dr. Jeffrey Hsu recalls the fear of the unknown as he and other health professionals confronted a virus they didn't understand, much less know how to treat.

"It was quite scary," said Hsu, a cardiologist and an assistant professor-in-residence at the David Geffen ...Read more

DEAR MAYO CLINIC: It seems like no matter what I do, I can't lose weight. Most of my family members struggle with their weight too. Do our genetics play a part in this?

ANSWER: It's important to understand that we are all unique and gain weight for many different reasons. When trying to understand weight gain and why some of us have difficulty ...Read more

It began with some foul-tasting wine.

As a sales rep for software company Ansys, Brandon Apodaca went out for drinks regularly and traveled by plane every other week. Throughout the pandemic, he continued traveling for work.

"I didn't take this seriously at all," he said. "I was one of those people that said, 'I am healthy, I'm fit, I've never...Read more

While the promise of longer evenings can be appealing to many after a long, dark winter, the looming "spring forward" comes with a range of potential health concerns.

Losing just one hour of sleep can throw off our internal clocks in ways that ripple through our health, spiking risks for heart problems, groggy commutes and restless nights. As ...Read more

As clocks march ahead and daylight saving time begins, there can be anxiety around losing an hour of sleep and how to adjust to this change.

Usually an hour seems like an insignificant amount of time, but even this minimal loss can cause problems. There can be significant health repercussions of this forcible shift in the body clock.<...Read more

U.S. measles cases jumped by a third over the past week, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data, a worrying sign in the outbreak that’s already linked to two deaths.

New Mexico’s health department listed Friday that an adult who had died and then tested positive for measles had succumbed to the disease, though the ...Read more

Investigations into the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster revealed that key decision-makers worked on little sleep, raising concerns that fatigue impaired their judgment. Similarly, in 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil spill resulted in a massive environmental catastrophe. The official investigation revealed the third mate, in charge of ...Read more

Panelists at a COVID conference last fall were asked to voice their regrets — policies they had supported during the pandemic but had come to see as misguided. COVID contact tracing, one said. Closing schools, another said. Vaccine mandates, a third said.

When Marty Makary’s turn came, the Johns Hopkins University surgeon said, “I can’t...Read more

In Washington’s debate over enacting steep funding cuts to Medicaid, words are a central battleground.

Many Republican lawmakers and conservative policy officials who want to scale back the joint state-federal health program are using charged language to describe it. Language experts and advocates for Medicaid enrollees say their word choice ...Read more

The National Institutes of Health is the largest federal funder of medical research in the U.S. NIH funds drive research and innovation, leading to better understanding and treatment of diseases and improved health outcomes.

The NIH provided more than US$35 billion in grants to over 2,500 universities and other institutions in 2023 to...Read more

TUSTIN, Calif. — Cynthia Williams is furious with U.S. House Republicans willing to slash Medicaid, the government-run insurance program for people with low incomes or disabilities.

The 61-year-old Anaheim resident cares for her adult daughter, who is blind, and for her sister, a military veteran with severe post-traumatic stress disorder and...Read more

Like many anxious parents, Beth Spektor spent the last few weeks fretting over how to protect her infant daughter from the first deadly measles outbreak to hit the U.S. in a decade.

Her 9-month-old was too young for the first dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, typically given to American toddlers shortly after their first birthday....Read more

Can't sleep at night?

Researchers say the reason – and the solution – could be lurking in your kitchen. The ingredients for poor sleep can be found in every meal, and the less you sleep, the more likely you may be to consume them.

"It's a cycle," said Dr. Marie-Pierre St-Onge, an associate professor of nutritional medicine in the division ...Read more

As much as half of the fentanyl sold on Philly’s streets contains an industrial chemical used in plastics manufacturing. That’s according to our November 2024 testing of fentanyl samples collected in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, regarded as the largest open-air drug market on the East Coast.

What’s more, the amount,...Read more