By Paul Chisholm 23 June 2018 (NPR) – The fact that rural, economically disadvantaged parts of the country broke heavily for the Republican candidate in the 2016 election is well known. But Medicare data indicate that voters in areas that went for Trump weren’t just hurting economically — many of them were receiving prescriptions for […]
By Annabelle Timsit 11 June 2018 (Quartz) – We’ve long known that processed sugar is bad for kids. And yet new data presented this week (June 10) at the American Society for Nutrition’s annual meeting show that American infants are consuming excessive amounts of added sugar in their diets, much more than the amounts currently […]
29 March 2018 (CDC) – An in-depth analysis of 2016 U.S. drug overdose data shows that America’s overdose epidemic is spreading geographically and increasing across demographic groups. The report, from researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), appears in today’s issue of MMWR. Drug overdoses killed 63,632 Americans in 2016. Nearly two-thirds […]
By Susan Scutti 8 June 2018 (CNN) – Suicide rates increased by 25 percent across the United States over nearly two decades ending in 2016, according to research published Thursday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Twenty-five states experienced a rise in suicides by more than 30 percent, the government report finds. […]
By Rosamaria Loures, Sue Branford, and Maurício Torres 31 May 2018 (Mongabay) – “The gold mining in our territory is bringing a lot of illness, a lot of malaria. It’s bringing alcohol into our communities. It’s bringing drugs into our territory,” said Maria Leusa, a Munduruku female warrior and a leading member of the Ipereg […]
30 May 2018 (UN News) – Cases of lead poisoning have been reported in the area near the factory, located in a poor area in the coastal city of Mombasa. The environmental defenders have been harassed and intimidated since an initial court hearing against the company which took place on 17 May 2018, and fear […]
By Christina Capatides 26 May 2018 (CBS News) – As more and more American communities grapple with opioid addiction, the human toll of the epidemic has grown in both scope and severity. And now, scientists at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife have found evidence that drug’s impact has literally flowed downstream to affect […]
21 May 2018 (UNODC) – In 2017, opium cultivation in Afghanistan reached a record high with an estimated 328,000 hectares, up 63 per cent compared with 201,000 hectares in 2016.According to the latest survey report released today by UNODC, last year’s record levels of production has led to unprecedented levels of potential heroin production. From […]
By Heather Long 25 May 2018 (The Washington Post) – The U.S. economy has a problem. The usual economic bench marks look really good: America in 2018 is enjoying faster growth, low unemployment, record numbers of job openings and a stock market near an all-time high. Yet an alarming number of Americans are still struggling […]
By Kat J. McAlpine 21 May 2018 (Vector) – Over-prescribing has long been thought to increase antibiotic resistance in bacteria. But could much bigger environmental pressures be at play?While studying the role of climate on the distribution of antibiotic resistance across the geography of the U.S., a multidisciplinary team of epidemiologists from Boston Children’s Hospital […]
