Racism-related stress may help explain why Black women in the United States are over 50% more likely to deliver a premature baby than white women. Just over 14% of Black women have premature births compared with 9% of white women.1 These stark racial disparities have been documented for more than a century, reports Catherine Cubbin…

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Migration is a common strategy used by millions of rural households in less-developed countries facing daily and long-term challenges, including economic risk related to climate change. A migrant is a household member who moves to earn income elsewhere in the country or abroad and often sends a portion back home as remittances to help their…

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In estimating the magnitude of the pandemic, demographers have found that COVID-19 is likely to shorten the average U.S. lifespan in 2020 by about a year.

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To combat obesity and diabetes, lawmakers in a number of U.S. cities have taxed sodas, sports drinks, and sweetened tea, and many are now considering health warning labels. Growing evidence suggests that both strategies—taxes and warning labels—can reduce the purchase and consumption of sugary drinks, research supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child…

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As coronavirus cases rise in less densely populated states in the Midwest and West, the disease, combined with high levels of obesity in rural America, could pose major challenges for health care systems, suggests Mark Lee at the University of Minnesota. People of any age with obesity face a greatly increased risk of severe illness…

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“We live in a country where we have huge numbers of children exposed to parental incarceration. When we talk about the need to reform the criminal justice and mass incarceration systems, we also need to talk about the unintended victims of the current system,” says Christine Leibbrand of the University of Washington. “Incarceration exposes families…

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