Youth in the United States who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer (LGBTQ) face widening health disparities compared with their straight or cisgender peers, and LGBQ young adults experience more psychological distress and suicidal thinking than older generations of LGBQ Americans, recent studies show.1 (Responses from transgender participants were examined separately.) “We are…

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Most American teenagers are sleep deprived: Fewer than one in four U.S. high school students gets the recommended eight hours of sleep per night.1 Researchers who study the relationship between sleep and depression are unanimous: Adequate sleep could greatly improve many U.S. teenagers’ mental health. “Perpetually fatigued adolescents look and feel depressed,” says Rachel Widome…

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Shutdowns and restrictions early in the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted contraceptive services, abortion access, and other sexual and reproductive health care across the globe, new research shows. In many places, providers shifted toward telemedicine; in the United States, more women received medication abortions. But women from disadvantaged groups faced more obstacles to receiving care as the…

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Drug- and alcohol-related death rates among pregnant and recently pregnant American women increased sharply between 2015 and 2019, faster than among women of childbearing age in general, new research shows. “We need to broaden our view and look beyond complications of childbirth and pregnancy to fully understand the threats to recently pregnant women’s lives,” says…

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In the United States, Black-white disparities in maternal mortality—deaths related to pregnancy or childbirth—may be larger than previously reported, new research shows. Closing the gap involves addressing structural racism—that is, those aspects of social, political, economic, and health care systems that reinforce inequity, researchers say. Because pregnancy is riskier to women’s health than abortion, state…

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Births to U.S. teenagers have been declining for a dozen years and reached another record low in 2020. But birth rates are far higher among U.S. teenagers ages 15 to 19 (15.3 per 1,000 females) than their peers in Canada (eight per 1,000 females), Sweden (five per 1,000 females), and many other high-income countries. New…

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