Smoking and obesity are the two leading causes of preventable death, disability, and chronic disease in the United States. New research shows that eliminating them could go a long way in reducing racial health gaps. But location also plays a key role in health disparities, with neighborhood setting and state-level policies shaping residents’ health, this…

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The prescription opioid painkillers that helped fuel the surge in U.S. drug overdose deaths were first approved by the Federal Drug Administration in late 1995.

The before-and-after fatality rates tell a shocking story: In 1994, the age-adjusted drug overdose death rate was 4.8 deaths per 100,000 people; by 2015, the rate had more than tripled to 16.3 per 100,000.

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The persistent separation of racial groups across U.S. neighborhoods has lessened slightly due to mixed-race marriages, according to researchers at Pennylvania State University and the University of Washington. But residential patterns differ depending on the racial makeup of the couple. Residential Segregation Declining Overall, residential segregation—neighborhood separation of whites, blacks, Asians, and Hispanics—has been consistently…

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In Nigeria, where 10 percent of the world’s deaths to children occur, literate mothers are much less likely to see their children die before their fifth birthday than their illiterate peers, according to a new study published online in the journal, Demography.1 And having a mother who can read well also makes a difference for…

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There are more than 16 million children in immigrant families in the United States, and they are one of the most rapidly growing segments of the U.S. population. Most are U.S. citizens who were born in the United States to foreign-born parents. They face complex cultural and social challenges, navigating between their parents’ backgrounds and…

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