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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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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Where we live, work, and play impacts our health. Air pollution and traffic noise from nearby roads and highways can increase residents’ risk of chronic health conditions, but living in areas with more local infrastructure means residents have easier access to health care, healthy food, and recreational facilities. New transportation options such as light rail…

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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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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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