Monica Swahn, Kennesaw State University and Ritu Aneja, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Drinking alcohol is normalized in American society. But the ubiquity of alcohol consumption hides its serious health risks, including cancer.
Colon cancer symptoms usually don’t arise until later stages of the disease, making routine screening imperative for prevention.
Valiantsin Suprunovich/iStock via Getty Images
Many Black patients experience stark differences in how they’re treated during medical interactions compared to white patients.
School meal waivers that started with the COVID-19 pandemic stopped with the end of the public health emergency.
Jonathan Wiggs/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Since nutrition standards were strengthened in 2010, eating at school provides many students with healthier food than is available cheaply elsewhere. Plus, reducing stigma increases the number of kids getting fed.
Class, gender and religion influenced health care in early modern Spain and Latin America.
Diego Velázquez/The National Gallery
Early modern societies in Latin America and Spain saw a convergence of traditional medical knowledge and the professionalization of medicine. The resulting differences in access to care endure today.
Some of the eggs and sperm in these tubes stored in liquid nitrogen may go on to form an embryo.
Jens Kalaene/picture alliance via Getty Images
IVF is a decades-old procedure that has allowed increasing numbers of prospective parents to have children. Evolving legislation may put it under threat.
A cancer diagnosis is serious, but immediately starting treatment sometimes isn’t the best course of action.
ljubaphoto/E+ via Getty Images
People with low-risk prostate cancer are more likely to die from something else. Overdiagnosis and overtreatment can lead to life-changing complications.
Medicine is as much about the human experience as it is about biology.
Jonathan Knowles/Stone via Getty Images
While medical school may teach students about how the body works, it often neglects the social, political and cultural factors that determine health and disease. The humanities can help.
Domestic violence is experienced unevenly across the U.S.
kieferpix/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Childhood adversity can put people at risk of perpetrating domestic violence in the future. Having a supportive social network and learning ways to regulate the stress response, however, can help.
Coping with everyday affronts comes at a cost and requires a certain level of emotional suppression.
RyanJLane/E+ via Getty Images
Racial threats and slights take a toll on health, but the continual invalidation and questioning of whether those so-called microaggressions exist has an even more insidious effect, research shows.
Access to life-saving HIV prevention medications varies by race and other sociodemographic factors.
David Talukdar/Moment via Getty Images
Two-thirds of new HIV infections are among gay and bisexual men. Although cases have decreased among white men, they have stagnated among communities of color.
Cancer cells don’t follow the typical rules that allow a multicellular collective to function.
Dr. Cecil Fox/National Cancer Institute
From math to evolutionary game theory, looking at cancer through different lenses can offer further insights on how to approach treatment resistance, metastasis and health disparities.
Regular testing for HIV protects you and those around you.
pixinoo/iStock via Getty Images Plus
Many people at heightened risk for HIV have never been tested. Those who have self-tested for HIV often don’t go on to receive care or change their sexual behavior.
LGBTQ+ caregivers from racial minorities reported experiencing poorer family quality of life and higher depressive symptoms.
FG Trade/E+ via Getty Images
Discrimination, isolation and stigma related to sexual orientation or gender identity likely contribute to the higher rates of depression and lower quality of life of LGBTQ+ caregivers.
Maternal death rates are higher in the U.S. than in other high-income countries.
Tetra Images/Getty Images
Black women died during or soon after pregnancy at higher rates than any other racial group in every year from 1999 to 2019. American Indian and Alaska Native women had the greatest increase in risk during this period.
A new study found that youth were providing extreme or untruthful responses to CDC surveys on LGBQ student health.
FG Trade/E+ via Getty Images
Potential inaccuracies in CDC high school surveys may have created an exaggerated perception that LGBQ youth engage in risky behaviors, new research shows.
Research reveals what generations of tribes know firsthand: that forced assimilation and unhealthy conditions at compulsory boarding schools takes a permanent toll.
RichLegg/E+ via Getty Images
Native Americans sent to government-funded schools now experience significantly higher rates of mental and physical health problems than those who did not.
An increasing number of health care decisions rely on information from algorithms.
Tom Werner/Digital Vision via Getty Images
Biased algorithms in health care can lead to inaccurate diagnoses and delayed treatment. Deciding which variables to include to achieve fair health outcomes depends on how you approach fairness.
Professor of Clinical and Diagnostic Sciences, Associate Dean of Research and Innovation in the School of Health Professions, University of Alabama at Birmingham