Alex Smith

Gun buying among African Americans is up in recent years, and so are suicide rates among young Black men.

Gun buying among African Americans has soared in recent years. So have suicide rates among young black men. Gun safety efforts and suicide prevention need to address race and cultural differences.

The environmental movement is doing more to address the psychological toll on activists and volunteers, encouraging resilience and self-care to counteract anxiety and grief over planetary damage.

After her son's death, a mother in the Midwest promotes mental health for environmentalists. It's part of a larger push to address the burnout and psychological stress that can affect activists.

Data collection for race and ethnicity vary among states, complicating efforts to distribute COVID-19 shots to all groups. In Missouri, health officials have questioned the data's usefulness.

To avoid racial or ethnic disparities in vaccination rates, health officials are doing outreach. But demographic data quality varies between states. In Missouri, there are errors they can't quite fix.

In Kansas City, hospitals are treating local COVID-19 patients as well as patients transferred from rural counties in Missouri and Kansas, where there's no mandate or culture for wearing masks.

With coronavirus infections at record rates in rural areas, the sickest patients are being sent to big cities for care, and those urban hospitals are getting alarmingly full.

Health communication experts say that misinformation spread through support groups can undermine trust in medicine and science. But some patients work to counter falsehoods with facts.

Rural Missouri counties are becoming coronavirus hot spots, with some slow to embrace safety protocols. Testing problems and funding delays only worsen the situation.

Missouri is the second state to expand the health care program via ballot measure during the pandemic. Nearly a quarter-million people could get health insurance thanks to the measure.

Missourians will vote Tuesday on whether to expand Medicaid to uninsured adults. The pandemic has raised the stakes for residents who have lost jobs and insurance coverage.

Health and hospital officials in two states report that a Trump administration change to how pandemic data is collected has left them unable to access vital information.

Experts say a bit of extra drinking isn't a problem for many people, but they recommend watching out for specific behaviors that signal addiction.

New treatment guidelines don't assuage concerns that some children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are being prescribed medication too soon, before behavioral interventions are tried.

New ADHD guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend children five or older take medication and get therapy as soon as they are diagnosed. Some experts say this is the wrong approach.

Naltrexone, commonly used for opioid and alcohol use disorders, may also help patients with chronic pain — when prescribed in microdoses. But few doctors or patients seem to know about it.

Many parents testified that their children's allergies had been brought under control by the treatment. But some experts are still concerned about its safety.

Loretta Boesing is on a mission to make sure prescription drugs delivered by mail are safe and effective. The life of her son — and others who order medicine by mail — could depend on it, she says.

Despite running against the Affordable Care Act for years, many Republicans are airing ads saying they support a central feature of the law: the requirement that pre-existing conditions be covered.