Many families are under financial stress, parents see kids seriously behind in school, huge rent bills and looming evictions and delayed medical care has negative consequences, to name a few.
Roughly 175,000 children in the U.S. have lost one or both parents or a grandparent caregiver to COVID-19, according to a new study. The majority come from racial and ethnic minority groups.
An estimated 300,000 people were held in solitary confinement in the U.S. at the height of the pandemic. Advocates are pushing to limit the practice, citing lasting harm to prisoners' health.
Public health data experts have a new way to calculate the underreporting of people killed by police. Criminologists call the results "interesting" but are reserving judgment on the accuracy.
The Illinois Department of Health says an elderly man died from rabies after waking up with a bat on his neck and refusing rabies treatment. It's the first case in the state since 1954.
We don't know the full impact of nonfatal firearms-related injuries. Unreliable data and political pressure have obscured the picture for researchers, the media and the public. That may soon change.
Boosters are available for higher-risk people who got the Pfizer vaccine. But what about people who got the one-shot Johnson & Johnson? Some doctors say they need an extra shot even more urgently.
Many K-12 school districts are tapping federal funds to pay for regular surveillance testing of students. It's an effective pandemic tactic when used alongside mask-wearing and other precautions.
Newly published U.S. data finds overdose deaths from methamphetamine use more than doubled in recent years. Use of the stimulant among Black Americans surged nearly tenfold.
Though infections are still sky-high, the U.S. may be turning a corner, according to a consortium of researchers who forecast the pandemic. And we may well be spared a winter surge.
Scientists are still studying whether the deworming medicine could have any effect on COVID-19. But the frenzy over the drug has far more to do with politics than science. Here's how that happened.
Patients with advanced cancer and heart disease are among those who have had to wait for surgeries and other procedures as critically ill, unvaccinated COVID patients strain the medical system.
Simone Gold isn't alone. NPR found other physicians who retained their licenses despite spreading misinformation online and to the media about effective COVID-19 vaccines and unproven treatments.