Black women offer a solution to racial health disparities

How race science influences breast cancer research

Despite researchers' and physicians' pushback, race is still used in studies and clinics to categorize human differences in health conditions and treatment responses. This article explores how race has influenced breast cancer research. Considering race as a factor in cancer research, diagnosis, and treatment can lead to racial inequalities. Sociocultural factors, including food access and air pollution, greatly influence health outcomes.

Women's health research continues to be underfunded

Health conditions that affect women more than men get less research funding. This interactive collection of graphs details the gendered gap in health research funding. Of the conditions that affect one sex more than another, those that create the...

Black women played a central but often overlooked role in the suffrage movement

Although the women's suffrage movement is often portrayed as a white story, Black women like Truth, Ida B. Wells, and Mary Church Terrell fought for voting rights—frequently facing racism within the movement itself.

Read a study about racial differences in Lyme disease diagnosis

The research published in September 2025 examined differences in Lyme disease diagnosis among Medicaid and Medicare beneficiaries using data from 2016 to 2021. It notes that though US Lyme disease surveillance data indicates more than 90% of diagnosed Lyme cases are among white people, people of color—particularly those who identify as Black or African American—have higher rates of more severe disease of Lyme, with symptoms including arthritis and neurologic impacts.

Black Americans with diabetes have amputation rates three times higher than average

Annually, 130,000 US diabetics undergo amputations due to complications from diabetes, with many patients located in low-income and uninsured neighborhoods. More than half of US diabetics who lose lower limbs are not subject to pre-surgery angiograms, imaging that shows blood flow blockages to determine if (and where) amputation is necessary.

The lack of diversity in DNA databases limits their applications

European ancestry dominates genetic research, hindering the usage of genetic databases for precision medicine for other groups, including African Americans, who face higher health risks due to genetic variants. Many Indigenous communities have also resisted genetic research due to past exploitation. (Some readers may experience a paywall.)

White patients waited 374 days for a kidney—Black patients waited 727 days

A 2022 congressionally mandated report highlighted racial inequities in the US organ transplant system, including disparities that made it more likely white people will be placed on organ wait lists than Black people. It spotlighted inequities such as racial differences in median kidney wait times identified in earlier research. The report, from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, recommended fixes including that the Department of Health and Human Services develop national performance goals for the system and achieve equity in the system in the next five years.

Black Americans were systematically excluded from juries for much of US history

Literacy tests, poll taxes, and even explicit laws kept Black Americans off juries until well into the 20th century. The Jury Selection and Service Act of 1968 mandated that federal juries reflect a fair cross-section of the community, though racial disparities in jury selection persist.

Indigenous women are murdered at 10 times the rate of all other ethnicities in the US

Murder is the third-leading cause of death among Indigenous women, who are also 2.5 times more likely to experience violence than any other group. More than 4 in 5 Indigenous women have experienced violence in their lifetime.

How meal timing factors into health outcomes

The world is trending toward weight gain, a development that comes with a corresponding rise in risk for health conditions, including diabetes and heart disease. This article explores how meal timing has become a factor in nutrition and weight maintenance.

Do wearables help those with chronic disease?

The integration of wearable technology in healthcare has promised significant benefits for chronic disease management, yet the actual impact remains underexplored. This systematic review published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research...

Examining golf's problems with race

In 1961, the PGA removed the "Caucasian-only" membership clause, marking the last major professional sports organization to desegregate. But unlike other sports, golf didn't see an influx of Black players following the change. This article from The Ringer's Lex Pryor examines golf's complicated history with race and gender, showing both the progress made and the challenges that remain.

Explore US public health data

This resource tracks key US health metrics, including mortality causes, child survival rates, and life expectancy comparisons, to inform future health improvements, with regularly updated global estimates.

How failures at Versailles Conference led to more racial inequality

Suffering a pandemic and the aftermath of a war that killed 50 million, the world in 1920 faced a turning point as it negotiated a new political order. As today, the key issue was racial inequality.

Private education offered an alternative for Black Americans

The early public school system was ostensibly designed for all Americans, but it was also racially segregated, offering substandard schools for Black Americans. Some private schools were founded to combat that problem, including St. Frances Academy in Baltimore, the United States' oldest predominantly Black Catholic high school.

Advocate estimate roughly 27% of Black service workers live below the poverty line

That’s significantly higher than the rate for restaurant workers overall. Approximately 37% of tipped workers are mothers, nearly half being single moms struggling with income volatility. This article includes more statistics about what the average tipped worker looks like and offers a peek inside their lives.

It has historically been tough for minorities to rise through the ranks in investment banking

According to a Barron’s article, only about 1.3% of the $69T asset management business is managed by firms led by women or minorities—even if their performance is comparable to those led by white men.

How self-care led to Ozempic's success

Self-care has become a $1.5T economy that idealizes restraint and willpower, leaving behind those who can't shake off human nature. This article explores how Ozempic and similar weight loss medications pick up where self-care left off.

One reason Americans are bad at math

The president of Barnard College explains why we need to better understand the links between math anxiety, math avoidance, and the US’s dismal test scores.

An excellent look at how Democrats lose working class voters.

Democrats fear they are losing white swing voters over racial politics. Three studies suggest that the party’s elite culture may be the real problem.

The resurgence of Black lung disease in coal miners

Black lung disease is a preventable condition long associated with coal miners who regularly breathe in toxic coal dust. Simple workplace safety procedures make the disease entirely preventable, but cases are rising. Due to lax enforcement of rules, miners in Central Appalachia are increasingly diagnosed with cases stemming from silica dust inhalation.

Meeting someone with common healthcare challenges can be life-changing

The understanding that comes from meeting others who have similar experiences can provide hope that life can get better, the solace of affirmation, and make navigating a new diagnosis or a rare illness, in particular, much easier.

Why South Korean women are having fewer babies

For decades, Asian countries have been combating dwindling birth rates by basically bribing families into having more children: offering government-subsidized housing, free IVF treatments, and even straight-up cash handouts. It hasn’t worked. In this BBC video, a TV producer, a cartoonist, and a private-school teacher explain their views on having children in 21st-century Korea.

We're breathing microplastics

White blood cells can't fight off microplastics and that sparks inflammation and bigger health risks. They're in our food, water, even the rain. What does that mean for us?

Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ campaign sparked conversations about beauty standards in media

For the 20-year anniversary of the campaign in 2024, Dove conducted a brand-commissioned study to gauge how perceptions of beauty standards have shifted since its launch. While 81% of US women thought “the media and advertising set an unrealistic standard of beauty that most women can’t ever achieve” in 2004, the share had shrunk to 69% in 2024. Watch the ad here.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Larger animals like giraffes, elephants, and blue whales have developed a unique defense against cancer, a phenomenon known as Peto's Paradox

Telehealth demand for GLP-1s for weight loss is booming as consumers seek easier access.

Cultural norms about how to handle the bodies of loved ones in communities in West Africa have hampered Ebola responses.

US consumers collectively owe more than $1T to credit card companies—almost as much as they owe in auto loans.

Studies suggest when you sleep is as important as how much you get, and syncing with your circadian rhythms may lead to less fatigue and improved long-term health outcomes

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

20,000 letters to the advice columnist 'Dear Abby' provide insight into prevailing sex, religion, and LGBTQ fears, anxieties, and concerns from the 1950s onward.

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

Alzheimer's can lead to brain shrinkage, with an average of around 2% of volume reduction per year

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

The United States is one of only around two dozen countries with a fully federal system of government, in which power is divided between national and state governments.

Use this tool to calculate the dollar value of your parental mental load, from meal planning to coordinating after-school care, then see resources that help generate solutions.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Watch how algorithms can be designed to train themselves and self-improve without human input, to the point where the optimized code is too complex for programmers to understand.

11 people died from firework injuries in the US in 2024.

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

Dozens of S&P 500 stocks, including Coca-Cola and Walmart—known as the dividend aristocrats—have increased dividends every year for 25 years

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.