Posts by Nate Anderson

You don’t need to be a scientist to recognize that incarcerated individuals are disproportionately impacted by epidemics. The health harms from being incarcerated and the underlying health inequities among those from the communities most likely to be incarcerated in the U.S. — Black Americans and other communities of color — can be a deadly combination.…

Overdose deaths surged during Covid-19. But suicides declined. What happened? After years of steadily moving in tandem, two of America’s worst public health trends diverged during the coronavirus pandemic. Drug overdose deaths jumped 30 percent last year to 92,500, according to newly released federal data, a sudden surge following years of incremental increases once the…

Just as with smoking, people will pay to have their behavior restricted The average person with Internet access spends 2.5 hours each day on social media, by one estimate, and there are now 3.8 billion social media users worldwide. A natural interpretation of these facts is that social media adds tremendous value to our lives.…

There’s no reason to delay any longer I am a primary care doctor who runs our chronic disease and preventive care initiatives at Massachusetts General Hospital, and in these waning days of the pandemic my clinic often feels like a family reunion that has gone really well. I get to catch up with people I…

St. Louis — She screamed and cried, banged on the dashboard, begging her husband to drive faster, faster, faster toward her brother lying face-down on his bedroom floor. Craig Elazer had struggled all his life with anxiety so bad his whole body would shake. But because he was Black, he was seen as unruly, she…

Southwest, American and United have all taken steps to curb in-flight alcohol consumption — and, hopefully, passenger incidents. After a marked increase in disruptive — and sometimes dangerous — behavior by passengers, some airlines are changing their plans to start selling alcohol in the cabin again. Southwest, which banned a woman for allegedly assaulting a…

Joy Thompson was in her early 50s when she started using opioids. Pain medication prescribed for hip replacement surgery in 2014 sent Ms. Thompson, now 58, quickly into addiction. By 2017, after she attempted to sell a gun to an undercover police officer to raise money for drugs, she was behind bars at a state…

Preslee Scott spent more than one afternoon in her early teen years picking up her dad’s empty beer cans and dumping them in the outside trash can after he’d fallen asleep on the couch. So in December, when the Utah teen was asked by her 10th-grade English teacher to write an essay about something that…

Under the loosened guidelines, prescribers will be able to treat up to 30 patients at a time with the drug The Biden administration is easing decades-old requirements that made it difficult for doctors to treat opioid addiction using medication. New guidelines announced Tuesday mean doctors and other health workers will no longer need extra hours…

HUNTINGTON, W. Va. — Larrecsa Cox steered past the used tire shop, where a young man collapsed a few days before, the syringe he’d used to shoot heroin still clenched in his fist. She wound toward his house in the hills outside of town. The man had been revived by paramedics, and Cox leads a…