In California, it's been seven months since some 3 million poor and disabled adults lost their dental coverage to budget cuts.

And in thousands of dentist's offices and community clinics — from the rocky north coast to the Mexican border — it's the receptionists who are left to counsel and console patients who have lost their benefits.

Hiding from merciless militiamen and trekking through unforgiving mountainous terrain, Madhel Majok escaped the mass slayings and genocide of the Sudan that killed his parents. The 9-year-old orphan fled to neighboring Kenya, where he then survived vigilante shellings on his crowded refugee camp.

Poverty is the problem that Philadelphia owns.
When Mayor Nutter and City Council consider the fiscal landscape, 62 percent of the budget devoted to battling crime and providing social services for the neediest citizens, they're grappling with the ravages of poverty.

Shantana Smith, a single mother who had not paid rent for three months, watched on a recent morning as men from Eagle Moving carried her tattered furniture to the sidewalk.

The final report of Gov. Pat Quinn's Nursing Home Safety Task Force, issued early Friday morning, for the first time sets out an urgent timetable and concrete road map for a sweeping overhaul of the state's troubled long-term care system.

Ayodeji Ogunniyi is a teacher who connects with students and stays with them until they absorb a lesson, his mentors and supervisors say.

Homelessness in rural and suburban America is straining shelters this winter as the economy founders and joblessness hovers near double digits — a "perfect storm of foreclosures, unemployment and a shortage of affordable housing," in one official's eyes.

For the first time, a new report reveals how counties across America stack up when it comes to health

After her sister kicked her out, Barbara Hollis started bouncing from one friend’s house to another’s, sleeping on couches and keeping her possessions in trash bags. Couch surfing was terrible, she thought as she wandered through a neighborhood where many of her high school classmates lived.

It's been more than a decade since Congress first officially acknowledged that this country has a problem with race and health. In 1999 the government asked the Institute of Medicine—an independent nonprofit whose reports are the gold standard for health-care policymakers—to investigate disparities in health and health care among racial and ethnic minorities.

An urban-versus-rural battle is brewing over the census because prison inmates are counted as residents of the prisons where they are locked up. That inflates the population of the mostly white, rural towns that have the prisons.

My grandson Chasen was on a first-grade bus trip when a classmate got carsick. The other children quickly moved away, mumbling words of disgust. Chasen went over, put his arm on the boy’s shoulder and asked, “Are you O.K.?”

Edwina G. Richardson-Mendelson has been the administrative judge of the New York City Family Courts for nine months, in charge of the judges responsible for the detention of dozens of young people charged with crimes, the vast majority of whom suffer from some form of mental illness.

Since the mid-1990s, the number of children diagnosed with bipolar disorder has increased a staggering 4,000 percent.

Since the mid-1990s, the number of children diagnosed with bipolar disorder has increased a staggering 4,000 percent.

IF BOSTON schools can’t make faster progress in helping students with limited English skills, the US Department of Education will have good cause to withhold some federal aid.

In the 1990s, Dr. John Rich worked at Boston City Hospital. It was a violent time in the city's history, and Rich started noticing a steady stream of young black men who turned up at the emergency room.

Much of the talk of vaccines typically focuses on young children. But older adults can also benefit from the protective effects of vaccines.

Much of the talk of vaccines typically focuses on young children. But older adults can also benefit from the protective effects of vaccines.

When it comes to improving the health of Americans, we normally talk about what happens in a doctor's office.

And when it comes to improving education, we usually focus on what happens in the classroom.