Health & Safety

An initiative in New York City is designed to nudge the families of overweight kids and teens to change the way they eat with fruit and vegetable prescriptions. The big incentive? Free produce as well as tips on how best to cook and economize.

Two years ago Pakistan's Punjab province was hit with one of the world's worst dengue outbreaks. This year the number of recorded cases has plummeted. Many leaders credit a mobile phone app that tracks mosquito populations and city workers' efforts to contain them.

If obesity were a disease, would you be more likely to seek medical help because insurance would pay for treatment? Or would you feel stigmatized and just give up? That's the debate surrounding increased efforts to classify obesity as a disease.

For decades, DNA has been used to identify victims of crime, even victims of war crimes. But there's no international standard for using DNA analysis for identifying bodies after a disaster. So some scholars are calling for an international group with the same reach as weapons inspectors.

A proposed road in Alaska is pitting residents against environmentalists. The people who live in a remote village want better access to an airport with year-round flights to Anchorage for medical emergencies. But the road would cut through a wilderness area, which environmentalists say would set a bad precedent.

After decades without any reported cases, dengue fever seems to be getting a foothold in the U.S. In 2009, it surfaced in Key West. This year, 18 cases have been reported this summer in Martin County, Fla.

Suicide rates among Native Americans are already four times the national average. And with recent cuts in federal funding for mental health services across the country, suicide prevention programs may lose ground in the communities that need them most.

Cut a tumor from a child's brain and you may save a life. But surgery can hurt the child if healthy brain cells are removed. A Seattle doctor is working on a substance that might help. It binds tightly to cancer cells and makes them glow, so they're easier to distinguish from healthy tissue.

People who lack special needs but simply want to keep their pets with them all the time can easily find fake "service animal" certifications on the Web. But those phony credentials can create problems for people with disabilities who legitimately need trained service dogs.