Public Health

Do soda taxes fight obesity? How did Juul hook American teens? Vox tackles all your questions about public health issues and trends.

Why does the US keep running out of medicine?

By Dylan Scott December 5

Syphilis rates are soaring in South Dakota’s American Indian communities. What’s going on?

By Keren Landman November 18

Going home for the holidays? Boost, mask, and test beforehand.

By Allie Volpe November 18

New RSV vaccines are coming. This is very, very good news.

By Keren Landman November 1

Forget tainted candy: The scariest thing on Halloween is parked in your driveway

By Muizz Akhtar October 31

Why everybody you know is sick right now

By Dylan Scott October 27

The 2022 midterm elections, explained

John Fetterman survived a stroke. It could be an asset if he’s elected.

By Keren Landman October 26

There’s a morning-after pill to prevent sexually transmitted infections

By Keren Landman October 25

Our buildings are making us sick

By Keren Landman October 24

The Future Perfect 50

Lucia Coulter and Jack Rafferty want to strip the world of lead-based paint

By Dylan Matthews October 20

The Future Perfect 50

Target Malaria’s scientists are working to rid Africa of an ancient plague

By Dylan Matthews October 20

The Future Perfect 50

Jennifer Doudna helped rewrite life with CRISPR

By Bryan Walsh October 20

The Future Perfect 50

Zeynep Tufekci has been consistently ahead of the curve on Covid-19

By Siobhan McDonough October 20

The Future Perfect 50

Kevin Esvelt wants to make the world safe from — and for — biotechnology

By Bryan Walsh October 20

The Future Perfect 50

DARPA changed technology. Now Renee Wegrzyn wants to bring the same innovation to medicine.

By Bryan Walsh October 20

The Future Perfect 50

Our health care data infrastructure is broken. Caitlin Rivers hopes to fix it.

By Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg October 20

The Future Perfect 50

Josh Morrison took risks for science, and he thinks you can, too

By Muizz Akhtar October 20

Why do labs keep making dangerous viruses?

By Kelsey Piper October 19

America’s increasingly atrocious access to maternity care, explained in 3 charts

By Dylan Scott October 13

Rising rates of syphilis in babies should set off all our alarm bells

By Keren Landman October 12

A wave of anti-vaccine legislation is sweeping the United States

By Dylan Scott October 6

Why are American lives getting shorter?

By Siobhan McDonough September 7

Anal and oral sex spread monkeypox. Let’s talk about it.

By Keren Landman August 17

11 Updates

A worldwide monkeypox outbreak

By Vox Staff August 14

Why monkeypox is a repeat of the data mistakes made with Covid-19

By Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg August 14

New York’s polio crisis, explained

By Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg August 12

School vaccine mandates for Covid-19 are not happening

By Rachel M. Cohen August 8

7 of your most pressing monkeypox vaccine questions, answered

By Keren Landman August 8

Monkeypox should have been easily controllable. How did we fail so badly?

By Kelsey Piper August 5

Should you get another Covid-19 vaccine booster now or wait for the new shots?

By Umair Irfan and Keren Landman August 4

Finally, an answer to the question: AI — what is it good for?

By Bryan Walsh August 3

You still need to tell your friends if you get Covid

By Allie Volpe July 31

The smallpox vaccine stockpile isn’t the monkeypox solution we need — yet

By Keren Landman July 29

We’ve all got Covid-19 fatigue, but BA.5 shows it’s not over

By Ellen Ioanes July 24

We’re battling a sleep loss epidemic. California has a plan to fight it.

By Sigal Samuel July 2

The Aftermath

By Vox Staff June 30

Health care in jails and prisons is terrible. The pandemic made it even worse.

By Victoria Law June 28

The end of Roe will mean more children living in poverty

By Dylan Scott June 24

The dire health consequences of denying abortions, explained

By Dylan Scott June 24

How the US got so dependent on baby formula

By Dylan Scott June 17