Last year, state epidemiologists studied an industrialized region east of Houston. They reported finding high rates of cancer, but refused to release key geographic details — a decision some experts say is irresponsible.

Although Harris County has found that industrial air toxics and pipelines can pose a significant risk to residents, emergency management officials say no mitigation initiatives have been developed

As climate change intensifies, heat health risks from accelerated aging to bad decision-making grow worldwide. Here’s what you need to know.

A book on a preventable workplace cancer epidemic by Public Health Watch founder and executive director Jim Morris has won the 2025 Science-in-Society award from the National Association of Science Writers. “The Cancer Factory,” published last year by Beacon Press, chronicled an outbreak of bladder cancer at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company’s chemical plant in Niagara Falls, New York.

The Public Health Watch serial podcast “Fumed,” which profiles two politically conservative residents of a Texas community besieged by pollution, has won a Barlett and Steele award for investigative business journalism. The award is sponsored by the Reynolds Center for Business Journalism at Arizona State University. “Fumed” received the bronze award in the local/regional category. “This is a compelling story of two unlikely activists trying to save their small community from the growing hazards of one of the largest petrochemical hubs in the world, the nearby Houston Shipping Channel,” Barlett and Steele judges said.

Legislation pending in Congress would eliminate discriminatory rules that bar anti-obesity medications from the same coverage afforded treatments of other chronic diseases. But its fate is uncertain.

Reporter Kim Krisberg talks about what she found in reporting a story about low-income Texans who have epilepsy but lack health insurance.

A shortage of mental-health providers and other barriers to proving a disabling condition can make qualifying for benefits especially challenging. Federal funding cuts could worsen the picture.

A shortage of mental-health providers and other barriers to proving a disabling condition can make qualifying for benefits especially challenging. Federal funding cuts could worsen the picture.

Nearly 300,000 people in Texas have the life-threatening, life-altering disease. It’s expensive to treat, so health insurance is crucial, though often out of reach.

The Rio Grande Valley of Texas is engulfed in an Alzheimer’s crisis. That disease -- and other forms of dementia -- is afflicting the Valley’s mostly Latino residents and taxing their caregivers. As Public Health Watch staff writer Raquel Torres reported August 7, Texas ranks second in the nation for Alzheimer’s deaths and third in prevalence. But the state’s lack of funding for memory care and support, along with its ongoing refusal to expand Medicaid, is making matters worse.

Four years ago yesterday – August 17, 2021 – Public Health Watch went live. That first year was a heavy lift; COVID-19 was still among us, and a new variant of the disease, Delta, was surging. The economy was stirring, but people were struggling with inflation and pandemic-related supply-chain interruptions. And, of course, trauma. We at PHW were betting there was room in the increasingly crowded nonprofit news space for an organization that did investigative reporting on threats to public health.

Officials in one of the fastest warming cities in the U.S. don’t track heat-related illnesses and count on an unfunded task force to provide services. Heat deaths hit record highs in 2023 and 2024.

Texas leaders are hoping to boost research funding for Alzheimer's and other dementia-related diseases. But doctors and family caregivers in the chronically underfunded Rio Grande Valley worry they ar...

Texas leaders are hoping to boost research funding for Alzheimer's and other Dementia-related diseases. But doctors and family caregivers in the chronically underfunded Rio Grande Valley worry they are being left behind.

Last year, the EPA issued a rule aimed at reducing cancer-causing emissions from 218 chemical plants around the U.S. On July 17, however, Donald Trump exempted 49 of those plants—including the biggest emitters of two potent carcinogens—from complying until 2028. In the meantime, the Trump EPA says it will reconsider the so-called HON rule and all other emissions standards issued under Biden.

Public Health Watch rarely covers breaking news, but its investigative reporting is often tied to the news — and sometimes foreshadows it. A case in point: the push to slash health coverage for the po...

Public Health Watch rarely covers breaking news, but its investigative reporting is often tied to it — and sometimes, as in the case of a Medicaid crisis, foreshadows it.

Community paramedics play a vital role in providing care and assistance that help keep people out of crisis and stabilize their lives. Rural areas struggle to fund the service.

About a year after Blanco County launched its community health paramedicine program in 2022, paramedic Wesley Patton was referred to a patient in the local jail. The man had been arrested on terroristic threat charges tied to his substance use. Community paramedicine is largely about being proactive and working with vulnerable people to help improve their health before they need emergency care.

The cuts could be ruinous in Louisiana, which could lose up to $35 billion in federal Medicaid support over the next decade, according to KFF, a health policy research group.

Many people in the Delta region of the Deep South say Medicaid work requirements and other health care provisions in the "big, beautiful" tax and spending bill ignore the reality of living in poorer r...

The "big, beautiful bill" would cause 11.8 million more Americans to become uninsured by 2034.