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Ryan White

Content Editor

Ryan White is content editor of CenterforHealthJournalism.org, where he oversees daily content across a range of health topics. He also is the lead for the Center’s Health Matters webinar series. Ryan has nearly two decades of experience reporting, writing and editing for newspapers in California, national magazines and online outlets. After graduating from UC Berkeley in 2003, Ryan reported widely on the environment, local politics, urban planning, affordable housing and public health issues throughout the Bay Area and Los Angeles. In the past, he’s worked on KQED’s public television program “This Week in Northern California,” served as the editor of the Alameda Sun, worked as a reporter and editor for Marinscope Community Newspapers and freelanced for a long list of outlets. He was a 2012 California Fellow, reporting on the plight of the “anchor out” community in San Francisco Bay.

Articles

For children who've suffered trauma and abuse, positive relationships can be elusive. In L.A., an innovative children's center and an alternative all-girls high school are helping kids and teens forge trusting relationships and meaningful narratives out of a traumatic past.

Health spending increases in the U.S. have slowed, but costs are still rising. This week's National Fellows heard from two innovative programs that are trying very different approaches to cutting costs by managing patients who are among the highest utilizers of our health care system.

A new review published this week marshals further evidence that childhood vaccines are not associated with autism or leukemia. Meanwhile, pertussis and measles outbreaks have been on the rise, partly owing to parents choosing to not have their kids vaccinated.

It's well-known that toxic stress and childhood adversity can lead to poorer health. But sobering new research focusing on the tips of chromosomes finds that a child’s experience of traumatic, violent family events can impact kids at the most basic cellular levels.

The American Academy of Pediatrics announced a new policy this week urging parents to read to their kids starting at birth, and for pediatricians to recommend the practice during doctor visits. The policy reflects recent research that stresses the importance of early literacy in child development.

A quirk in the Affordable Care Act may leave an estimated half-million children without access to affordable health coverage, and that number could grow. The glitch in the law could be easily fixed by the president or Congress, but despite recent efforts, the problem persists.

The media cycle seems perpetually filled with reports of violence perpetrated against or by young people. But there are some encouraging trends in the data on violence and abuse against young people. Researchers just aren't sure how to explain the gains.