Joanne Silberner

These trips — where volunteers from the West perform surgeries in poorer countries — are a multibillion-dollar endeavor. But is this the best way to provide health care to needy nations?

A New England Journal of Medicine study looks at death rates for children in the U.S. and compares them to rates from countries around the world.

'The Lancet' looks at everything from the potential spread of infectious diseases to the impact on the economy of the country where migrants and refugees have arrived.

Life expectancy is up. The death rate for young children is down. So why is Dr. Richard Horton, editor of 'The Lancet,' worried about global health?

A new study shows that slow rates of diagnosis and delayed access to treatment are the norm around the world.

A major report points out the lack of resources for mental health issues — and offers some possible solutions.

A new museum exhibit in London reveals a hidden side of the literary great. It turns out he was prolific not just as a novelist, but also as a promoter of public health and medical discoveries.

One corner of the garden of Alnwick Castle in northern England grows a hundred plants behind lock and key. Many of the toxic species there were used by medieval doctors — nasty plants adapted to heal.

It's estimated that about 90 percent of people in India in need of mental health treatment go without. A new program is looking to change that by training locals to be mental health counselors.

A different way of providing counseling is being tested in India. It turns out it was tested — but abandoned — in the U.S. decades ago.

A new treatment strategy is being tested out in India, where there are only three psychiatrists for every million people.

It sounds like another melodramatic show: pregnant teen heroine with a boyfriend who's a substance abuser. But there's a lot more to this soap.

0.4 percent.

That's the proportion of global development assistance that goes to mental illness prevention, care and treatment, according to Daniel Vigo. It's $1.5 billion of the $372 billion total health assistance spending around the world over the last 15 years.

Vigo, a psychologist and psychiatrist at Harvard, believes that ...

Pregnant women and new mothers need more attention when it comes to screening for depression, according to recommendations issued Tuesday by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

That came as part of the panel's recommendation that all adults should be screened, in a situation where they can be provided treatment ...

The suicide rate has increased in the past decade, despite the best efforts of hotlines and prevention programs. A Detroit health plan set a zero suicide goal among its members — and achieved it.

The injectable polio vaccine marks its 60th birthday Sunday. For many people, it seems like a relic — isn't the oral version, not the injectable, the vaccine that's supposed to end polio within a few years?

But after being eclipsed by the oral polio vaccine, the injectable version has made ...

Not too many years ago, nearly half of the kids diagnosed with cancer in Guatemala wouldn't come in for treatment. There wasn't much chemotherapy to be had, and parents didn't think treatments worked. Most children with curable cancers died.

The situation is similar in many poor countries. There's little money ...

When I asked climate change expert Tony McMichael back in March how he thought the world would deal with climate change, he said, "It's likely to be an extraordinary century and we're going to have to have our wits about us to get through it."

But the legions of scientists ...

When an Abu Dhabi film company, Image Nation, asked filmmaker Tom Roberts last summer to come up with an idea for a documentary about polio, he was flummoxed.

"Oh God, polio," he says now. "I thought we got rid of it." And then, tongue only partly in cheek, "how boring." ...

Nigeria has been a stubborn hot spot of polio — and that turned out to be a good thing when it came time to fight Ebola.

In late July, a patient with the deadly Ebola virus arrived from Liberia. Health workers knew what to do. The country has created a ...