Martha Bebinger

President Trump has announced new rules banning certain transgender people from serving in the military. The new policy replaces the administration's earlier ban on transgender troops.

Opioid overdoses and related deaths are still climbing, according to U.S. statistics. Teasing out which overdoses are intentional can be hard, but is important for treatment, doctors say.

Most transgender Americans say they are discriminated against, but not everyone agrees on where it's coming from according to a new NPR poll.

A week after violent clashes during a white nationalist march in Charlottesville, Va., today's "Free Speech" rally in Boston was met with massive counter-protests.

Doctors, consumers and politicians say big federal cuts to Medicaid funding would jeopardize the treatment a lot of kids rely on. The state would either have to make up lost funding or cut benefits.

People often turn to public restrooms as a place to get high on opioids. It has led some establishments to close their facilities, while others are training employees to help people who overdose.

Emergency room doctors are just beginning to study a new kind of casualty in the opioid epidemic — patients who survive an overdose, but walk away with brain damage, kidney failure or dead muscle.

People who abuse opioids are well aware of the risk posed by fentanyl, a powerful anesthetic that's increasingly slipped into heroin and other drugs. They're coming up with new tactics to survive.

Law enforcement is scrambling to get ahead of the opioid, which is far more chemically potent than heroin. Most illegal fentanyl is made in China. As soon as one version is outlawed, another pops up.

So far this year, more than 1 in 4 donations in New England are from people who died after a drug overdose — a much higher rate than in the U.S. overall, though it's not clear why.

Studies suggest that smoking heavily in adolescence may affect brain function in adulthood, but there's a dearth of hard evidence for voters contemplating pot's long-term effects.

As doctors and nurses learn more about what the body goes through during drug use, they are changing the treatment they provide for patients on heroin and other drugs.

A Boston health clinic that treats transgender kids and teens finds that the percentage of its young patients who are adopted is higher than expected. These kids might need extra support, doctors say.

The FDA has approved the Probuphine implant for medication-assisted therapy for opioid addiction. It lasts for six months, compared to daily pills. But it also will be more expensive.

A refrigerator-sized machine could someday make lifesaving drugs on site when outbreaks occur or where medicine is in short supply, like on the battlefield.

The FDA could soon approve an implantable form of a drug used to treat opioid addiction. While the approach helped patients avoid relapse in tests, its price may be prohibitive for some, doctors say.

Set to open within a few weeks, the room will not be a place to inject drugs or get high, say health providers. Instead, a nurse will monitor heroin users as they come down from the drug's effects.

A state analysis reveals that the majority of overdose deaths in 2014 came from heroin or prescription opioids taken in combination with cocaine, anti-anxiety medications or alcohol.

A Harvard Medical School study found that online symptom checkers, such as WebMD and the Mayo Clinic, are only accurate about half the time.

Martha and Alvaro Galvis were wounded in 2013's bombing of the Boston Marathon. One of the hardest things to deal with, they say, is the feeling that something random and scary could happen again.