Toxic lead-based paint was banned in 1978, but the threat of poisoning persists. In suburban Cook County, officials say as many as half a million homes have lead paint hazards that present enormous health threats for young children.

The Department of Veterans Affairs found Black veterans may be more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder than their White counterparts. However, an internal VA report shows Black veterans were more often denied benefits for PTSD.

Millions worldwide have had long COVID, with dozens of widely varying symptoms including fatigue and brain fog. Scientists still don’t know what causes it, why it only strikes some people, how to treat it -– or even how to best diagnose it.

Officials with the Chicago Department of Public Health have documented 29 cases of the virus that can cause intensely painful lesions between April 22 and Tuesday, after recording just five cases between Jan. 1 and April 15, according to city data.

The U.S. surgeon general is calling for tech companies and lawmakers to take “immediate action” to protect kids’ and adolescents’ mental health on social media.

A dense green tree canopy can reduce the effects of air pollution and climate change. A 2019 study by the city found Little Village was among communities burdened by higher air pollution — and now, the neighborhood is planting the seeds for change.

A 2022 Guardian analysis found that majority Black and Latino neighborhoods had the highest concentration of lead in their tap water. As of a few months ago, the city of Chicago had replaced fewer than 300 lead service lines out of about 390,000.

RSV fills hospitals with wheezing babies each fall and winter, and the virus struck earlier than usual and especially hard in the U.S. this past year.

With Mayor Brandon Johnson vowing to reopen the city’s shuttered mental health clinics, some advocates are looking at the administration to reinvigorate and reimagine the city’s approach to providing mental health services.

Nearly nine out of 10 adults in the U.S. say that the benefits of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccines outweigh the risks – a share that’s remained unchanged since before the COVID-19 pandemic, according to data published Tuesday by the Pew Research Center.

Capping an improbable rise and carrying the hopes of a political movement determined to remake Chicago as a more equitable place to live, Brandon Johnson was sworn into office Monday as Chicago’s 57th mayor.

“We are going to reopen the mental health clinics,” Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson said in an interview with WTTW News, putting it first in a list of his top priorities.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle was unsparing in her criticism of Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott for continuing to bus thousands of migrants to Democratic cities such as Chicago and New York.

The findings were published Tuesday in the journal JAMA Network Open and stem from a survey that followed the lives of thousands of children in Chicago since the mid-1990s. 

Federal health advisers said a decades-old birth control pill should be sold without a prescription, paving the way for a likely U.S. approval of the first over-the-counter contraceptive medication. Currently, a prescription is required in the U.S.

Saint Anthony Hospital has been a Chicago fixture on the Southwest Side for more than a century. Residents and local leaders say it’s time to upgrade the hospital facility but that they keep getting overlooked.