health

Earlene Avalon was nervous that Saturday’s lashing rainstorm would keep people away from the Black Family Wellness Expo, but the forecast wasn’t enough to slow the hundreds of people who came to the historic 12th Baptist Church to receive the blessings of health guidance.

As big chain pharmacies shutter stores in Boston and across the country, local advocates are looking to independent pharmacy stores and community health centers to fill the gaps that are left behind.

Valarie Molyneaux’s vitiligo diagnosis in 2002 turned her life upside down. “I drove my car to Jamaica Pond and wanted to drive it in,” said Molyneaux, a Hyde Park resident

Life expectancy for Americans, including for Black Americans, is on the rise, due to the decline in the prevalence and severity of COVID-19. Nevertheless, a racial gap exists in life expectancy. As of 2022, Black life expectancy was 72.8 years, compared with 77.5 years for white Americans.

“I have never been sick a day of my life. I don’t smoke. I rarely drink. Breast cancer does not run in my family. And yet, here I am with stage three breast cancer,” Sidner, 51, said on air.

The treatments, both produced by Boston-area companies, join 32 other approved gene therapies and are approved to treat the disease in the United States.

Black men are dying from prostate cancer at about 2.1 times the rate of other men for reasons that remain unclear, which is why Mark Kennedy took it upon himself to spend a decade screening about 5,000 men who would otherwise have not been given the chance.

Lung cancer is the third most common cancer in this country, but the most deadly. It is the leading cause of cancer deaths in both men and women. According to the National Cancer Institute, an estimated 237,740 new cases will be diagnosed in 2022 and over 130,000 deaths.

Black patients had worse breast cancer outcomes than their white counterparts, according to researchers at Mass General Cancer Center who also noted other factors that contribute to survival rates.

Officials at Boston’s community health centers, taking their message deep into the neighborhoods, are encouraging residents to get vaccinated as flu season begins —and before they get sick.

New research from Brigham and Women’s Hospital could eventually lead to therapies that could further treatment and understanding of all kinds of debilitating addictions.

A new research partnership between the Broad Institute and pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk aims to help develop new treatments for diabetes.