New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ended years of contentious debate Wednesday by announcing that the health and environmental risks of fracking were greater than the benefits and that the controversial method of harvesting natural gas would be banned in the state.

Recommended standards for clinical low-back pain research hold promise for more consistently designed research and, in the long term, better treatment solutions to support those living with chronic low-back pain. The recommendations from the National Institutes of Health Task Force on Research Standards for Chronic Low-Back Pain were published in several leading back pain journals.

Although the $1.1 trillion federal spending bill passed by Congress last week avoided a government shutdown, it fell short on protecting the health of Americans - particularly children, according to the American Heart Association (AHA).

A new American Cancer Society (ACS) study finds that despite significant drops in smoking rates, cigarettes continue to cause about three in ten cancer deaths in the United States. The study, appearing in the Annals of Epidemiology, concludes that efforts to reduce smoking prevalence as rapidly as possible should be a top priority for the U.S. public health efforts to prevent cancer deaths.

The glut of U.S. workers contending with obesity and other chronic health troubles is costing companies more than $153 billion annually in lost productivity from absenteeism, alone—a situation exacerbated by even more staggering productivity loss from the four-times more detrimental “Presenteeism.”

You might be surprised to learn that how you feel emotionally can have a big effect on your heart health. In fact, the relationship between depression and heart disease is a two-way street. Not only does depression appear to promote heart disease, but it can also result from a heart attack.

The cigarette smoking rate among adults in the U.S. dropped from 20.9 percent in 2005 to 17.8 percent in 2013, according to new data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in a recent Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR).

Obese employees miss more work days, and those absences carry high costs at the state and national level, according to a study in the November Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).

Constant stress — whether from a traffic-choked daily commute, unhappy marriage, or heavy workload — can have real physical effects on the body. It has been linked to a wide range of health issues, including mood, sleep, and appetite problems — and yes, even heart disease.