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Public health
Posted inNovember 2025: Precious Metalheads
Heavy metal is healing teens on the Blackfeet Nation
In response to youth suicides, teachers show students the power of headbanging at Fire in the Mountains festival.
Posted inArticles
The aging Los Alamos lab at the center of America’s nuclear overhaul
Contamination incidents, work outages and declining infrastructure have plagued the site, but the lab remains the linchpin in an effort to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons.
Posted inArticles
La carrera armamentística nuclear pone a prueba el laboratorio de Los Álamos
El laboratorio donde Oppenheimer desarrolló la bomba atómica es el eje del esfuerzo de EE. UU. por modernizar sus armas nucleares. Pero el centro ha enfrentado incidentes de contaminación, interrupciones de obras e infraestructuras obsoletas.
Posted inNovember 2025: Precious Metalheads
Want fluoride in the water? Too bad.
Across the West, lawmakers are skipping over the will of voters and yanking fluoride.
Posted inArticles
The rural West’s increasing health care costs haunt the shutdown
Health insurance costs are skyrocketing, and federal tax credits that make it more affordable are expiring.
Posted inArticles
Tribal governments fend off the worst of the impacts of the shutdown
In the weeks leading up to the shutdown, tribal nations hefted their political and economic capital to protect services for their citizens.
Posted inAugust 2025: Fire Culture
911’s hidden emergency
A former firefighter makes the case for community paramedicine in the age of climate change.
Posted inAugust 2025: Fire Culture
Flow like the San Juan
If western rivers have been recognized as legal persons, they must be queer and disabled persons.
Posted inJuly 2025: Seeds as Sustenance
Our grief is what brings us together
On a rapidly warming planet, we are not alone in our fear.
Posted inJuly 2025: Seeds as Sustenance
‘I see no reason to compromise my value system’
#iamthewest: Giving voice to the people that make up communities in the region.
Posted inArticles
The Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe is bridging Nevada’s healthcare gap
A new mobile clinic serves 2,000 Indigenous patients.
Posted inArticles
Working in the Permian Basin comes at a high cost
Oil workers in New Mexico are subjected to harrowing conditions that lead to death, injury, disease and terrible tolls on mental health and family life.
Posted inArticles
A new Montana majority defangs the far right
Disaffected Republicans and resurgent Democrats just took over the Montana Legislature and spent big on education and health care.
Posted inMay 2025: The Art of the Cruise
The toll of Bozeman’s housing crisis
At the small city’s only emergency shelter, demand is higher and the work is harder than ever.
Posted inArticles
Nearly all federal workers who investigate firefighter deaths fired
The Trump administration made cuts at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which also halted a study of the causes of thousands of firefighters’ cancer cases.
Posted inArticles
Contamination threatens the last source of clean groundwater in west New Mexico
The toxic legacy of Cold War uranium mining and milling has shattered lives, destroyed homes and created a pollution problem for an entire region.
Posted inArticles
Uranium trucks on Arizona’s ‘Killer 89’ spark alarm in tribal communities
White Mesa residents say they’d be last to know about accidents despite being closest to danger.
Posted inArticles
EPA takes unprecedented step to remove uranium waste from the Navajo Nation
The decision opens the door for new ways to manage uranium pollution on tribal land.