In the fall of 2005, Alister Martin seemed the most unlikely candidate for Harvard Medical School. Laid up in the hospital with “my face so swollen my mother didn’t recognize me,” he says, the high-school senior was recovering from a brutal gang attack. The situation had escalated to a point that law enforcement advised Martin’s mother, a Haitian immigrant, to pull her son from Neptune (N.J.) High School to avoid further trouble.

While the Affordable Care Act will provide health-insurance coverage for 32 million previously uninsured individuals (most of them lower-income Blacks and Latinos), there’s a serious concern that there won’t be enough physicians to treat these patients. And will new physicians understand the needs of a previously uninsured, undertreated and less-health-aware population?

State and local governments are increasingly stepping in to stop the rampant consumption of soda and candy that is leading to obesity and health disparities. Evidence continues to point to sugar as the culprit, and government intervention may eventually help push soda the way of cigarettes. But the powerful food lobby—like the tobacco lobby—is pushing back with a heavy hand.

Federal healthcare law changes dramatically impact how the industry—hospitals, health-insurance companies and pharmas—do business today. University Hospitals in Cleveland has been aggressively reaching out to the newly insured, predominantly Blacks and Latinos. University Hospital’s Case Medical Center’s Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital, known as UH Rainbow, is receiving a $12.8-million grant to implement a Physician Extension Team, which works to improve the healthcare of about 68,000 children on Medicaid with high rates of emergency-room visits.

Are the companies that bring us junk food and sugary drinks funding feel-good research studies to mask what they’re really doing—driving conditions such as obesity and diabetes to record-high levels, particularly among Blacks and Latinos?