Chronic Disease Prevention

Efforts focus on chronic but preventable conditions including obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, stroke, asthma, and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. Healthy lifestyles (including exercise and diet), genetics, and the environment are also major foci, as is healthy aging.

FEATURED STORY

Strengthening health systems to address new challenge diseases (NCDs)
Reframing a public health acronym to better encompass the realities of the health dilemmas currently faced by low- and middle-income

OBESITY, DIABETES, AND HEART DISEASE

Shrinking the effects of the obesity epidemic
If we can’t stop Americans from getting heavier, can we at least prevent them from getting sick with obesity-related diseases?

Happiness & health: Are good moods good medicine?
A new avenue of public health explores whether a sunny outlook could mean fewer colds and less heart disease

Obesity in China portends a diabetic disaster
Can brown rice blunt an epidemic?

NUTRITION/HEALTHY LIFESTYLES

Can neighborhoods hurt Our health?
Doctoral student Caitlin Eicher wants to understand how people’s perceptions of their local surroundings shape their health behaviors.

Trans fat ‘ban wagon’
Prohibition in NYC restaurants delivers seismic aftershocks nationwide

Vitamin D:  How much is enough?
Many Americans are deficient, studies show

AGE-RELATED DISEASES

Age-related vision loss
While most disorders result from a combination of both genetic and environmental factors, researchers say parsing out the roles of these two players is complicated business. But according to one new study of the common eye disease known as macular degeneration, it’s possible to characterize and quantify the interplay between genes and lifestyle.

ASTHMA

Public housing, private vice
Should smoking be banned in people’s homes?

Wright ideas: Couple’s combined expertise forges new directions for treating asthma and lead poisoning
HSPH faculty members Rosalind and Robert Wright make connections between environment, emotion, and health

A geographer of health
Nicos Middleton, a research fellow in the HSPH-Cyprus Initiative for the Environment and Public Health, is studying the long-term health effects of traffic pollution in Boston and Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus.

CANCER

Shadow epidemic: Malignancies on the rise in developing countries
While it’s well known that cancer is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide, what is less recognized and understood is the significant growth of cancer in the developing world.

A new twist on inherited cancer risk
Slight DNA variations raise risk of common breast, prostate tumors

Ray of insight
When it comes to radiation exposures, less is more says HSPH alum