Winsten, who spearheaded the successful “designated driver” campaign in the late 1980s and early 1990s to reduce drunk driving, thinks that messages against distracted driving—on television shows, movies, websites, or social media—will eventually change social norms about the acceptability of emailing or texting behind the wheel. And, as he did with the distracted driving campaign, Winsten hopes to enlist the creative talents of Hollywood to get the message out.

“People connect to fictional characters, and become engaged in the story lines,” Winsten said in a May 20, 2013 Harvard Gazette article. “A substantial body of research on social learning has demonstrated that the modeling of behavior through entertainment programming can strongly influence social norms and behavior.”

Read the Harvard Gazette article

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Social media campaign could help stop teen drivers from texting (HSPH news)

Designated Driver Campaign: Harvard center helped to popularize solution to a national problem (HSPH feature)

Read the report.

“This study provides previously unavailable information about the conflict in Sudan, while also demonstrating how humanitarian actors can see other, future disasters in new ways,” said Michael VanRooyen, HHI director and professor in the Department of Global Health and Population at Harvard School of Public Health, in a press release.

The report also corroborated findings of apparent intentional targeting of humanitarian facilities, identification of SAF units involved in specific attacks, and evidence of intentional mass displacement of civilians.

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Read a Harvard Gazette article about the report

In a video interview with MedPage Today, study co-author Gregory Connolly, director of HSPH’s Center for Global Tobacco Control and professor of the practice of public health in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, said the fact that there’s been no recent decline in smokeless tobacco use—while cigarette use has steadily declined—is cause for concern. He noted that the government’s tough measures aimed at reducing cigarette smoking—raising taxes, requiring stronger warning labels, and banning flavors—did not carry over to smokeless tobacco.

“We have to treat all tobacco products alike,” Connolly said. “Otherwise we see this switching of youngsters away from cigarette smoking to combined use of smokeless tobacco and cigarettes, and that is not going to reduce the disease risk in our nation from tobacco.”

See MedPage Today article and video

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HSPH researchers help Israel stamp out tobacco (HSPH news)

Most Americans support reducing nicotine levels in cigarettes to stop children from taking up smoking  (HSPH news)

Dean Frenk, focusing on adaptation, spoke about HSPH’s efforts in both residential and online learning.

Read a Harvard Gazette article about the conference

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Inaugural HSPH edX course draws thousands of students from around the globe (HSPH feature)

HSPH to launch second public health course on edX (HSPH feature)

“I’ll put my chips on brute force, and that is regulation,” said Leape, adjunct professor of health policy in the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) Department of Health Policy and Management, at the recent Association of Health Care Journalists conference in Boston. Following up on his remarks in a May 13, 2013 article for HealthLeaders Magazine, he said, “We need to quit blaming and punishing people when they make mistakes and recognize that errors are symptoms of a system that’s not working right, and go figure that out and change the system so no one will make that error again, hopefully. We have to change the culture so everyone feels safety is his or her responsibility and identifies hazards before someone gets hurt.”

For instance, Leape said, hospitals workers should always disinfect their hands and get immunized against influenza. “But we have no mechanism for making that happen,” he said. “If a hospital doesn’t require it, nothing happens, and that’s not right. It should be illegal….It’s incomprehensible to me that hospitals can continue to not follow practices that are known to make a real difference.”

Read the HealthLeaders Magazine article

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Report: Integrated care should be national priority for patient safety, health system efficiency (HSPH news)

Patient safety expert calls on health care institutions to better manage adverse events (HSPH news)

Patient safety experts call for shorter resident physician shifts (HSPH news)

McNulty is a researcher with NPLI, which studies crisis leadership and trains officials at all levels of government. Resilience means different things to different people, he told the Globe. For those who suffered trauma, it’s the ability to move on. For engineers, it’s systems returning to normal after a disruption. Ecologists look for resilience in the natural world’s ability to adapt to changed conditions following a disaster, such as water levels altered by flooding.

Marcus, NPLI’s co-director, said that it would be difficult for officials to make the Marathon more secure without impinging on its spirit of openness. However, given the pattern of terrorist attacks focusing on areas of maximum disruption, security changes could focus on the areas of greatest vulnerability such as the starting and finish line, he said.

Read Boston Globe story

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HSPH alumni and faculty part of Boston Marathon tragedy response (HSPH News)

The NEJM study was coauthored by Katherine Baicker, professor of health economics at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), and Amy Finkelstein, Ford professor of economics at MIT.

Read the HSPH press release about the latest findings from the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment

Read the NEJM abstract

Two HSPH professors—Ashish Jha, professor of health policy and management, and John McDonough, professor of the practice of public health and director of the Center for Public Health Leadership, both wrote blogs stressing the importance of the benefits afforded the Medicaid group. On May 2, 2013, in his blog “An Ounce of Evidence,” Jha wrote that the finding that health didn’t improve in the Medicaid group doesn’t mean Medicaid doesn’t work, but rather that health care quality overall needs improvement. “There is some evidence that providers who disproportionately care for Medicaid patients deliver lower quality care, but the problem is much bigger than Medicaid,” he wrote. “In fact, most Americans get pretty mediocre quality health care.”

McDonough, in his Boston.com blog “Health Stew,” noted the significant drop in catastrophic medical costs and “surprising decrease in the diagnosis of depression” among Medicaid recipients. He added, “In the end, this is not a debate about numbers or data or studies. This is a debate about values. Do Americans value providing access to necessary medical services and financial protection to the most vulnerable among us or not?”

Read Ashish Jha’s blog, “Misunderstanding Oregon”

Read John McDonough’s blog, “The Oregon Tale: A Medicaid Kerfuffle”

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Hitting the lottery (Harvard Public Health)

Details about how Boston prepared are outlined in a May 1, 2013 Perspective article in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Paul Biddinger, associate director of the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) Center for Public Health Preparedness, assistant professor in the HSPH Department of Health Policy and Management, and medical director for emergency preparedness at Massachusetts General Hospital was a co-author of the article.

“It’s important to remember that the response in Boston generally followed a very carefully crafted and much-practiced set of plans and that those plans owe much to the lessons of others in the unfortunate fraternity of cities that have experienced mass casualties from intentional attacks,” wrote the authors. “We must sustain our efforts as a nation to examine experiences together, plan together, and train together if we are to truly say that we’re learning the lessons of others and improving our ability to respond.”

Another NEJM Perspective article about the Marathon bombing, also published May 1, was co-authored by HSPH student Eric Goralnick, associate clinical director and medical director of emergency preparedness at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Goralnick will earn a master’s in health care management in 2014. The article, titled “We Fight Like We Train,” described how Brigham and Women’s extensive preparations for emergencies helped their personnel respond quickly and efficiently in treating 39 people with serious injuries.

Read the NEJM article co-authored by Paul Biddinger

Read the NEJM article co-authored by Eric Goralnick

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The Boston Marathon bombings: lessons learned for saving lives (Forum at HSPH video)

Disaster response: A decade of lessons learned post-9/11 (Forum at HSPH video)

Crisis responders seek to bridge gaps in emergency response (HSPH feature)

Another prominent HSPH alumnus—William Foege, MPH ’65, also a former CDC director and a major player in the war on smallpox—told the Times that Hopkins is “one of the most tenacious people you’ll ever find.”

Hopkins, who won an HSPH Alumni Award of Merit in 2012, said he doesn’t get discouraged about the long years of fighting diseases. He recalled a man he met in India 25 years ago who said, “ ‘We’re never going to get rid of smallpox here.’ ”

“But we did,” Hopkins told time Times. “So I’m sort of immunized against skepticism.”

Read the New York Times article and watch a video

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William Foege awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom (HSPH news)

History of the School: Leaders and Prizewinners

In the video, Lu cites his 2008 study that monitored pesticide levels in children who normally ate non-organic fruits and vegetables but who were given only organic over a five-day period. “During that five-day period, most of the pesticides [in the children’s urine] disappeared,” Lu said. “We believe the most vulnerable population would be small infants and children, because of their small body weight.” Possible negative health effects from pesticides include impaired mental development or problems with motor skills.

Lu recommends that families seek information about which fruits and vegetables have the highest pesticide residue levels—EWG’s Shopper’s Guide lists a “dirty dozen” on its website, for example—so they can decide when to buy organic instead of regular.

See EWG video featuring Alex Lu

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Vegetables and fruits: Are organic fruits and vegetables better for you? (HSPH Nutrition Source)