Does retirement really lead to worse health? A closer look at women & men in Europe

Although it has been suggested that retirement can be bad for your health, Harvard Pop Center Bell Fellow Philip Hessel, PhD has taken a look at longitudinal data using an instrumental variables approach and his findings, published in Social Science & Medicine, suggest otherwise. Positive effects of retirement on health were found to exist for low as well as high educated men and women.

By honing in on top 5 risk factors for child undernutrition in India, findings could lead to more effective interventions

Harvard Pop Center affiliated researchers including recent Bell Fellow Daniel Corsi, PhD,  research associate Iván Mejía-Guevara, PhD,  and faculty and executive committee member SV Subramanian (Subu), PhD, have published a study in Social Science & Medicine that has evaluated the contribution of 15 common risk factors for chronic child undernutrition in India. The findings point to five risk factors responsible for more than 65% of the problem. Learn more in…

Lisa Berkman on challenges of aging societies at Harvard’s inaugural TEDx event

Harvard Pop Center Director Lisa Berkman, PhD, was a fitting speaker to kick off Harvard’s first TEDx event which explored the challenges posed as populations, influenced by both declining birth and death rates, change shape. Learn more in this Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s news item, and watch the video.

Eliminating ‘food deserts’ not a panacea for improving diet quality & reducing disparities

Harvard Pop Center faculty members Jason Block, MD, and SV Subramanian (Subu), PhD, have co-authored a paper published in PLOS Medicine that suggests that when it comes reducing dietary disparities and improving dietary quality in the U.S. there are more effective strategies than increasing access to healthy foods (eliminating ‘food deserts’). Learn more in this Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health news post, in this piece on MedicalDaily.com and…

A call to make count of law enforcement-related deaths visible

Harvard faculty member Nancy Krieger, PhD, is lead author on a study published in PLOS Medicine that calls for the CDC to to make law enforcement-related deaths (both those cases involving victims of police violence, as well as deaths of law enforcement agents in the line of duty) a “notifiable condition” which would allow public health workers to report this data in real-time. Learn about the how this increased visibility…

Study first to find intervention helpful in preventing traits in adolescent boys that are considered a precursor to psychopathy

Former Harvard RWJF HSS program scholars Margaret Sheridan, PhD, and Katie McLaughlin, PhD, are co-authors on a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry that found a foster care intervention to be effective in preventing the onset of CU (callous-unemotional) traits—a development precursor to psychopathy—among adolescent boys who had been exposed to severe, early deprivation.

Can psychological insights bring relief to U.S. consumer debt burden?

Harvard RWJF Health & Society Scholar Rourke O’Brien, PhD, is author on a paper in Perspectives in Psychological Science that examines psychological barriers to the responsible use of credit and debt, and suggests ways that policymakers could help to remedy the consumer debt issue in the U.S.

Despite economic progress, millions of women in low- and middle-income countries still severely undernourished

Harvard Pop Center faculty and researchers, including Fahad Razak, MD, former Bell Fellow and current visiting scientist, as well as former Bell Fellow Daniel Corsi, PhD, Pop Center Director Lisa Berkman, PhD, and faculty member SV Subramanian (Subu), PhD, are among the authors of a novel study published in JAMA on severe, chronic, adult undernutrition. The study provides the first global estimate of severe undernutrition (defined by body mass index…