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Children living on edge of malnutrition in India at greater risk of “food shocks” during national lockdowns to curb COVID-19

Child in a field in India

With one out of two children in India suffering from one form of malnutrition, there are many more who are hovering just above that threshold. The findings of this paper published in the Journal of Global Health Science estimate that even a slight shock to body weight could result in a significant uptick in cases of underweight and wasting. Study authors Sunil Rajpal, William Joe, and S V Subramanian make…

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Gita Sen speaks out about impact of COVID-19 on global community of women, adolescents and children

Gita Sen at Harvard Pop Center

Professor of global health and population Gita Sen, PhD, has collaborated on a Commentary published in The Lancet that warns about how the coronavirus pandemic is stressing the The Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health (2016-2030) efforts to reach its target goals. She was also interviewed in The Jakarta Post and shares her views about the “backlash against gender equality.” “We are living in deeply unsettling times. The…

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Narrowing in on disparities in life expectancy across the U.S. with help of census-tract level data

Neighborhood

A study published in PNAS is the first to look at life-expectancy data at the local, state, and county levels across the U.S. Findings reveal significant disparities at the micro level (census-tract) suggesting that analyzing life expectancy data at the typical state and county levels may not be local enough to get an accurate picture of life expectancy inequalities. “There is a need for greater precision and targeting of local…

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How is COVID-19 impacting Asians, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the U.S.? This team is going to find out…

AAPI COVID-19 Project title and description

The research project AAPI COVID-19 Project launched by the Harvard Sociology Department in partnership with UNESCO will investigate the increase in racism aimed at Asians in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Harvard Pop Center Associate Director Jason Beckfield is serving as co-principal investigator on the team. Learn more in this piece in The Harvard Gazette.

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The power of policy; what happens when sweetened beverages are taxed & school meals are legislated to be more nutritious?

Image of soda bottles and veggies

A review of two implemented policies—an excise tax of 1.81 cents/ounce on sweetened beverages in Philadelphia, and the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010—shows that both policies had a positive impact on health and health behaviors. Authors of the studies include Harvard Pop Center faculty affiliates Sara Bleich and Steven Gortmaker, and former post-doctoral fellow Christina Roberto. Learn more in this EurekaAlert release.

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American Cancer Society renews research award to Nancy Krieger

Head shot of Nancy Krieger

Congratulations to Professor Nancy Krieger on being named as one of four recipients of a five-year research grant awarded by the American Cancer Society’s Extramural Grants program. Learn more about this prestigious research grant… “In the current challenging fundraising environment, it is gratifying to be able to make these awards to these highly esteemed investigators, who continue to break new ground, mentor future leaders, and lead the way in cancer…

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Novel approach to help predict and diagnose diseases tracks electronic health records over time using machine learning

Head shot of Estiri_Hossein

Harvard Pop Center faculty member Hossein Estiri, PhD, is an author on a study published in Cell Patterns that is receiving attention in the media for its sequential approach to mining meaningful (as it relates to predicting and diagnosing diseases) patient information from complex electronic health records. “In this paper, we propose an algorithm for exploiting the temporal information in the EHRs that is distorted by layers of administrative and…

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