Throwback Thursday: Taking another look at social investment policies and gender health equity (2019 study)

Throwback Thursday news post

Our Associate Director Jason Beckfield, along with then Harvard Pop Center Graduate Student Affiliate Katherine Morris and their colleague Clare Bambra, published a study in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health that found that while European government spending on social investment policies was linked to lower levels of mortality related to cardiovascular disease across the genders, there was variation between the genders depending on the nature of the specific policies.

A hopeful discovery about later-life cognitive function in those exposed to early-life adversity in rural South Africa

Older woman in South Africa

The HAALSI team of researchers is one of the first to look at the impacts of early-life adversity (such as parental unemployment, discord and substance abuse, and physical abuse) on later-life cognitive function in rural South Africa. Their findings published in Psychology and Aging suggest that cognitive function is, for the most part, resilient against early-life adversity.

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…

A closer look at discrimination and systemic inflammation, a key biomarker for stress-related illnesses

David R. Williams and Justin Rogers

Harvard Pop Center postdoctoral fellow Justin Rodgers, and faculty member David R. Williams are among the authors of a critical review and synthesis published in Brain, Behavior and Immunity that summarizes the literature about discrimination and inflammation, explains the recent findings, and offers recommendations for future research.

How accurately have prediction models forecast cases and deaths during previous epidemics?

coronavirus

A review published in the European Journal of Epidemiology finds that during the Ebola epidemic, for example, when there was in increase in forecasting studies, the number of cases and deaths were overestimated by most of the studies. “Only once COVID-19 is behind us will we know whether prediction models did better than their counterparts from the Ebola epidemic. Until then, it is critical that researchers communicate the contexts and…

First look at impacts of expanding antipoverty social policy benefits (Paycheck Plus) to working people without children in New York City

Emilie Courtin headshot

Recent Bell Fellow Emilie Courtin, PhD, and her colleagues have published a research article in the journal Health Affairs. They found that expanding the earned income tax credit to people without children resulted in an uptick in employment and earnings, and, for women, in health-related quality of life. “…our study provides some optimism that reshaping the social policy landscape could reverse the declining health of low-income Americans observed in recent…

Weighing the value of crowdsourced versus official COVID-19 data in India

Face of stopwatch

A piece on natureindia.com written by researchers affiliated with the Harvard Pop Center — Weixing Zhang, Rockli Kim and S V Subramanian— highlights the importance of timely data on COVID-19 infection rates in order to slow the spread of the virus. Crowdsourced data, although not verified by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), has the advantage when it comes to speed, as it may be available up to two…

Is social capital valuable in protecting cognitive function in lower-resource settings such as rural South Africa?

Older man in South Africa sitting in a field

While theories about the connection between strong social supports and better cognitive health among an aging population are well established in higher resource settings (high income, high education levels), less is known about whether this same pattern exists in lower resource settings. Researchers affiliated with Health and Aging in Africa: a Longitudinal Study of an INDEPTH community in South Africa (HAALSI) have published findings that suggest that a similar pattern…