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Follow-up: Results of first round of COVID-19 survey released

coronavirus

Professors David Bloom and David Canning, along with Rashmi Dayalu (all associated with the Program on Global Demography of Aging (PGDA) at Harvard, and Boston University Assistant Professor Mahesh Karra, have released the results of the first round of their survey focused on social distancing behavior and COVID-19 symptoms. Are older people practicing social distancing more than younger people? Do some symptoms influence behavior more than others? See the results…

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Working paper shows people living in most disadvantaged U.S. counties have highest COVID-19 death rates

Working Paper on COVID-19 death rates by county

A Harvard Pop Center working paper by Jarvis Chen and Nancy Krieger provides critical public health monitoring data—missing until now—on the unequal economic and social burden of COVID-19 in the United States. The Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies (HCPDS) Working Paper Series provides a flexible and timely outlet for affiliates to publish their work in progress to the scholarly community in an open-access form. 

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In honor of Earth Day, a review of the last decade of social science research on the effects of disasters

Hurricane Katrina from satellite

Three researchers affiliated with the Harvard Pop Center—Mariana Arcaya, Ethan J. Raker, and Mary C. Waters—have published a review in the Annual Review of Sociology that concludes with their concerns about the likelihood of more severe natural disasters due to climate change in the future, and the need for innovative concepts and methods to cope with these environmental and societal challenges. Photo: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Flickr

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A call to decode human immune system to help protect our global aging population

Michelle Williams head shot

Harvard Chan School Dean Michelle A. Williams, ScD, has co-authored a Perspective in The New England Journal of Medicine that calls for more longitudinal studies in aging populations to better understand the “mechanics of immunity” in this vulnerable, growing sector of our global community.  Learn more in this news item by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

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Mothers in India who experienced neonatal death of child found to be at increased risk of additional neonatal deaths

Head shot of Subu and Rockli

Harvard Pop Center faculty member S (Subu) V Subramanian, PhD, and visiting scientist Rockli Kim, ScD, are among the authors of a study published in the JAMA Open Network that could help to identify high-risk pregnancies and potentially reduce the neonatal mortality rate in India. Read the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health website.

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Factoring in structural inequalities in fight against COVID-19

Head shot of Nancy Krieger

Harvard Pop Center faculty member Nancy Krieger is an author of a pre-print article that examines the U.S. county by county to identify those most vulnerable to the risks of COVID-19 and in greatest need of interventions aimed at minimizing the epidemic’s toll on people’s health and its burden on the healthcare infrastructure.

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This time-series analysis shows state-level social distancing slows growth of U.S. COVID-19 epidemic

Headshot of Tsai

Harvard Pop Center faculty member Alexander Tsai, MD, PhD, is an author of an article that reports finding social distancing to be associated with a decrease  of 3,090 cases at 7 days, and 68,255 cases at 14 days, after these measures were implemented. Other authors of the article include Mark J. Siedner, Guy Harling, Zahra Reynolds, Rebecca F. Gilbert, and Atheendar Venkataramani.

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Education is not only factor in cognitive health disparities between older men and women in rural South Africa

two women walking away from camera on dirt road, text that reads "HAALSI, Health and Aging in Africa A Longitudinal Study of an INDEPTH Community in South Africa"

Researchers affiliated with HAALSI, a longitudinal project focused on an aging population in South Africa, have published a study that emphasizes the need for additional research focused on strengthening the cognitive resilience of older women, given the predominately female composition of aging populations worldwide.

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Applying the lessons from the field of genetics to social determinants of health with a polysocial risk score

Ashish Jha headshot

Faculty member Ashish K. Jha, MD, and colleagues suggest in this JAMA Viewpoint that given the complexity of trying to parse the impact of social factors on health, perhaps developing and deploying a risk score model similar to the polygenic model could advance the field of social determinants of health.

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Impact of traumatic events earlier in life still registers among older cohort in rural South Africa

Older man in South Africa sitting in a field

Researchers affiliated with a longitudinal study on aging in South Africa (HAALSI) have published a paper that examines the impact of traumatic events experienced earlier in the life course on cognition, and mental and physical health outcomes in an older South African population.