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Color-coded life expectancy: People in blue states are living longer than people in red

Map of the United State with Red and Blue States

Our former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar Jennifer Karas Montez, along with our associate director Jason Beckfield, and their colleagues have published a study in The Milbank Quarterly that looks at how changes in state policies since the 1970s have impacted life expectancy in the United States. Read about the study in this release… …  on alternet.org … on salon.com   Image: Wikimedia.org

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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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When trying to receive health care for depression, discrimination does not help

Headshot of Leslie Adams

Our Bell Fellow Leslie Adams collaborated on this paper based on a qualitative component of a larger, mixed-methods, community-based participatory research study focused on understanding how health care discrimination influences depression treatment preferences. The study provides a more in-depth investigation of the implications of negative interactions in the health care sector for diverse people with lived experience of depression. The study was funded by the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute…

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Learning lessons from Berkeley, CA: Analyzing roll out of nation’s first sugary beverage tax

Anna Grummon headshot

Harvard Pop Center’s Bell Fellow Anna Grummon, PhD, is an author on this study published in the American Journal of Public Health that analyzes what factors helped to facilitate (and impede) this public policy that generated more than $9 million for public health, nutrition, and health equity through 2021.

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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.

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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.

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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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