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Ethical considerations of food and beverage warnings; weighing the pros and cons

Display of soda bottles

Harvard Bell Fellow Anna Grummon, PhD, and colleagues (including Harvard Pop Center faculty members Jason Block and Sara Bleich) evaluate the ethical strengths and weaknesses of food and beverage warnings (aimed to help prevent obesity and improve health) by looking through the lens of a public health ethics framework. Their findings are published in the journal Physiology & Behavior. Other authors of the study include: Marissa Hall, Eric Rimm, Lindsey…

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Lessons from Hurricane Katrina on less obvious possible health impacts of COVID-19

Hurricane Katrina survivor

Data from a longitudinal study of survivors of Hurricane Katrina could be helpful in predicting the more indirect health stressors of a pandemic. Ethan Raker, a Harvard Pop Center graduate student affiliate, Meghan Zacher, and Sarah Lowe, have published a study in PNAS that draws from their work on the RISK project. Their findings suggest that lapses in medical care and medication use, fear surrounding the well-being of loved ones,…

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Why are more women than men dying of coronavirus in Massachusetts? Berkman, Krieger provide some possible reasons…

Boston Globe with Lisa Berkman and Nancy Krieger

Globally and nationally, the gender divide is clear; more men than women are dying of the coronavirus. The Boston Globe spoke with Harvard Pop Center Director Lisa Berkman, PhD, and faculty member Nancy Krieger, PhD, to uncover why Massachusetts is experiencing a different trend.

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How can diabetes be more accurately diagnosed in an aging South African population?

South African women

Two of the most common tests for diagnosing diabetes (fasting plasma glucose and HbA1c) don’t always yield the same result, and researchers affiliated with the research study Health and Aging in Africa: A Longitudinal Study of an INDEPTH Community in South Africa (HAALSI) took a closer look at the concordance of these test results within an aging population in South Africa. Their findings were published in the Journal of the…

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Novel study reveals an unequal surge in COVID-19 mortality rates in Massachusetts by poverty level, race and crowded housing

death rate differences by crowded housing

A Harvard Pop Center working paper reveals the findings of an analysis of State-provided public health data by Harvard T. H. Chan School researchers Jarvis Chen, Pamela Waterman, and Nancy Krieger. The Boston Globe obtained the data and shared it with the researchers in order to generate this novel analysis. Read more in The Boston Globe, and in this Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health news item.   Graphic…

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To support front-line health care workers we must remove mental health stigma

Michelle Williams head shot

Dean Michelle Williams and Arianna Huffington have teamed up to write this op-ed in USA Today in light of the tragic suicide by an ER doctor in New York, as well as the ongoing struggles faced by health care workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Harvard Bell Fellow Anna Grummon awarded highest honor by UNC Chapel Hill for her dissertation

Anna Grummon headshot

Anna Grummon, PhD, MSPH, is the recipient of the highest level of graduate student award bestowed by her alma mater, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Behavioral scientist Grummon received the 2020 Dean’s Distinguished Dissertation Award, Social Sciences for her dissertation titled Individual- and Population-Level Impacts of Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Health Warnings. As a postdoc at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Dr. Grummon is furthering her research…

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How could we get a more accurate picture of prevalence of COVID-19 without universal testing?

Headshot of Professor Subramanian

Professor S (Subu) V Subramanian, PhD, has co-authored a letter published in Lancet Global Health in which he and co-author K.S. James suggest that a random-sample-based population surveillance framework like the Demographic Health Survey (DHS), or in India’s case, the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), could be cost-effectively leveraged to help establish the prevalence of the novel virus in the populations of developing countries. Learn more… Harvard Chan School news…

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