A team of researchers, including collaborator and Harvard Pop Center Director Lisa Berkman, PhD, has developed a multidimensional index that measures how well a country is handling the transition to having an increasingly larger proportion of older adults by evaluating status across five domains. The results, published in PNAS, indicate that while the U.S. scored well in the areas of productivity and engagement, the country ranked near the bottom in equity.
David Bloom: “The promise and peril of universal health care”
Faculty member David Bloom and colleagues outline the efforts that would be required to implement universal health care on a global scale, as well as the potential benefits that could be realized in this issue of Science.
Middle and high school racial composition linked to misuse of non-medical prescription painkillers later in life
A study by Harvard Pop Center director Lisa Berkman, faculty members Ichiro Kawachi and Mauricio Avendano, and colleagues has revealed that both white and black students who attended majority-white schools were at higher risk of lifetime, non-medical use of prescription painkillers. Blacks who attended predominantly white schools were twice as likely to report misuse compared to blacks who attended predominantly black schools.
Are circumcised men safer sex partners? Findings from the HAALSI cohort in rural South Africa
Not necessarily, finds a study published in PLoS ONE by a team of researchers affiliated with Health and Aging in Africa: A Longitudinal Study of an INDEPTH Community in South Africa (HAALSI). Older men who were circumcised in a hospital setting (as opposed to initiation-based circumcision) had higher HIV prevalence than uncircumcised men. Former Harvard Bell Fellow and HAALSI researcher Molly Rosenberg explains in this article in the South African publication Business Day that…
A comprehensive road map for tackling risky and costly diet-related disease in the U.S.
Sara Bleich, PhD, professor of public health policy at the Harvard Chan School, has penned an op-ed in The New England Journal of Medicine that makes a strong case for an approach that is multi-prong, spanning health systems, population, individual, local, national, and private sector levels.
Margaret McConnell promoted to associate professor of global health economics
Congratulations to Harvard Pop Center faculty member Margaret McConnell on her promotion to associate professor of global health economics in the Department of Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. A former PGDA Fellow at the Harvard Pop Center, Dr. McConnell’s research combines behavioral economics with field and laboratory experiments to better understand and evaluate policies designed to change health behaviors, with a specific…
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Mary Brinton appointed director of the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University
Congratulations to Harvard Pop Center faculty member and Reischauer Institute Professor of Sociology Mary C. Brinton, PhD, who has been named the director of the Harvard institute that supports research on Japan and provides a forum for related academic activities and the exchange of ideas.
Eminent social scientists explore RCTs & evidence-based policy in special issue of research journal
In a special issue of the journal Social Science & Medicine, 26 social scientists comment on the usefulness of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) when it comes to evaluating health interventions. This interdisciplinary discussion—inspired by an article by Angus Deaton and Nancy Cartwright— includes articles by Harvard Pop Center faculty members, including Ichiro Kawachi, and S V Subramanian (who, along with a colleague, authored the preface), Robert J. Sampson, and postdoctoral fellow Rockli Kim.
Harvard Pop Center is hiring a Research Assistant!
Are you interested in researching how the long-run effects of early-childhood circumstances and education affect income and health state transitions in older ages? Learn more about this opportunity to join our team…
What is widening the racial and ethnic wealth gaps during young and middle adulthood in the United States?
Harvard Pop Center faculty member Alexandra Killewald, PhD, and Graduate Student Affiliate Brielle Bryan have authored a paper published in Social Forces that applies a life-course perspective to wealth accumulation, examining both the inherited disadvantage of previous generations, along with current inequities in factors such as education, income, marital status, and home ownership.