Jason Block contributes his public health expertise to this op-ed in The Washington Post on the acute (and chronic) risks of ignoring the obesity issue in the U.S. “The reason obesity is so stigmatized is that people think of weight as a choice . . . It’s especially unfair when we have a society that makes opportunities to gain weight so ubiquitous.”
A study in Pediatrics contributes to the evidence that links early exposure to antibiotics with higher body weight in five-year old children. Lead author of the study is Jason Block, MD, a Harvard Pop Center faculty member and former Harvard RWJF Health & Society Scholar. Learn more in this news item.
A study by Harvard Pop Center faculty member Sara Bleich, PhD, published in the journal Obesity finds that while the consumption of sugar sweetened beverages is on the decline among both children and adults, it is still too high among adolescents and young adults, and certain racial and ethnic minority populations. Learn more in The New York Times, The Guardian, and on the Harvard Chan School website.
Harvard Pop Center faculty member Steven Gortmaker, PhD, is co-author on a study that has found that teens who spend 5 hours or more per day behind a screen (e.g., tablet, computer, videogame, smartphone, television) face greater exposure to obesity and/or risk factors for obesity such as increased sugar-sweetened beverage consumption, and inadequate physical activity and sleep.
The findings of a study by Harvard Pop Center faculty member Maria Glymour, ScD, research associate Ivan Mejia, PhD, and their colleagues published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) is the subject of this United Press International (UPI) article.
Harvard Pop Center faculty member Mark Schuster, MD, is an author on a paper published in Pediatrics that examines the results of an intervention aimed at lowering the BMI of middle school students over a two-year period.
RWJF alumnus Adam Lippert has recently published an article titled “Neighborhood Crime Rate, Weight-Related Behaviors, and Obesity: A Systematic Review of the Literature” in Sociology Compass. The piece, which is a review of current literature, identifies the effects of neighborhood-level crime on obesity and physical activity outside of socioeconomic correlates. Findings from this review suggest a positive correlation between the crime rate in an area (especially violent crime) and higher…
Continue reading “Lippert on the association between neighborhood crime and BMI/activity levels”
Harvard Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Program alumnae Margaret Sheridan, PhD, and Katie McLaughlin, PhD, are co-authors on a study in Child Abuse & Neglect that finds that children who witnessed domestic violence had almost six times the odds of being overweight or obese as adolescents.
Harvard Pop Center Bell Fellow Fahad Razak, MD, and Pop Center Executive Committee Member S V Subramanian, PhD, have co-authored a study published in the Journal of Public Health that clusters the obese into subgroups, such as heavy drinking males, and affluent and happy elderly, to better understand and formulate strategies to target obese individuals.
Harvard RWJF Health & Society Scholar alum Kristi Pullen, PhD, blogs about a two-day workshop that explored the link between obesity and environmental chemicals on Switchboard, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) staff blog.