Center for Health and Happiness Seminar Series

The Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness invites you to “When Twin Public Health Crises Meet: Trends in Ill-Being and Deaths of Despair during the COVID Pandemic,” presented by Dr. Carol Graham, Leo Pasvolsky Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, College Park Professor at the University of Maryland, and Senior Scientist at Gallup.

How much of an impact has COVID had on “excess” deaths of despair in the United States? Dr. Carol Graham has been tracking trends in well-being, and initial results suggest approximately 60,000 “excess” deaths for 2020 compared to the average 2 years prior. While the findings are of interest in their own right, they also provide additional evidence for the need to regularly track trends in well-being, as many other countries are already doing. Dr. Graham will discuss these findings in the context of how levels of resilience and optimism vary among groups characterized by different racial identities and socioeconomic status.

This seminar is part of the Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness seminar series. The event is free and open to the public. This year’s theme is health equity and positive well-being. Please email centerhealthhappiness@hsph.harvard.edu with any questions.