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Op-ed: Controversy over India’s COVID-19 mortality rate illuminates need to address “holes” in mortality statistics and death registration data

Head shot of Aashish Gupta

Harvard Bell Fellow Aashish Gupta, along with his colleagues Murad Banaji and Vipul Paikra, have published an op-ed in The Indian Forum that points out how increased global attention on India’s COVID-19 mortality statistics could ultimately help to illuminate and potentially improve the underlying unreliability of mortality statistics and death registration data in India.

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New policy brief series by India Policy Insights team delivers concise analysis of key performance indictors for five national programs sponsored by Indian government

Box plot graph for India Policy Insights' policy brief

The government of India has invested in programmes to help the states and districts achieve performance goals set to address everything from health issues (such as reducing anemia, stunting and low birth weight) to issues around gender inequity and women’s empowerment through education. But how can it be determined if India’s districts are achieving these goals? Now, a new policy brief series produced by India Policy Insight‘s team helps shed…

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Three cheers for transformative potential of randomized controlled trials and natural experiments to help us better understand how social exposures impact health!

Word cloud about social epi

In honor of the American Journal of Public Health’s 100th anniversary, a commentary by HCPDS Director Lisa Berkman, faculty member Mauricio Avendano, and former Bell Fellow Emilie Courtin spreads enthusiasm about how the implementation of social randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and natural experiments that utilize observational data can help to advance the field of social epidemiology, and to illustrate… “…how credible social policy reforms may be instrumental to address health…

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Op-ed introduces conceptual framework to better understand how “intersectional stigma” affects HIV prevention and care outcomes among sexual minority men in sub-Saharan Africa

Graphic of conceptual framework of intersectional stigma

Yerby Fellow Adedotun Ogunbajo, PhD, HCPDS faculty members Kenneth H. Mayer, MD, and Alexander C. Tsai, MD, PhD, and their colleague Phyllis J. Kanki, ScD, have published an editorial in the American Journal of Public Health that puts forth a framework  that illustrates and dissects the “interconnected systems of stigma” that are likely serving as impediments to receiving quality HIV health services for sexual minority men (SSM) in sub-Saharan Africa.…

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Christina Cross receives award from National Council on Family Relations for publication

Head shot of Christina Cross

Christina Cross, PhD, our recent postdoctoral fellow who has now joined the ranks as one of our faculty members, co-authored an article that has been awarded the Best New Professional Article Award from the National Council on Family Relations’ Men in Families Focus Group.  The article — “Nonresident Social Fathering in African American Single-Mother Families” — has been accepted in the Journal of Marriage and Family’s special issue on Transformative…

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Can India’s Health Information Management System (HMIS) data be relied upon for estimates of population-level birth and child mortality rates?

A series of graphs that compare neonatal mortality rates from HMIS administrative data to national survey data in India

This study is one of the first to compare facility-based, administrative health data on births and child deaths to birth and death vital statistics from the more commonly relied upon nationally representative surveys, such as the Sample Registration System and the National Family Health System, at national and state levels over a four-year period. Although the study authors (including Pritha Chatterjee, Harvard Bell Fellow Aashish Gupta, and HCPDS faculty member…

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A closer look at the impact of social networks on well-being among an aging South African population

Two South African women wearing colorful clothes

A recent study based on data from the project “Health and Aging in Africa: a Longitudinal Study of an INDEPTH Community in South Africa” (HAALSI) suggests that social capital theory (the concept that the higher socioeconomic status of your contacts can have positive health impacts as they are a type of interpersonal resource) applies not only in higher-income settings, but in a more resource-limited, rural setting in South Africa as…

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