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Many chain restaurants found to change their behavior in response to menu labeling mandate, and roll out lower calorie items

Head shot of Anna Grummon

Opting for newer items on the menu of your favorite chain restaurant may be the best choice if you are calorie conscious. A study published in JAMA Network Open that included nearly 60 of the largest US chain restaurants reveals that the menu items that were introduced after a calorie labeling policy was implemented (the law was enforced starting in May, 2018) had about 25% fewer calories than the already…

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When estimating global child undernutrition, are the standard measures enough?

Child in a field in India

An investigation published in JAMA Network Open Global Health reports that currently relied-upon anthropometric measures (i.e., stunting, underweight, wasting) may not be comprehensive enough to accurately assess global child undernutrition. Harvard Pop Center researchers Rockli Kim and S V Subramanian, along with their colleagues Markus Heemann and Sebastian Vollmer, suggest that dietary and food-based measures should be factored in as well. Photo: EU Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid on Flickr

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Applying the lessons from the field of genetics to social determinants of health with a polysocial risk score

Ashish Jha headshot

Faculty member Ashish K. Jha, MD, and colleagues suggest in this JAMA Viewpoint that given the complexity of trying to parse the impact of social factors on health, perhaps developing and deploying a risk score model similar to the polygenic model could advance the field of social determinants of health.

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Why is U.S. healthcare spending so high? How does it really stack up to other high-income countries?

Faculty member Ashish, Jha, MD, is author and lead researcher on a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) that takes a “careful and more comprehensive” look at the U.S. healthcare system. Learn about the somewhat surprising results of the study in this piece in The New York Times.

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Jason Block comments on US Preventative Services Task Force’s recently revised recommendations on tackling childhood obesity

Harvard Pop Center faculty member Jason Block, MD, and a colleague pen this Editorial in JAMA, sharing their thoughts on the screening, treatment and prevention of childhood obesity in the US. The new recommendations by the expert panel, as well as the Editorial in JAMA, is explored in this piece by the LA Times.

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How do we improve patient safety in the U.S. health care system?

Harvard Pop Center faculty member Asish Jha, MD, has co-authored a JAMA Viewpoint in which the authors reflect on improvements made over the last 15 years (since the landmark report To Err is Human) and suggest that with better data, valid metrics, greater transparency, and better systems in place, health care can become even safer for patients.