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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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Mass vaccination campaign in India may have contributed to spike in cases

Headshot of Professor Subramanian

Professor S (Subu) V Subramanian, PhD, has authored a comment in The Lancet Global Health in which he cautions that the mass vaccination campaign in India may have contributed to the recent increase in COVID-19 cases there. He urges leadership in India to rethink its vaccination strategy to reduce virus spread by preventing overcrowding and enforcing non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as masking and social distancing, at vaccination centers. On IndiaToday.com, Subu…

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“In India, anything and everything is a super-spreader event”

Headshot of Professor Subramanian

Harvard Pop Center faculty member S (Subu) V Subramanian, PhD, tells The Harvard Gazette that “in India, anything and everything is a super-spreader event.” A visualization dashboard of COVID-19 vaccine distribution in India by Subramanian’s Geographic Insights Lab was also cited by The New York Times in an article describing the recent and devastating surge of infections in the county.

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First study to map child undernutrition in India by village shows greatest variation at these micro levels

Screenshot of website dashboard for villages in India

A study published in PNAS by Harvard Pop Center Visiting Scientist Rockli Kim, ScD, faculty member S V Subramanian, PhD, and colleagues that utilizes “state-of-the-art data science techniques” to map and predict child undernutrition across the nearly 600,000 villages in India now provides governments at the most local level with this critical information about their constituents. To learn more about the potential value of such breakthrough, precision mapping, read the…

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Geographic Insights Lab rolls out two new interactive dashboards: one for tracking NFHS data in India, the other for COVID-19 vaccination by U.S. congressional district

Geographic Insights Lab Logo

The National Family and Health Survey (NFHS) provides critical data on India’s health, nutrition, and population indicators. The Government of India utilizes many of these indicators to formulate policies and track its progress. The team at Geographic Insights Lab presents an interactive dashboard that systematically allows multiple stakeholders to compare 55 indicators for 300+ districts in India.  These indicators can also be compared across 300+ Parliamentary Constituencies in India with…

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Geographic Insights Lab presents LIVE COVID-19 vaccine rollout dashboard for India by state

Dashboard of the COVID-19 vaccine tracker in India

The Geographic Insights Lab is an initiative committed to improving public policies by honing in on targeted geopolitical units (such as congressional districts in the U.S. and parliamentary constituencies in India) in order to mine more precise population health and development data. This Lab, led by S V Subramanian, professor of population health and geography at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has launched a new project that provides…

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Taking a closer look at the psychosocial stressors that are thought to affect health and mortality

Heavy set woman sitting on a bench

A study focused on middle-aged and older Americans by Harvard Pop Center postdoctoral fellow Justin Rodgers, faculty members David R. Williams, Ichiro Kawachi, and S V Subramanian, along with their colleague Adolfo G. Cuevas, sheds light on the eight behavioral, biological, and psychological pathways commonly thought to play a  role in the association between stress and health.

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Study aims to advance prevention of HIV/AIDS among young women in low- and middle-income countries

Head shot of Chunling Lu and Subu Subramanian

Two researchers affiliated with the Harvard Pop Center (Chungling Lu, PhD, and S V Subramanian, PhD) and their colleagues assessed levels of knowledge of HIV/AIDS and associated socioeconomic disparities among young women between the ages of 15-24 using Demographic Health Surveys from 51 low- and middle-income countries completed between 2002–2018.  Their findings, published in JAMA Network Open, point to there being a need to increase knowledge of HIV/AIDS across this…

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Interdisciplinary research lab release first COVID-19 live tracker for U.S. congressional districts

COVID-19 Live Tracker portal

Researchers at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard Center for Geographic Analysis at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and Microsoft AI for Health have joined forces to create a COVID-19 live tracker that monitors the current status of COVID-19 cases and deaths, as well as the reduction of new cases in U.S. congressional districts. Geographic Insights is an interdisciplinary research lab that is the first to…

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Estimating COVID-19 across Parliamentary Constituencies and districts in India could facilitate better, evidence-based policy decisions

Map of India geopolitical units with title of working paper

This Harvard Pop Center Working Paper presents the first estimates of COVID-19 cumulative cases and deaths per 100,000 population, and the case fatality rate (CFR) from January 7 – October 18, 2020 across 543 geopolitical units (Parliamentary Constituencies) and 721 districts of India.