Health economist Katherine Baicker of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health was interviewed on the July 13 episode of Politico’s “Pulse Check” podcast about her pioneering work with the Oregon health insurance experiment, what she thinks of Obamacare’s cost controls, and how her research helps inform health policies. Baicker, C. Boyden Gray Professor of…

The Eighth New York International Piano Competition (NYIPC), presented under the auspices of The Stecher and Horowitz Foundation of New York, has crowned the winners of the competition. Harvard College student Aristo Sham ’18 claimed the Joyce B. Cowin First Prize, along with a $10,000 cash award and concert and recital appearances presented by the…

Being overweight or obese is associated with a higher risk of dying prematurely than being normal weight—and the risk increases with additional pounds, according to a large international collaborative study led by researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the University of Cambridge, UK. The findings contradict recent reports that suggest…

Michelle Williams, new Dean of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Paula Johnson, new president of Wellesley College and a professor in Harvard Chan School’s Department of Epidemiology, talked about their milestone achievements and education in Boston in a Q&A in the July 2016 issue of Boston Magazine. Both women represent historic firsts.…

Black men, compared to white men, were at a five to 19 times greater risk of a law enforcement-related death over the past 50 years, according to a study led by Nancy Krieger, professor of social epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She recently spoke to Voice of America about a report…

Disbelief from last month’s vote for Brexit lingers. Proponents of Britain’s continued EU membership want to revisit the decision. Some hope the British parliament will vote against implementing the referendum, or that the next prime minister will decide not to trigger Article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon. Others suggest Scotland could refuse to consent…

Solar-powered bike paths that can melt snow and ice; pollution-eating vacuum towers near bicycle paths; bicycle parking stations with lockers, rest rooms, and showers; and bicycle wheels with rechargeable batteries that help propel riders up hills are just a few of the 70 innovations—some already in place, others still on the drawing board—outlined in a…

Challenges faced by Brazil to reduce pollution and upgrade the slums of Rio de Janeiro prior to the August 2016 Summer Olympics illustrates the struggles faced when trying to protect the respiratory health of approximately a billion people living in slums globally, Joseph Allen, assistant professor of exposure assessment science at Harvard T.H. Chan School…

Consuming higher amounts of unsaturated fats was associated with lower mortality, according to a study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In a large study population followed for more than three decades, researchers found that higher consumption of saturated and trans fats was linked with higher mortality compared with the same number of…

Harvard Law School and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University are pleased to announce that Michael R. Klein, LL.M. ’67 has made a generous gift of $15 million to the Berkman Center. In recognition, the Center will now be known as the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. “This gift…

As we age, every stumble or fall comes with a risk—a risk that is even greater for those 10 million people in the U.S. who have osteoporosis, a skeletal disease characterized by low bone mass, poor bone quality, and fractures. Each year, 1.5 million bone fractures are attributed to osteoporosis, including 350,000 hip fractures. But hip…

Albert Hofman has been named the Stephen B. Kay Family Professor of Public Health and Clinical Epidemiology and Chair of the Department of Epidemiology  at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, effective July 1. Hofman comes to Harvard from the Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, Netherlands, where he was Professor of Epidemiology and Chair of…

John Jackson, S.D. ’13, and Sonja Swanson, S.D. ’14, are the winners of the 2016 Kenneth Rothman Epidemiology Prize. The award is given annually for the best paper published in Epidemiology in the preceding year, and was announced in the journal’s July 2016 issue. It was presented June 23 at the Epidemiology Congress of the…

Women who attend religious services at least once a week may have a lower risk of suicide than those who never attend services, according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study was published online June 29, 2016 in JAMA Psychiatry. Tyler VanderWeele, professor of epidemiology,…

The trillions of microbes that transfer from people to surfaces could provide an early warning system for the emergence of public health threats such as a flu outbreak or a rise in antibiotic resistance, according to a study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The researchers took to the Boston subway system to find…

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health recently welcomed 10 new fellows into the Multidisciplinary International Research Training (MIRT) program. MIRT is a national program aimed at encouraging students who are members of underrepresented minority groups to pursue careers in biomedical and behavioral science research and it provides placement and funding for summer international field…

As the gun control debate reignited following the mass shooting at a nightclub in Florida, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public expert David Hemenway spoke to several news outlets about the state of firearms research. He said that a Congressional ban on using federal funds to “promote gun control” has had a chilling effect on…

Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus called on health ministers at the fifth annual Ministerial Forum for Health Ministers at Harvard to think of health as an integral part of economic development and to recognize productive work by women and young people as a critical factor in advancing national health and economic growth in their nations. Making…

It is unlikely that the influx of travelers to Brazil for the Olympic Games in August will accelerate the spread of the Zika virus, according to Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Professor Ashish Jha. In an editorial published June 19 in the Washington Post, Jha offers support for the conclusion by a World…

After months of vitriolic campaigns, on June 23 voters began to emerge from polling stations throughout the United Kingdom having cast their ballots in a nationwide referendum on European Union (EU) membership. The possibility of a British exit, or “Brexit,” has shined a spotlight on the institutional, political, and economic woes of the EU and…

As an undergraduate working in malaria researcher Dyann Wirth’s lab at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Caleb Irvine was curious why malaria transmission was on the uptick in the Thiès region of Senegal, in spite of efforts to control the disease there. In July 2014, he traveled there to study the DNA of…

Poor people around the world who depend on seafood for a significant portion of their diet are likely to suffer malnutrition if global fisheries continue to decline, according to new research from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study was published in Nature on June 15, 2016. Lead author Christopher Golden, a research…

A new study suggests that so-called “pay-for-performance” programs—in which hospitals are financially rewarded for better patient outcomes and penalized for worse outcomes—may not be working. Ashish Jha, senior author of the study, discusses the implications. Pay-for-performance programs have been touted as an important way to improve hospital care, but your study suggested otherwise. Did this…

Deborah Azrael, a gun violence researcher at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, spoke to the Harvard Gazette for a June 14, 2016 article on addressing incidents of mass violence such as the recent night club massacre in Orlando. Mass shootings can be thought of as a contagion, said Azrael, who is research director…

While transgender people have increasingly received public recognition, there has been little concerted effort to support and improve their health, according to a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researcher and other authors of a special Series published in The Lancet. Compiled with input of members of the transgender community, the Series provides an…

Prostate cancer screening with prostate-specific antigen (PSA) has been shown to reduce death and the spread of prostate cancer to other parts of the body, but the PSA test remains highly controversial as it frequently leads to over diagnosis and over treatment of men who may not be at risk. Smarter screening strategies that can…

Eating more whole grains may reduce the risk of premature death, according to a new meta-analysis by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study found that people who ate the most whole grains (70 grams/day, about 4 servings), compared with those who ate little or no whole grains, had a lower…

Renovation of the Smith Campus Center is in full swing. To help reduce disruption to building tenants and visitors, some of the construction work will need to be undertaken in the evenings and on weekends. As a result of this construction, which will include periods when power and other services to the building must be…

On June 13th, the Harvard Global Health Institute and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society will bring together more than sixty leaders from the pharmaceutical industry, foundations, civil society, academia, and government for a conference to develop actionable solutions for increasing access to medicines and promoting innovation to help the world’s poor. Despite recent…

The Ceramics Program at the Office for the Arts at Harvard recently installed a ceramic mural created by students of instructor Allison Newsome for the CHA Somerville Hospital, part of the Cambridge Health Alliance. Created by 17 artists over two semesters, the salon-style mural, titled “Homeostasis,” incorporates life-reinforcing imagery such as fruit and flowers, rendered…