In an effort to keep the polio virus from spreading between countries, the World Health Organization (WHO) recently recommended that all residents and long-term visitors in Pakistan, Cameroon, and Syria be immunized and obtain a certificate of verification before traveling. According to the WHO, these countries pose the greatest risk of exporting polio. The certificates will do little to stop the…

Howard K. Koh, assistant secretary for health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, will be rejoining the faculty at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) this fall in a new position as a professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership in the Department of Health Policy and Management. In his new role,…

Eighteen Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) faculty members—more faculty than at any other school of public health—have been included on a new list of the most highly cited researchers in the sciences and the social sciences, compiled by Thomson Reuters. Approximately 3,000 researchers worldwide earned this distinction. Faculty members with primary appointments at HSPH on the list…

Make a difference as an Arnold Arboretum School Program Guide. Training for the fall season of school programs at the Arboretum begins Aug. 28. We are looking for outgoing and mature adults who can commit to one year of volunteering. You do not need to know about plants, but experience working with children is preferred.…

The Center for Public Leadership (CPL) at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) announced today that Tufts University president emeritus Lawrence S. Bacow M.P.P. 1976, Ph.D. 1978, has joined the Center for Public Leadership (CPL) community as its inaugural Leader-in-Residence. Bacow’s two-year appointment begins this summer. Bacow is known as a prominent expert on environmental policy and environmental dispute…

The Institute of Politics at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), recently announced Maggie Williams as its new director. The Institute of Politics (IOP) decided to sit down with Williams and learn more about her, what she had planned for the future of the IOP, and what she felt needed to be done to inspire the next generation of…

The deep pink of watermelon, the sharp crunch of carrots, the cool scent of fresh mint—these are some of the things that Lilian Cheung is hoping people will focus on while eating at the Harvard School of Public Health’s new “Mindful Eating Corner” in Kresge Cafeteria. Cheung, lecturer and director of health promotion and communication in the Department…

Shifting the open enrollment period for health insurance signups could boost enrollments and may help people make better health plan choices, according to a new study. The next open enrollment period for the health insurance marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is set for November 15, 2014 through February 15, 2015. But in a study…

Boston has installed more than 50 miles of bike lanes since 2007, and the number of pedal-powered commuters in the city, while only 2.1%, is more than three times the national average. To help urban planners continue to improve bike friendliness, researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) set out to determine the types of…

The Office of the Vice Provost for Advances in Learning is sponsoring a pilot program called the Faculty Academy to enable full-time Harvard faculty to get hands-on assistance with some of the techniques and concepts used in online learning experiences (such as those created through HarvardX) and in blended or flipped classrooms. Topics covered include…

More than 2,000 color images of Harvard’s architecture are now available to Harvard affiliates free and online through a library partnership with photographer Ralph Lieberman. Lieberman began photographing Harvard’s architecture in May 2012 for a project commissioned by Harvard College Library’s Fine Arts Library (FAL) and the Graduate School of Design’s Frances Loeb Library. The…

Aquaculture has become a booming industry in Chile, with salmon and other fish farmed in floating enclosures along the South Pacific coast. But as farmers densely pack these pens to meet demand, diseases can easily pass between fish — for example, an outbreak of infectious salmon anemia that emerged in 2007 caused the deaths of more than a…

In wind farms across North America and Europe, sleek turbines equipped with state-of-the-art technology convert wind energy into electric power. But tucked inside the blades of these feats of modern engineering is a decidedly low-tech core material: balsa wood. Like other manufactured products that use sandwich panel construction to achieve a combination of light weight…

Graduate students Aleem Ahmed and Caroline Mauldin are benefitting two countries with a single grain. Ahmed and Mauldin launched Love Grain last year to produce gluten-free cereals, pastas, and pancake and waffle mixes all made with teff — a high-protein, high-fiber grain that’s a staple in the Ethiopian diet. “I am impressed with Love Grain’s…

This year, June 29 marks the beginning of Ramadan, a 30-day period during which time devout Muslims around the world pray, reflect, and fast from sunrise to sunset. It is a time when religious tradition trumps business considerations. Shopkeepers reduce their hours and workers spend less time on the job and more time in the…

A well-timed and executed intervention with an under-performing math student can produce very substantive and positive results.  That is the finding in a new study co-authored by Harvard Kennedy School assistant professor Joshua Goodman.  “Intensive Math Instruction and Educational Attainment: Long-Run Impacts of Double-Dose Algebra” is published as part of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Working Paper series. The…

The Food and Drug Administration recently announced that it will issue a proposal to the food industry aimed at encouraging voluntary sodium reductions in products. That’s good news, wrote Dariush Mozaffarian, associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), in a June 18 New York Daily News editorial. The average American consumes far more sodium each…

Anubhav and Arunika Agarwal share more than a marriage. Both earned MBAs focused on health management in their home country of India. Both worked in India and Afghanistan on health improvement projects. And both are about to graduate with master of public health degrees from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). But even as each earns an M.P.H.…

Individual electrons in graphene are massless, but when they move together, it’s a different story. Graphene, a one-atom-thick carbon sheet, has taken the world of physics by storm—in part, because its electrons behave as massless particles. Yet these electrons seem to have dual personalities. Phenomena observed in the field of graphene plasmonics suggest that when…

“What keeps you up at night?” That was the question posed by Katie Lapp, executive vice president of Harvard, at the University’s inaugural Institutional Risk Management (IRM) Symposium on Tuesday, June 17, 2014. The symposium, sponsored by Harvard’s Office of Risk Management & Audit Services (RMAS), was part education, part strategy session, part therapy session…

Recent disease outbreaks have been traced to deliberately unvaccinated Americans—and anti-vaccine sentiment is a serious health concern. Barry Bloom, an infectious diseases expert at Harvard School of Public Health, thinks health care providers need better strategies—based on solid evidence—for communicating the importance of vaccination to hesitant and skeptical parents. Why is it so important that research be done on how…

According to a new survey, young adults are reporting better health since the passage of the Affordable Care Act. .in 2010, which allowed them to be covered on their parents’ plans through age 26. The study, co-authored by Kao-Ping Chua, a health policy Ph.D. student at Harvard and a pediatrician at Boston’s Children’s Hospital, and Benjamin Sommers, assistant…

Celebrating 25 years, Deputy Provost Margaret E. Newell awarded certificates of completion to the Administrative Fellows Program’s class of 2014 earlier this month. The program, administered by the Office of the Assistant to the President for Institutional Diversity and Equity, offers one year of talent management experience and professional development to mid-career professionals, especially members…

A new publication based at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) aims to tackle tough, timely questions facing the public health community and provide a platform for debate, according to its editor and founder, newly minted HSPH graduate Andrew Boozary. The Harvard Public Health Review (HPHR) was launched on May 25 “in the spirit of the Harvard Law…

The American Society of International Law (ASIL) has announced its 10th class of Helton Fellowship winners who received a $2,000 micro-grant to peruse fieldwork or research on a variety of issues involving human rights, international criminal law, humanitarian affairs, and other international law areas. This year’s winners included one Harvard student, Shayak Sarkar, a Ph.D. candidate from…

A new poll by The Boston Globe and Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) finds, eight years into the state’s universal health insurance legislation enacted in 2006, 63% of Massachusetts residents support the law and 18% oppose it, while 7% are not sure, and 12% have not heard or read about the law. The percentage of residents supporting the law remains…

The Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching (HILT) Spark Grant application is now open. Apply at the HILT website Spark Grants are $5-$15K grants designed to help “spark” promising teaching and learning projects from idea to reality and position innovations for future success (see examples of funded projects). All benefits-eligible faculty, students, staff, and postdoctoral…

Victor De Gruttola, chair of the Department of Biostatistics and Henry Pickering Walcott Professor of Biostatistics at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), recently answered three questions about the role of biostatistics in public health. What does a biostatistician do? A biostatistician’s work is driven by questions relating to the health of people—as individuals or members of population. For example,…

A spring 2013 Harvard Public Health magazine article titled “Guns & Suicide: The Hidden Toll” has won the Grand Gold Award for Best Article of the Year from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). The article topped 74 other entries in CASE Districts I and II, which include colleges and universities throughout New York, New…

Nanoparticles with microbial properties have proven effective in fighting bacteria; however, some may cause health risks to humans such as damage to the lungs. But now, researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) have developed a technique for making nanoparticles safer by suspending them in water. These droplets — called nanobombs by Philip Demokritou, associate…