Featured series 
Tag: Harvard School of Public Health
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Science & Tech
“…An important experiment for Harvard.”
When the Harvard University Science and Engineering Committee (HUSEC) gathered for its first meeting late last April, it was charged by not one, but two Harvard Presidents. Then President-designate and now President Drew Faust told the 18 members of the new committee that theirs is both a unique and “historic” body, created to forge meaningful…
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Science & Tech
Growing U.S. disparities in health not inevitable
In the public health field, there is an ongoing debate as to whether improvement in the overall health of the population is linked to increases or decreases in social inequities in health, that is, the inequities between higher-income and lower-income groups or people of different race/ethnicities. In the most comprehensive study to date addressing this…
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Health
Working to snip malaria drug resistance
Useful genetic maps showing the inner workings of drug-resistant malaria parasites, and where they live around the world, are being created as part of a major drive against the persistent tropical disease.
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Science & Tech
Early childhood stress affects developing brain
It is now clear that creating a sustained, reliable, compassionate and widespread system that cares for tiny children born into troubled families is needed in this nation, said Jack P. Shonkoff, Director of the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. Speaking today during a symposium at the annual meeting of the American Association…
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Science & Tech
The ethics of the organ bazaar
In nearly every country in the world, there is a shortage of kidneys for transplantation. In the United States, around 73,000 people are on waiting lists to receive a kidney. Yet 4,000 die every year before the lifesaving organ is available. Worldwide, about 66,000 kidney transplants are performed annually. By far, that’s too slow a…
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Health
Cancer drug activates adult stem cells
The use of a drug used in cancer treatment activates stem cells that differentiate into bone appears to cause regeneration of bone tissue and be may be a potential treatment strategy for osteoporosis, according to a report in the February 2008 Journal of Clinical Investigation. The study – led by Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI)…
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Health
HOPE in African HIV/AIDS fight
It was close to midnight one day this week in Durban, South Africa, when Harvard AIDS researcher Bruce D. Walker switched on his computer and made a visit to 104 Mt. Auburn St. in Cambridge. That’s the address of the Harvard Initiative for Global Health (HIGH), a multidisciplinary group that supports interfaculty research on worldwide…
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Health
Harvard researchers receive $14 million TB study grant
Harvard researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Partners In Health (PIH) have received a grant of $14 million over five years from the National Institutes of Health to study multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) and extensively drug resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB). The goal of the project…
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Health
Gene variation may elevate risk of liver tumor in patients with cirrhosis
A genetic variation appears to significantly increase the risk that individuals with cirrhosis of the liver will develop hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a liver tumor that is the third leading cause of cancer death. Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Cancer Center and colleagues in France describe in the January 2 edition of the Journal of…
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Health
New survey of public attitudes on cold and cough medications for children
A new survey from NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health examines the public’s views of over-the-counter children’s cold and cough medications in the wake of recent concerns raised by a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel, the media and the pharmaceutical industry regarding their safety and effectiveness. The…
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Science & Tech
Trafficked
Slight and soft-spoken, the dark-eyed girl called Gina looks into the camera and speaks of her ordeal in a flat, disembodied voice, chronicling a story relived a thousand times. “The first night, they forced me to have sex. When I refused, they held me down, beat me, and raped me. I was seven years old.”…
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Science & Tech
From neuroscience to childhood policy
The Center on the Developing Child, founded in July 2006 to promote healthy child development as “the foundation of community development, economic prosperity, and a secure nation,” has been putting its message forth in a powerful series of colloquia across the University. Wednesday night (Dec. 5) director Jack P. Shonkoff brought his case to a…
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Health
Differences between malaria parasites in patients’ blood and in lab
In a groundbreaking study published today in the advance online edition of Nature, an international research team has for the first time measured which of the the malaria parasite’s genes are turned on or off during actual infection in humans, rather than in cell cultures, unearthing surprising behaviors and opening a window on the most…
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Health
Scientists Decode Genomes of Diverse TB Isolates
An international collaboration led by researchers in the US and South Africa today announced the first genome sequence of an extensively drug resistant (XDR) strain of the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis, one linked to more than 50 deaths in a recent tuberculosis (TB) outbreak in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. As part of this work, genomes of multi-drug…
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Health
Consumption of some foods associated with decrease in ovarian cancer risk
New research from the Channing Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) reports that frequent consumption of foods containing the flavonoid kaempferol, including non-herbal tea and broccoli, was associated with a reduced risk of ovarian cancer. The researchers also found a decreased risk in women who consumed large amounts of the flavonoid luteolin, which is…
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Health
Changes in diet and lifestyle may help prevent infertility
Women who followed a combination of five or more lifestyle factors, including changing specific aspects of their diets, experienced more than 80 percent less relative risk of infertility due to ovulatory disorders compared to women who engaged in none of the factors.
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Health
Economic motivation could underlie some ordering of imaging tests
A new study by researchers at Institute for Technology Assessment in Massachusetts General Hospital’s (MGH) Department of Radiology finds that physicians who consistently refer patients to themselves or members of their own specialty for imaging studies, rather than to radiologists, are more likely to order such studies for a variety of medical conditions. The results…
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Health
It took a novel tack to discover an obesity gene
The racing sailboat was small, and Christoph Lange wanted to be sure he didn’t capsize and plunge into the Charles River again, as he’d done half a dozen times that spring. Using his blue sailing shoes for leverage, he carefully arranged himself on the craft’s cramped bench and reached for the tiller. The day was…
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Health
Income Inequality Associated with Double Disease Burden of Overnourishment and Undernourishment in India
It has been known that countries with rapidly developing economies may experience a double-disease burden that results from undernutrition and overnutrition. People living in poverty experience diseases that result from a lack of resources, while affluent individuals may suffer from diseases that result from an abundance of resources. Researchers at the Harvard School of Public…
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Health
High rates of HIV infection documented among young Nepalese girls sex-trafficked to India
A study by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers of girls and women who were sex-trafficked from Nepal to India and then repatriated has found that 38 percent were HIV positive. The infection rate exceeded 60 percent among girls forced into prostitution prior to age 15 years. One in seven of the study’s participants…
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Science & Tech
Survey of hurricane preparedness finds one-third on high risk coast will refuse evacuation order
Thirty-one percent of residents surveyed in coastal areas said they wouldn’t evacuate in the face of a major hurricane, even if told to do so by the government, according to a new survey of people in high-risk hurricane areas conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health Project on the Public and Biological Security. This…
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Health
Weight gain between first and second pregnancies and sex ratio
A new study from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, found that mothers who experienced an increase in weight from the beginning of the first pregnancy to the beginning of the second pregnancy may be slightly more likely to give birth to a baby boy during their second…
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Health
Nine Harvard faculty members win NIH’s Pioneer, Innovator Awards
Nine Harvard researchers “well-positioned to make significant – and potentially transformative – discoveries in a variety of areas,” ranging from brain development to reprogramming stem cells, have been awarded special funding by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The grants, announced Tuesday (Sept. 18), total $15 million over the next five years. They will be…
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Campus & Community
Winners of Fisher Prize in Geographical Information Science named
The Committee of the Howard T. Fisher Prize in Geographical Information Science (GIS) recently named two undergraduate and two graduate students as 2006-07 award recipients.
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Campus & Community
‘Harvard does something to you: It opens the door to the world’
When Raul Ruiz was a teenager, some of his teachers realized he had potential. But most, he says, recommended he apply to a vocational school; it would be a big step toward the American dream for a first-generation Mexican-American boy whose migrant-worker parents had never finished high school.
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Campus & Community
The biggest challenge of sustainability: Changing minds
In 1999, the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) made plans to move its offices to the Landmark Center, a converted Sears, Roebuck and Co. warehouse in Boston. Danny Beaudoin — the School’s manager of operations, energy, and utilities — was asked to look into sustainable design for the renovation: a realm of low-emitting paints,…