Massachusetts tackles flaws that cost lives during the pandemic
“Covid made the case clearly that public health infrastructure is really important.”
Front Page
What should happen to doctors who spread misinformation?
So far, medical boards have been hands-off.
Mixed lessons from intentionally infecting people with COVID-19
Challenge trials help researchers study immune responses. Skeptics still doubt the approach is worth the risks.
Sign up for Harvard Public Health
Exploring what works, what doesn’t, and why.
Delivered to your inbox weekly.
Environmental Health
New year, new world
An editorial cartoon by Jenna Luecke
Mapping every square kilometer of air pollution in India
Siddhartha Mandal’s team estimates air quality and how it affects health.
Can a $10 billion climate bond address California’s water contamination problem?
Tucked in the bond on the November ballot is an earmark to improve drinking water quality.
Equity
Of mice and women
Decades of male-dominated studies leave women at risk.
Making the invisible visible
How better data, more access, and community-based solutions can drive health equity
Digital redlining perpetuates health inequity. Here’s how we fix it.
Not all internet service is created equal, especially for marginalized communities.
Global Health
How the U.S. election has an outsized effect on global reproductive health
U.S. politics harm women by tying health workers’ hands, even in countries where abortion care is legal.
Mpox offers another chance to confront vaccine inequity
Expanding vaccine manufacturing in Africa could address longstanding disease control problems.
The battle against tuberculosis will be won or lost in India
Experts say the country could be a model for the world. Instead, its TB fight has floundered.
Snapshots
Bite-sized views of big ideas in public health
Mental Health
Migrant children struggle to express themselves in words. Enter art and play.
Research shows art and play therapy can help children process complex trauma.
Cities hope adding mental health workers to emergency response will reduce violence
Ryan Levi, a reporter for Tradeoffs, talks about Durham’s HEART program.
“People forget about the fathers.”
In the barren world of men’s grief, the Sad Dads Club allows fathers to mourn openly.
Policy & Practice
To break cycles of trauma, we need family-friendly addiction treatment
The surging number of children of opioid users in foster care is leading to worse health outcomes.
Could the media stop avoiding public health, please?
Politicians are ignoring the greatest public health crisis in a century, and journalists are letting them.
Public health vs. politics
Increasingly, people’s health choices align with their political identities rather than medical advice.
Reproductive Health
Hispanic women are less likely to get PrEP treatment. A new intervention could change that.
Latinas make up 17 percent of U.S. women, but 21 percent of those living with HIV.
Adopt-A-Mom wants to eliminate pregnancy disparities in North Carolina
The program responds to racial and insurance-based inequities in maternal care in Guilford County.
Researchers look closer at the placenta
A better understanding of the placenta may help curb maternal and fetal mortality rates, but progress is slow.
Tech & Innovation
Health care AI, intended to save money, turns out to require a lot of expensive humans
You need people, and more machines, to make sure the new tools don’t mess up.
Community information exchanges quench health data droughts
Data-sharing models from San Diego and Chicago could provide a roadmap for the rest of the country.
Weaving data into the fabric of public health
The field is finding new and creative approaches to how it uses data.