Next Saturday, members of the School of Public Health class of 2018 will walk across a stage at the BU Track and Tennis Center, and, in the presence of family and friends, receive the degrees they have earned. Reflecting on their accomplishment, I have found myself thinking about the central mission of public health. Our aim is to improve the social, economic, and environmental conditions that shape health, with special focus on closing health gaps and caring for the health of vulnerable populations. This mission is, at heart, a call to correct the underlying injustices in our society that can manifest as disease and injury. With each passing year, I become more convinced that there can be no health without social justice, and that public health must address injustice if it is to create a world that generates health, rather than a world that too often undermines it. With this in mind, we today rerun a modified Dean’s Note on the link between health and social justice, in the spirit of the class of 2018, with high hopes for all they will do to build a healthier, more just world.
The Public's Health: Public Health and the President's Racism | Public Health Post
President Trump has a history of statements that suggests he harbors racist sentiments and of actions that would back up these same sentiments. He seemed to lay to rest any doubt about his inclinations in reported statements in the Oval Office that the United States should not be granting admission to residents from “shithole” countries.
The Public's Health: Volunteering for the Health of the Public | Public Health Post
The world is aging rapidly. There are now more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 5 worldwide. And we all want to age healthy.
Yet how do we do that? We propose one simple potential way to facilitate healthy aging: volunteering. We like to think of volunteering as a public health intervention, as a social model for health promotion.
Disasters and Public Health | Dean's Note
Before beginning today’s note, an acknowledgement of the recent tragedy in Toronto. Last Monday, 10 people were killed, and more than a dozen were injured, when a man drove a van into pedestrians. While the investigation into what caused him to allegedly commit this crime is still ongoing, he appears to have been motivated by hatred against women. I have written previously about the public health consequences of hate; sadly, there has been ample cause to revisit these thoughts in recent years, from the mass shootings we have regularly seen, to bombings like last Sunday’s attack in Kabul, to the hate that has infused much of our political discourse, both in the US and abroad. In this context, it is all the more important that we continue working to reduce hate and promote the values of empathy and community that are the basis for a healthy world.
The Public's Health: Health Systems and Public Health Thinking | Public Health Post
Every health care provider—from pediatrician to geriatrician—has seen how hunger and homelessness affect health. The disordered lives of patients disrupt appointment-keeping and medication adherence but also create problems themselves. For example, they drive depressive symptoms, high blood pressure, and hospitalizations for asthma.
Recognizing this, some health systems are paying attention. Our health system in Boston recently announced plans to subsidize housing to improve housing options for patients for whom it is accountable.
The Public's Health: When We Talk About Public Health | Public Health Post
According to a new study, there was little discussion by candidates Trump and Clinton of “public health issues” during the 2016 Presidential campaign.
Combing the texts of major campaign speeches, interviews, and advertisements made by candidates Trump and Clinton for keywords, the authors of this study conclude, “the two candidates did not communicate the major concerns of the public health field.” They bemoan that general references to “health” accounted for less than 1% of the words used by these candidates.
The Public's Health: Income Inequality and Our Health | Public Health Post
Pre-tax incomes for the poorest 50 percent of Americans have stayed mostly unchanged for the past 40 years. As our economy has grown, the pre-tax share of national income among the poor has dropped significantly, widening income gaps in the country. We leave the question of why inequality matters for the economy to others. What is of concern to us is whether income inequality matters to our health and to the extent that it does, how we in the health profession should respond.
The Public's Health: A New Sexual Revolution | Public Health Post
Quietly, slowly, there has been a notable change in how young Americans relate sexually with each other. Between 1995 and 2015, the proportion of high school students who report ever having sexual intercourse has fallen from 53.1% to 41.2%, the lowest rate since the 1970s. If these percentages were moving in the opposite direction, the headlines would announce how “discouraged” we were by this next generation putting themselves at risk for pregnancy, infection. Good news does not travel as fast as bad news does. So if you were looking for positive public health reports, this is one.