The New England Journal of Medicine released a study Tuesday estimating that at least 4,645 people died in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. This death toll is more than 70 times the official government estimate of 64 people and is likely still only a fraction of the storm’s full human cost.
The Public's Health: Healthy Homes | Public Health Post
Sixteen million American children live in poverty, putting them at risk for delayed development, disease, and poor educational outcomes. The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is a pro-work, federal tool that has reduced or eliminated poverty for 13.2 million children. Cash transfer programs like EITC improve maternal and infant health.
3 Lessons from Puerto Rico: Mitigating the Health Effects of Future Hurricanes | Harvard Business Review
Nearly one year after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the official death toll for the disaster stands at 64. However, a new study, published Tuesday in The New England Journal of Medicine, estimates that at least 4,645 people have died as a consequence of the storm. That is more than 70 times the official estimate. Perhaps most worrisome, it is not at all clear that we are taking steps to mitigate the consequences of future hurricanes. This observation, as a new hurricane season is about to begin, should give us all pause.
Guns and the Health of the Public | Dean's Note
Next weekend, Americans will wear orange to mark Gun Violence Awareness Day and advocate for changes to our laws that could help stem the tide of firearm violence in this country. The recent shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas, which killed 10 people, underscored the need for reform, as did the many shootings that came before it, as will the many shootings that will follow if we persist in our collective inaction. With this in mind, we today rerun a modified version of a Dean’s Note on guns and public health. It is no accident that the original version of this note was one of the first I wrote when I became dean of the School of Public Health in 2015. I have come to believe that gun violence is among the preeminent public health challenges of our time, a belief shared by many in our field, and, hearteningly, an increasing number of people outside of it. The growing acknowledgement that gun violence is indeed a public health problem opens the door to public health solutions, and a commonsense, data-informed approach to this challenge, as the gun debate continues to unfold.
The Public's Health: Names Matter in the Opioid Epidemic | Public Health Post
A quick survey of any number of general media reports about drug use will readily find mentions of “addicts” who use opioids. Casual conversations label those who use drugs as “junkies.” We are accustomed to using language to distance ourselves from those with substance use problems, making sure we mark those who use drugs as “the other,” not like us.
Denial of services to same-sex couples can harm their health | The Hill
In the Supreme Court hearing for Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, lawyers for the baker argued that he should not have to sell a cake to a same-sex couple because his religion does not support same-sex marriage.
Debates around this case have referenced potential implications for the dignity of sexual minority populations, but in the absence of data to ground the conversation.
In a new study published in JAMA Psychiatry, we found that state laws permitting the denial of services to same-sex couples are associated with a 46 percent increase in mental distress among gay, lesbian, and bisexual adults.
Why Public Health? Three Stories That Reflect Our Core Mission | Dean's Note
As we send this SPH This Week to print, news is emerging of yet another school shooting, this time in Texas, with 10 people so far confirmed dead. It is worth remembering that these shootings are not random, not inexplicable.They are outbreaks of a preventable disease we could cure with commonsense gun safety legislation. Each day we choose not to is tantamount to allowing an epidemic to rage while we keep the vaccine on ice. We can do much better that this. I have written previously, always sadly, about this before.
The Public's Health: The Microbiome and the Public's Health | Public Health Post
Each of us is a living ecosystem with trillions of microorganisms living on and in us, our microbiome. Each of us has her own collection of such microbes, inhabiting skin, mouth, gut, lungs. Yes, it’s surprising that identical twins are barely more similar to one another in microbial composition than are non-identical twins; that our personal menagerie changes over time; that a sufficiently extreme short-term dietary change can cause the gastrointestinal flora of different people to resemble one another within days. Yes, the microbiome may well turn out to play a critical role in an individual’s health, a very intriguing prospect. But when nearly two dozen federal agencies—NIH, FDA, EPA, NSF—join together to release a five-year strategic plan to bolster the study of microbiomes, we wonder why these same agencies can’t get together on another day to make a second strategic plan. This one a plan for public health, not private health, one that could save lives and reduce morbidities next year by focusing on what we know matters to our health: the policies that drive behavior.