At a time when much of the news is dismaying, last week brought a development that was, for a change, truly joyous. The rescue of a Thai soccer team, along with their coach, from the cave where they had been trapped for 18 days was a welcome conclusion to an at-times harrowing tale. While the death of one of the team’s rescuers—former Thai Navy SEAL Saman Kunan—prevents this ending from being an unequivocally happy one, the fact that the team is now out of immediate physical danger is something we can all celebrate.
The Public's Health: Creating Health is Like Winning at Soccer | Public Health Post
As the 2018 World Cup moves toward its finale, it's clear that soccer is the global sport, with an estimated 500 million people playing regularly, or about 5% of the world’s population. The game is simple: eleven players on one side try to get the ball into the net on the other side. Of the eleven players, only the goalie can use her hands to keep the ball from getting into the net.
Those who are not used to soccer may, reasonably enough, see the goalie as the key to winning. After all the goalie is the last defense, standing between the ball and the net, and in theory a spectacular goalie can stop every shot that comes her way.
Open letter to Secretary Azar on breastfeeding stance at the World Health Assembly | ASPPH
Dear Secretary Azar: On behalf of the members of the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health, and the students, faculty and leadership of America’s public health schools and programs, I write to express our disappointment and dismay at the United States’ efforts to block a resolution offered at the World Health Assembly that called on all governments to “protect, promote and support breast-feeding.” We ask that you clarify the United States’ position on breastfeeding, including why we apparently now are opposed to its promotion and why the United States also now apparently is opposing efforts to limit the inaccurate or misleading marketing of breast milk substitutes. Lastly, since you led the U.S. delegation to the World Health Assembly, we ask you to explicitly state who approved this radical change in U.S. policy
Roe v. Wade and Abortion Rights in the Post-Kennedy Era | Dean's Note
The announcement that Justice Anthony Kennedy will retire from the US Supreme Court has created deep uncertainty about a range of issues related to health. Kennedy was regarded as a swing vote on the court—while he generally sided with the court’s conservative wing, he famously joined with progressive opinion on the issues of abortion and LGBT rights. His successor will likely make decisions about these and many other issues, including the economy, voting rights, the environment, and the basic ground rules of our politics, all of which will have ramifications for health.
Social Movements in the Trump Era | Dean's Note
Last week, we ran a Dean’s Note addressing the Trump administration’s decision to separate families at the US border, and how these separations threatened health, particularly the health of children. They were the latest in a series of actions taken by this administration that have undermined health in the US and around the world. From its reinstatement of the Mexico City Policy, to its move to withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Agreement, to its tolerance, even encouragement, of hate groups, to recent events concerning the Supreme Court, the presidency of Donald Trump has so far done much to dismay those who care about compassion, inclusion, and health. Furthering this calumny, this week the Supreme Court upheld Trump’s travel ban on the grounds that it is within executive powers to create such a ban, even as this ban is clearly founded on xenophobia and Islamophobia, an appeal to the basest instinct of a political base that would keep us back from building a better and healthier world for all of us and for our children.
The Public's Health: The Census and Public Health | Public Health Post
The US Constitution mandates that every resident be counted at least every ten years. As the 2020 census approaches, the Trump administration’s decision to meddle with how to perform this head count by adding a question about citizenship to the census has already been criticized by the Census Bureau’s Scientific Advisory committee and has become the target of lawsuits.
America Has A Health Care Gap, And Insurance Alone Won't Fix It | HuffPost
Health in America is characterized by profound divides; we have become a nation of health haves and health have nots. There is a 20-year life-expectancy gap between the country’s healthiest and least healthy counties, and a similar life-expectancy gap within counties.
These disparities are evident in every state, including Massachusetts, where residents have remarkable access to high-quality health care. The commonwealth has the most primary care physicians per 100,000 residents in the nation and the lowest rate of uninsured residents of any state, with less than 3 percent of the population without coverage.
POV: Harm of Border Separations Will Haunt US Future | BU Today
In recent weeks, much has rightly been written about the forced separation of families and children at the US-Mexican border. As details of the separations emerged, it became clear that we were witnessing an act of wanton cruelty carried out by an administration that has already done much to mainstream callousness in American life. Many of the detained children were being held in warehouse facilities; some, appallingly, were placed in cages. As former First Lady Laura Bush writes in the Washington Post, images of these facilities were “eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in US history.”