Reimagining immigration with public health as a guide | The Hill

Last Sunday, President Biden made his first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border since assuming the presidency. It is good to see the Biden Ever since the U.S. became a destination for immigrants, migration has shaped our culture and politics, as Americans have balanced competing impulses. On one hand, we are the land of “Give me your tired, your poor, /Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” On the other, we are the country of Benjamin Franklin arguing against German immigration, the country of “No Irish need apply,” and the country of “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best … They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” administration keeping attention on the issue of migration, which remains a critical part of the American demographic landscape. The U.S. has more immigrants than any other nation. Over 40 million people living in the U.S. were born beyond our shores. Each year, over 1 million immigrants arrive here.

Ever since the U.S. became a destination for immigrants, migration has shaped our culture and politics, as Americans have balanced competing impulses. On one hand, we are the land of “Give me your tired, your poor, /Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” On the other, we are the country of Benjamin Franklin arguing against German immigration, the country of “No Irish need apply,” and the country of “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best … They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” 

The tension between the instinct to welcome immigrants and the willingness to demonize them has kept migration a political flashpoint for most of American history.

Read the full piece on The Hill

Building a Healthier World in the New Year | Dean's Note

On advancing a vision of health in 2023.

As we return from the holiday intersession, a word of welcome to our community. I hope everyone had a relaxing, joyous time with family and friends. Over the past week it has been wonderful to reconnect with colleagues, to hear about travels, about books read over the break, dinner table conversations, and new ideas that emerged from holiday reflections.

We are now at the beginning of a new year. This has historically been a time for making resolutions, using the fresh start of the season to become the best possible versions of ourselves. The tradition of making resolutions began about 4,000 years ago with the ancient Babylonians, who also held the first recorded new year celebrations. During a festival, the Babylonians would promise their gods that they would pay their debts and return anything they had borrowed.

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Welcoming (back) complexity and contradiction in 2023 | The Healthiest Goldfish

To shape a healthier world, we need to resist Manichean narratives and engage with reality in all its messy nuance.

We have been living in divided times. It is hard to pinpoint exactly when this started, but a strong contender for that moment would have to be 2015, which, not coincidentally, was around the time of the rise to prominence of Donald Trump. Before then, the country had known divisions, our political system characterized by entrenched ideological positions, but we more or less felt we knew where we were collectively headed. Our future seemed to be one in which the push and pull of two different views of the country continually jostled for space, with one occasionally prevailing over the other. This jostling would sometimes result in constructive engagement, with both sides recognizing the complexity of issues. We in public health found ourselves working to promote ideas and policies that generate health, reaching whenever possible across partisan divides to achieve this goal. That the world and country were getting healthier was testament to our achievements. That there was so much we could do better, so many getting left behind, was testament to how much more we still had to do.
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Reimagining science communication in a time of change for social media | The Healthiest Goldfish

It is time to ask: are platforms like Twitter really the best places for conversations about issues of consequence for health?

13 years ago, as I was considering leadership positions in epidemiology, I thought it was important to find new ways of communicating about the science of public health. This led me to the still relatively new world of social media. At the time, social media seemed to hold much potential as a place for sharing the latest science, for making connections, and for helping engage with the public around issues of consequence for health. In the spirit of this engagement, I joined Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and, later, Substack. I have used these platforms to communicate broadly, because I see translation as a core part of what we do in public health. I have long believed that a robust public conversation is central to generating the ideas that shape a healthier world.

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The Qatar World Cup and the commercial determinants of health | The Healthiest Goldfish

The events leading up to the Qatar World Cup showed the dark side of a beautiful game, but they also provide a window into the forces that shape health.

In recent weeks, I have been glued to my phone watching the World Cup, sometimes I must admit surreptitiously during Zoom meetings. In this, I have been far from alone. The World Cup is, in terms of audience, by a fair measure the world’s largest global sporting event. In 2018, over half the world’s population watched the competition. The World Cup is always exciting, both for the competition itself and for the human stories of its participants. The contenders include preening superstars (Ronaldo…) and young upstarts, national clubs that are well-oiled winning machines and scrappy underdogs looking to earn an upset for the ages. It will be a while before we forget Morocco shocking Spain this week, with the former world champions heading home while Morocco moves forward.

But the World Cup has other stories as well. The narrative leading up to this year’s competition includes much that is unprecedented. It is being held in winter in Qatar—the first time the World Cup has been in the Middle East—as to hold it in its traditional time of summer would be too hot for the players. Then there are the horrific stories about the lives of migrant workers lost due to the conditions many of them experienced in building the stadiums where the games are happening. During the lead-up to the World Cup, reports of this abuse as well as bribery and corruption of officials involved in bringing the games to Qatar, and the broader issue of human rights violations within the country, have complicated the joy soccer fans take in the World Cup. It has, rightly, prompted the question: should we really be holding games in a place where human rights are not respected?

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Reconsidering our School’s Engagement with Twitter | Dean's Note

Our commitment to a healthier world will continue to inform all of our communications, no matter where they take place.

It has long seemed to me that one of the core responsibilities of academic institutions is to aspire to always align what we do with our mission. This should include our way of communicating, both within our community and to the broader population. On this front, our aspiration is to advance a communications model that not only highlights the work of our community with efficiency and reach, but also exemplifies our values as a community.

With this in mind, having weighed the impact of a number of changes around the platform over the past several weeks, we will, as a School, be disengaging from our Twitter account @busph. Relatedly, I will also suspend my personal @sandrogalea account. Neither account will be deleted. While we may in future return to Twitter if the circumstances around the platform change, this seems the right thing to do at this point, for two key reasons.

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Placing Transgender Health at the Heart of Public Health | Dean's Note

On public health’s responsibility to support the dignity and health of transgender people.

Last Tuesday, the US Senate passed the Respect for Marriage Act, which would codify marriage rights for same-sex and interracial couples. The bill passed with bipartisan support in a vote of 61-36. The drafting and passage of the bill happened in a context of uncertainty around the future of marriage rights. This uncertainty was informed, in part, by Justice Clarence Thomas’ stated belief, with the recent overturning of Roe v. Wade, that the Supreme Court might consider revisiting its ruling supporting marriage equality. These comments were part of a larger ecosystem of backlash to LGBTQ+ rights we have seen in recent years, making it all the more urgent that these rights be protected. It is progress indeed that Congress acted decisively to ensure that the fundamental right to marry will no longer be subject to such uncertainty.

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Reimagining How We Support Persons Living with Disability | Dean's Note

It is time for public health to contribute to a world where disability is not merely accommodated but uplifted.

A key theme of my writing has long been the question of what health, fundamentally, is. Is health just the ability to treat disease? Or is it the creation of a world where everyone can access the resources—the dignity and material assets—that support health? I argue that health is the latter, that a healthy world is one that is maximized to allow as many people as possible to flourish and thrive. In many ways, we have made remarkable strides towards the creation of such a world. People are living longer, healthier lives than ever before. We have shown greater willingness to address the inequities that underly health gaps, recognizing the historic injustice that often informs these inequities. Yet the continued existence of health gaps reflects the reality that our progress has not gone far enough, that there are still areas, and many, where we are falling far short of where we should be.

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