Better Off

Working from home has its perks: Better coffee, easy commute, no fluorescent lighting. But, as any home office worker can tell you, there are also downsides: No more office social hours, no more ergo…

As COVID-19 swept through American prisons and jails in 2020, wardens scrambled to keep prisoners and corrections officers from getting sick. One strategy was to increase solitary confinement. Health…

It’s estimated that half a million Americans are experiencing homelessness. Even a brief period of housing insecurity can make existing health issues worse, and bring up new physical and mental traum…

What does a plate of healthy food look like? Everyone has an opinion – from doctors to dieticians to wellness experts. But advice on what to eat often ignores a big factor in how and why we make meal…

Guests:  

Shruthi Mahalingaiah, assistant professor of environmental reproductive and women's health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Tamarra James-Todd, Mark and Catherine Winkler associate …

40 million American homes cook their meals with natural gas. But most people don’t think of the little blue flame on their gas range as the end of a very long natural gas pipeline. New research shows…

What makes a healthy home? 

In 2022, that question feels more important than ever. What are the right foods to eat? The least-toxic shampoos and sunscreens? The best way to prevent loneliness while wo…

This episode was first released in December, 2020.

Until the COVID-19 pandemic, most of us didn't think about indoor air very much, if at all. But healthy buildings expert Joseph Allen has been studyi…

Eating disorders affect a population the size of the state of Texas, cost the economy tens of billions of dollars, and kill 10,000 Americans per year. If eating disorders are so common, expensive, an…

During the earliest days of the pandemic, younger people were told to protect the older adults in their lives from COVID-19 by isolating at home. Concerns about the virus and pandemic restrictions ha…

In a special bonus episode, recorded a day before Juneteenth was made a federal holiday, we listen in on a conversation between Opal Lee, an activist and teacher often called the "grandmother of June…

This spring, public health officials have been laser-focused on getting more Americans vaccinated against COVID-19. So why do racial disparities persist around vaccination? And once more Americans ar…

When Aaron (Ari) Bernstein met his first pediatric patient infected with COVID-19, he realized that this little girl's health was connected to an infected bat on the other side of the world. Climate …

In the 1980's, there were millions of cases of Guinea worm disease across the globe, mostly in rural Africa. Donald Hopkins, MPH '70, has spent 40 years working to eradicate this painful and debilita…

The technology that is helping us combat COVID-19 is also poised to help us tackle tough infectious and non-infectious diseases. Immunologist Sarah Fortune explains how these vaccines work, and how t…

When Antón Castellanos Usigli was asked to help bring younger LGBTQ people into a Brooklyn clinic for sexual health services, he thought it would be a piece of cake. But after his first attempts fail…

We’re better off when kids are resilient

Are kids going to be okay when the pandemic is over? That’s the question on many parents’ minds as remote learning continues, and friends and family remain six…

Better Off talks with Harvard Chan School's Howard Koh about lessons learned from the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, also known as swine flu, and how the incoming administration can use those lessons …

Until the COVID-19 pandemic, most of us didn't think about indoor air very much, if at all. But healthy buildings expert Joseph Allen has been studying indoor air for years. He says that since we spe…

How can we make our families, communities, and our world a little bit better during the COVID-19 crisis, and beyond?  That's the question we're asking on Better Off, a new podcast from Harvard T.H. C…