Better Off

There are widespread power outages and shortages of food and water in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria. The storm is being blamed for at least two dozen deaths. It also devastated the islan…

A recent report published in The Lancet finds that health systems in sub-Saharan Africa are largely unprepared to deal with that region’s rapidly expanding epidemic of diabetes. According to the Lanc…

More than 90,000 schools in the U.S. have participated in the Box Tops for Education program—one of the largest school-based brand marketing initiatives. The program was launched by General Mills in …

August 31, 2017 — Tropical storm Harvey has caused devastating flooding around Houston, Texas since making landfall as a hurricane on August 26. The storm has dumped nearly 50 inches of rain—and is b…

More than half of the world's population lives in so-called emerging markets—countries such as China, India, Brazil, and Mexico. These are middle-income countries on the rise, experiencing rapid econ…

esarean delivery of a baby—or C-section—is the world's most commonly performed surgery. Rates have been rising across the globe, but there has been a particularly notable increase in the United State…

In a new advisory the American Heart Association (AHA) strongly urges people to swap out saturated fats in favor of healthier unsaturated fats. The AHA says doing so can lower a person’s heart diseas…

A new study of 60 million Americans is strengthening the link between air pollution and premature death. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researchers found that long-term exposure to airborn…

Dry cleaning is an industry that dates back to the 1600s—when turpentine was used to clean fabrics. But now it's an industry in transition amid growing demand for dry cleaning solvents that are less …

In this week's podcast we explore a new discovery in the fight against tuberculosis(TB). It's a disease that infects more than 10 million people a year—killing nearly two million. And while TB is pre…

It's now been more than a year since the Zika virus gained global attention, sickening a million people in dozens of countries. The epidemic began in early 2015 and was declared a public health emerg…

June 1, 2017 — Health officials in Minnesota are now grappling with that state’s largest measles outbreak in several decades. As of May 31, the Minnesota Department of Health had confirmed 70 cases o…

Deepali Ravel, PhD '17, studies the malaria parasite and believes biology can be a powerful tool for addressing global health problems. In this week's podcast we speak with Ravel about the challenges…

May 18, 2017 — Pedro Lamothe-Molina, PhD ’17, is an HIV researcher, aspiring physician-scientist, and an accomplished triathlete. He's also one of the hundreds of future public health leaders who wil…

In this week's podcast we share an in-depth interview with Gina McCarthy, former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and currently a Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow at Harvar…

Structural racism is often called an invisible evil because it's so pervasive, but also hidden in some ways. It involves interconnected institutions—housing, education, health care—that foster discri…

In this week's podcast we bring you two stories of disturbing human rights abuses: one developing in real-time, and another that's been lingering for centuries. In the first half of the episode, we s…

We're now in the midst of a golden era of data. and scientists are constantly finding news ways to harness this information with applications across health care, the environment, commerce, urban plan…