Harvard Chan: This Week in Health

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 ergonomic chairs, and no more quiet train rides to catch up on your podcasts. In this episode of the Better Off podcast, we'll ask: Is working from home good or bad for our health?  GuestsEileen McNeely, Founder and Executive Director of SHINE, the Health & Sustainability Initiative at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.Read a study by Eileen McNeely and SHINE researchers, exploring associations between the importance of well-being domains and the subsequent experience of well-being.Read an article by Eileen McNeely discussing business as a platform for human flourishing.Bethany Barone Gibbs, Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at West Virginia UniversityRead a study by Bethany Barone Gibbs and other researchers who explored COVID-19's impact on sedentary behaviors.CreditsHost/producer: Anna Fisher-PinkertThe Better Off team: Kristen Dweck, Elizabeth Gunner, Pamela Reynoso, Stephanie Simon, and Ben WallaceAudio engineering and sound design: Kevin O'ConnellAdditional research: Kate Becker

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 experts warn that solitary confinement increases the risk of mental illness and suicide, but the practice continues. Today, about 2 million people are incarcerated in the U.S. In this episode of the Better Off podcast, we'll ask: Is it possible to build a corrections system that accounts for their health and safety? Guests:Jasmine D Graves, Ph.D. student, Population Health Sciences program, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public HealthMonik Jimenez, Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public HealthCredits:Host/producer: Anna Fisher-PinkertThe Better Off team: Kristen Dweck, Elizabeth Gunner, Pamela Reynoso, Stephanie Simon, and Ben WallaceAudio engineering and sound design: Kevin O'ConnellAdditional research: Kate Becker

Guests:Ana Rausch, Vice President of Program Operations at Coalition for the Homeless of Houston/Harris CountyKimberley Richardson, therapistMaggie Sullivan, family nurse practitioner, Boston Health Care for the Homeless and instructor and human rights fellow, FXB Center, Harvard UniversityCredits:Host/producer: Anna Fisher-PinkertThe Better Off team: Kristen Dweck, Elizabeth Gunner, Pamela Reynoso, Stephanie Simon, and Ben WallaceAudio engineering and sound design: Kevin O'ConnellAdditional research: Kate Becker

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 meals: Culture. Americans who trace their heritage back to Latin America or Africa often get messages that discourage them from seeing their home foods as healthy. In this episode, we'll ask: Are we better off when diet and nutrition advice is informed by culture?Guests:Josiemer Mattei, Donald and Sue Pritzker Associate Professor of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public HealthDalina Soto, registered dietician, Your Latina NutritionistCredits:Host/producer: Anna Fisher-PinkertThe Better Off team: Kristen Dweck, Elizabeth Gunner, Stephanie Simon, and Ben WallaceAudio engineering and sound design: Kevin O'ConnellAdditional research: Kate Becker

Guests:  Shruthi Mahalingaiah, assistant professor of environmental reproductive and women's health, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public HealthTamarra James-Todd, Mark and Catherine Winkler associate professor of environmental reproductive epidemiology, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public HealthVisit our website to learn more about our guests, and to find a full transcript.Credits:Host/producer: Anna Fisher-PinkertThe Better Off team: Kristen Dweck, Elizabeth Gunner, Stephanie Simon, and Ben WallaceAudio engineering and sound design: Kevin O'ConnellAdditional research: Kate Becker

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 that gas stoves pollute our indoor air, but Americans have yet to embrace alternatives, like induction stoves. In this episode, Better Off asks: When it comes to our health, are we better off giving up on natural gas?Guests:  Drew Michanowicz, senior scientist, PSE Healthy EnergyBrady Seals, manager, Carbon-free Buildings Program, RMIJon Kung, chefVisit our website to learn more about our guests, and to find a full transcript.Credits:Host/producer: Anna Fisher-PinkertThe Better Off team: Kristen Dweck, Elizabeth Gunner, Stephanie Simon, and Ben WallaceAudio engineering and sound design: Kevin O'ConnellAdditional research: Kate Becker

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 working from home? On Season 2 of the Better Off podcast, we'll look at the research behind some of those big questions. We'll also ask what happens to our health when “home” is a tent encampment, or a 6x9 solitary jail cell.Through six new episodes, host Anna Fisher-Pinkert will talk to leading public health experts about the questions she's had on her mind as a health communicator, a mom, and a person with more than a little skepticism about the things our culture tells us are “healthy.”Better Off: Home starts November 2. Subscribe to get episodes as soon as they drop. Visit hsph.me/better-off to learn more about this season.

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 studying indoor air for years. He says that since we spend 90% of lives inside, we need to do more to make our offices, homes, and schools places where we can breathe easy.Guest: Joseph Allen, Associate Professor of Exposure Assessment Science, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public HealthFor a full transcript of this episode, visit our website. Subscribe to get new episodes of Better Off in your podcast feed every other Wednesday.Has your office, school, or apartment building made changes since the pandemic? How have those changes affected your health? Share your thoughts with us on Twitter and Instagram.Read more about Joseph Allen's research along with all the latest news from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at hsph.harvard.edu/news.To read reports from Joseph Allen and his colleagues, visit ForHealth.org.Music in this episode:Ketsa – SabreBlue Dot Sessions – MilkwoodBlue Dot Sessions – CalissonKetsa – Onwards Upwards

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, and deadly, why don't we talk about them more? Bryn Austin, director of the Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders (STRIPED), says we need to start by getting rid of our "sticky" stereotypes about who is affected by eating disorders.Guest: S. Bryn Austin, professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard Chan School, a faculty member at Boston Children's Hospital, and director of the Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders (STRIPED).

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 have taken a toll on everyone's mental well-being. But it turns out that when it comes to mental health, older adults might actually be faring better than their children and grandchildren. On this episode of Better Off, aging and mental health expert Oliva Okereke explains why.Guest: Olivia Okereke, associate professor in the department of epidemiology at Harvard Chan School, director of geriatric psychiatry in the department of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, and associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.For a full transcript of this episode, visit our website. Subscribe to get new episodes of Better Off in your podcast feed every other Wednesday.Read more about Mary Bassett's work, as well as the latest news from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at hsph.harvard.edu/news.Music in this episode:Ketsa – SabreBlue Dot Sessions – Willow BelleBlue Dot Sessions – Selena LeicaBlue Dot Sessions – Trenton ChannelKetsa – Onwards Upwards 

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 Juneteenth," and Harvard University professors Annette Gordon-Reed and Evelyn Hammonds.Guests:Opal Lee, ActivistAnnette Gordon-Reed, Carl M. Loeb University Professor, Harvard University; author, On JuneteenthEvelynn Hammonds, Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and Professor of African and African-American Studies, Harvard UniversityFor a full transcript of this episode or to watch the full conversation, visit our website. Subscribe via your favorite podcast app.Music in this episode:Ketsa – SabreKetsa – Onwards Upwards

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 are vaccinated, how do we ensure that Black and Latino families aren’t left vulnerable to future public health crises? In the latest episode of Better Off, Mary Bassett talks about the historical roots of health inequities, and the big changes needed to close those gaps.Guest: Mary T. Bassett, director of the François Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University.For a full transcript of this episode, visit our website. Subscribe to get new episodes of Better Off in your podcast feed every other Wednesday.Read more about Mary Bassett's work, as well as the latest news from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at hsph.harvard.edu/news. Music in this episode:Ketsa – SabreBlue Dot Sessions – LupiBlue Dot Sessions – The Caspian SeaBlue Dot Session – An Oddly Formal DanceKetsa – Onwards Upwards

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 change and deforestation have made it easier for new pathogens to spread across the globe. On this episode of Better Off, Ari Bernstein explains how protecting the environment could also secure the future of our own species.Guest: Aaron (Ari) Bernstein, Interim Director of The Center for Climate, Health and the Global Environment (Harvard Chan C-CHANGE).More about climate and healthHarvard Chan C-CHANGEClimate Optimist newsletter 

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 debilitating disease – and he's had remarkable success. Last year, there were only 27 cases worldwide. In the latest episode of Better Off, Donald Hopkins talks about eradicating a disease that many people thought wasn't worth fighting.Watch the inaugural Donald Hopkins Scholars Lecture.Learn more about The Donald Hopkins Predoctoral Scholars Program.More about Donald Hopkins:Fierce Optimism, Harvard Public Health Magazine, 2018The Eradicator: Donald HopkinsGuest: Donald Hopkins, MD, MPH '70,  former director of all health programs at The Carter Center, currently the special advisor for Guinea worm eradication at The Carter Center.For a full transcript of this episode, visit our website. Subscribe to get new episodes of Better Off in your podcast feed.Read more about the latest news from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at hsph.harvard.edu/news. 

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 the mRNA platform could transform the prevention and treatment of deadly diseases.In this episode of "Better Off," Harvard Chan School immunologist Sarah Fortune takes on common misconceptions about COVID-19 vaccines, and discusses the ways that mRNA technology could be used to create vaccines for diseases like TB and cancer.Guest: Sarah Fortune, John LaPorte Given Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Chair, Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public HealthFor a full transcript of this episode, visit our website. Subscribe to get new episodes of Better Off in your podcast feed every other Wednesday.Read more about Sarah Fortune's work, as well as the latest news from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at hsph.harvard.edu/news. Music in this episode:Ketsa – SabreBlue Dot Sessions – St. Augustine RedBlue Dot Sessions – Solear InterludeBlue Dot Sessions – Ewa Valley

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 failed, Antón turned to the one place where young people talk about sex every day: dating and hookup apps.In this episode of "Better Off," DrPH student Antón Castellanos Usigli talks about creating positive conversations about sexual health, and the parallels between sex education and the public health messaging during the COVID-19 pandemic.Guest: Antón Castellanos Usigli, DrPH student, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public HealthFor a full transcript of this episode, visit our website. Subscribe to get new episodes of Better Off in your podcast feed every other Wednesday.Read more about Antón Castellanos Usigli's work, as well as the latest news from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at hsph.harvard.edu/news. Music in this episode:Ketsa – SabrePodington Bear – Am-TransBlue Dot Sessions – SylvestorKetsa – Onwards Upwards 

We’re better off when kids are resilientAre 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 feet apart. Better Off talks with psychologist and researcher Archana Basu about kids’ mental health and the COVID-19 crisis.Guest: Archana Basu, Research Scientist, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public HealthFor a full transcript of this episode, visit our website. Subscribe to get new episodes of Better Off in your podcast feed every other Wednesday.Read more about Archana Basu’s work on mental health as well as the latest news from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at hsph.harvard.edu/news. Music in this episode:Ketsa – SabreBlue Dot Sessions – TaoudellaBlue Dot Sessions - TopslidesKetsa – Onwards Upwards 

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 to respond to COVID-19.Guest: Howard Koh, Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public HealthFor a full transcript of this episode, visit our website. Subscribe to get new episodes of Better Off in your podcast feed every other Wednesday.What do you think of the incoming Biden administration's plan to respond to COVID-19? Share your thoughts with us on Twitter and Instagram. Read more about Howard Koh's work on health policy, along with all the latest news from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at hsph.harvard.edu/news. Music in this episode:Ketsa – SabreBlue Dot Sessions – St. Augustine RedBlue Dot Sessions – Pxl EventuatKetsa – Onwards Upwards

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 spend 90% of lives inside, we need to do more to make our offices, homes, and schools places were we can breathe easy.Guest: Joseph Allen, Associate Professor of Exposure Assessment Science, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public HealthFor a full transcript of this episode, visit our website. Subscribe to get new episodes of Better Off in your podcast feed every other Wednesday.Has your office, school, or apartment building made changes since the pandemic? How have those changes affected your health? Share your thoughts with us on Twitter and Instagram. Read more about Joseph Allen’s research along with all the latest news from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at hsph.harvard.edu/news. To read reports from Joseph Allen and his colleagues, visit ForHealth.org.Music in this episode:Ketsa – SabreBlue Dot Sessions – MilkwoodBlue Dot Sessions – CalissonKetsa – Onwards Upwards

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. Chan School of Public Health. In each episode of Better Off, host Anna Fisher-Pinkert will introduce you to the people who are hunting down solutions to current public health challenges, and innovating to solve public health problems that we haven’t even imagined yet.Subscribe to Better Off wherever you get your podcasts. First episode coming soon!Visit our website for a transcript of this trailer.

What has the environmental movement accomplished since the first Earth Day in 1970? Where is the movement headed? Gina McCarthy, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council and chair of the Board of Advisors at the Harvard Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment (C-CHANGE), reflects on the strides we’ve made and the need to frame climate change as a public health crisis going forward. For full transcript, visit: https://hsph.me/earthdayat50

Could an app help scientists better understand menstruation, fertility, and menopause? On the latest episode of This Week in Health, Shruthi Mahalingaiah and JP Onnela talk about the groundbreaking Apple Women’s Health Study. Shruthi Mahalingaiah, an assistant professor of environmental, reproductive, and women’s health, and JP Onnela, an associate professor of biostatistics, are two of the Harvard Chan School researchers involved in a new study seeking to gain more insight into women’s health. Using an app on their Apple devices, women can share information about their monthly cycles, as well as certain behavioral factors such as physical activity and mobility, to help researchers advance understanding of menstrual and gynecological health. To learn more about the study, or to participate, visit www.hsph.harvard.edu/applewomenshealthstudy. Full transcript available here: https://hsph.me/womenhealthpod

Before Mary Bassett was director of Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, she was New York City’s Health Commissioner. Bassett talks about her experience dealing with the growing opioid epidemic in the city—what worked, what didn’t, and what New York can teach other cities coping with the same problem. She sat down with Kimberlyn Leary, an associate professor at Harvard Chan School and a psychologist at Harvard's McLean hospital who specializes in public health policy. Full transcript: https://hsph.me/nyc-opioid-pod You can subscribe to Harvard Chan: This Week in Health by visiting Apple Podcasts or Google Play and you can listen to it by following us on Soundcloud, and stream it on the Stitcher app or on Spotify.

Shelly Greenfield to unpacks the stigma that surrounds addiction. A psychiatrist from Harvard’s McLean hospital, Greenfield specializes in addiction—how patients cope with it, how it factors into treatment, and how it works its way slowly into policy. Greenfield sat down with Mary Bassett, director of Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. Full Transcript: https://hsph.me/stigma-pod You can subscribe to Harvard Chan: This Week in Health by visiting Apple Podcasts or Google Play and you can listen to it by following us on Soundcloud, and stream it on the Stitcher app or on Spotify.

Physicians’ over-prescription of opioid painkillers opened the door to the current opioid crisis. What can health care providers do to fix it? Chad Brummett, a pain management specialist from the University of Michigan, shares a new approach to combat Michigan's opioid crisis that could be a model for the rest of the nation. Brummett sat down with Mary Bassett, director of Harvard’s FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. Full Transcript: https://hsph.me/prescription-pod You can subscribe to Harvard Chan: This Week in Health by visiting Apple Podcasts or Google Play and you can listen to it by following us on Soundcloud, and stream it on the Stitcher app or on Spotify.

Each year in Zambia, 60,000 people are infected with HIV, and more than 20,000 die of AIDs. In all, it’s estimated that more than 1.2 million people in the country are living with HIV. Research shows that over 90% of Zambians have heard of HIV but less than 40% have a thorough knowledge of the virus or how to protect themselves. In this week's episode, we're talking to the people behind a collaborative project working to fill that knowledge by harnessing the influence of some of Zambia’s most popular musicians. The goal is to produce songs and music videos that can reach youth across Zambia with important messages about HIV prevention. We spoke to three of the people making this possible. Katy Weinberg recently graduated with an MPH from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and works in the Global Health Program at Boston Children’s Hospital. She has partnered on the project with her colleague, David Bickham, a research scientist at the Hospital’s Center on Media and Child Health. And we were also lucky to be joined by one of the musicians collaborating with Katy and David—Ephraim "Son of Africa." Full Transcript: https://hsph.me/zambia-pod

In this week’s episode we're talking about new research comparing the health of athletes in the National Football League and Major League Baseball. The study looked at 6,000 athletes between the years of 1979 and 2013. During that period, there were 517 deaths among NFL players and 431 deaths among MLB players, translating into a 26% higher mortality rate among football players compared with baseball players. The findings showed that while NFL players died of neurodegenerative diseases at a higher rate than MLB players, both groups of athletes were more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than brain diseases. The study was led by Marc Weisskopf, Cecil K. and Philip Drinker Professor of Environmental Epidemiology and Physiology at the Harvard Chan School. The research comes amid increasing concerns over the effects of repeated head trauma on the health of NFL players. And while the study did show a difference in death rates, it’s still unclear exactly what’s driving that disparity—and how to address it. We sat down with Weisskopf to discuss the research and the unanswered questions he’s hoping to answer in the future. Full Transcript: https://hsph.me/sports-pod

What does it mean for someone to flourish? Flourishing is more than just being happy—although that’s a part of it. But the idea of flourishing expands beyond happiness to look at a person’s overall well-being, taking into account things like life satisfaction or someone’s sense of purpose. That’s why studying flourishing is an interdisciplinary science drawing on public health, philosophy, psychology, and more. In this week’s episode we’re talking to two researchers from Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University who are tackling big questions about flourishing: What does it mean for people to flourish? How do we measure it? And are there things that make people more or less likely to flourish? Our guests are Tyler VanderWeele, director of the Human Flourishing Program and John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the Harvard Chan School, and Matthew Wilson, associate director of the Human Flourishing Program and a research associate at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science. Full Transcript: https://hsph.me/flourishingpod

A new study shows that transgender and gender-nonbinary teens face a greater risk of sexual assault in schools that prevent them from using bathrooms or locker rooms consistent with their gender identity. In this week's episode we speak with the study's author, Gabe Murchison, a doctoral student at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Murchison explains why restrooms and locker room policies are so critical and outlines steps that schools, parents, and physicians can take to create more inclusive environments for transgender and gender-nonbinary adolescents. Full Transcript: hsph.me/gender-pod

In this week's podcast we're sharing a special conversation between Cecile Richards, former president of Planned Parenthood and one of the co-founders of Supermajority, and Mary Bassett, director of the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights. Richards spoke about how Supermajority is working to empower women and organize them around key issues related to gender equity, including equal pay and child care. The two also spoke about the recent spate of anti-abortion laws across the United States and the need to protect reproductive rights. Full Transcript: hsph.me/richards-pod

Each year, more than 200 million people around the world are infected with malaria and more than 400,000 die. For the past two decades, the most successful method of malaria prevention has involved treating bed nets with long-lasting insecticides that kill mosquitoes. But that progress is being threatened as mosquitoes increasingly grow resistant to the most commonly used insecticides. Now, new Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health research offers a potential fresh approach to fighting malaria: directly target the parasite responsible for the disease. A recent study showed that mosquitoes that landed on surfaces coated with the antimalarial compound atovaquone were completely blocked from developing Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes malaria. The study was led by Flaminia Catteruccia, professor of immunology and infectious diseases and Doug Paton , a research fellow at the Harvard Chan School. In this week's episode we sit down with Paton to discuss the findings—and how they could be used to make progress in the fight against malaria. Full Transcript: hsph.me/malaria-pod

Rear Admiral Sylvia Trent-Adams has been caring for people since she was just a child. When Trent-Adams was just 12 she volunteered as a candy striper at Lynchburg General Hospital in Virginia. The Rear Admiral later served as a nurse in the U.S. Army before rising up the ranks of the U.S. Public Health Service to become Deputy Surgeon General. In 2017, she was named Acting Surgeon General for six months, becoming just the second nurse, and the first registered nurse to hold that position. Today, Trent-Adams is Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health in the Department of Health. Throughout her career, Trent-Adams has focused on improving access to care for under-served and marginalized groups. And during a visit to the Harvard Chan School, we took the opportunity to interview Trent-Adams about her career in public health. She spoke about the need to shift America’s health care system to a prevention model, strategies for addressing complex health challenges, and how being a nurse has shaped her career. Full Transcript: hsph.me/trent-adams-pod

Noncommunicable diseases—or NCDs—are the leading cause of death around the world. And of those NCDs, chronic cardiometabolic conditions—such as heart disease and diabetes—are particularly deadly. For more than two decades, Gökhan Hotamışlıgil, James Stevens Simmons Professor of Genetics and Metabolism and and director of the Sabri Ülker Center for Nutrient, Genetic and Metabolic Research, has been working to understand the root causes of these diseases—what goes wrong at the cellular and molecular level to make us sick. In this week’s episode we share a wide-ranging conversation with Hotamışlıgil, focusing on the burden of cardiometabolic diseases, the importance of basic scientific research in treating and preventing these conditions, and the unique challenges of running a lab like the Sabri Ülker Center. Full Transcript: hsph.me/ncd-pod

In 2018, colorectal cancer was the third-most common diagnosed cancer among both men and women in the U.S., and data indicate that younger adults are increasingly being diagnosed with it. A new research initiative will examine how the microbiome—a collection of trillions of microorganisms throughout the body—affects the development of colorectal cancer. Scientists on the team will also seek out ways to manipulate the microbiome to better prevent and treat colorectal cancer. In this week's episode, part two of our miniseries on cancer prevention, we're speaking with one of the co-principal investigators of the team, Wendy Garrett, professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Garrett is also on the steering committee of the Zhu Family Center for Global Cancer Prevention. In part one of our miniseries, we spoke to Timothy Rebbeck, the center's director. Full Transcript: https://hsph.me/microbiome-pod

The statistics on cancer worldwide are staggering:  In 2018, more than 18 million people worldwide were diagnosed with the disease, and nearly 10 million died from it. And the burden of cancer is only expected to grow in the coming decades, thanks to a combination of the world’s aging population, the adoption of unhealthy lifestyles, and environmental exposures linked to cancer. The challenge of combating cancer may seem daunting, but research has shown that one-half to two-thirds of all cancer cases could be prevented if societies fully implemented currently available cancer-prevention strategies. At the same time, there is also a need to develop new strategies for prevention and screening. That's why we're devoting our next two episodes to the future of cancer prevention and diagnosis. In part one you'll hear from Timothy Rebbeck, director of the recently launched Zhu Family Center for Global Cancer Prevention. During a wide-ranging conversation Rebbeck explained the current landscape of cancer prevention and detection—and outlined his interdisciplinary approach to pushing the field forward. Full Transcript: https://hsph.me/cancer-pod

When many people think of design they’re probably picturing a product, like a new smartphone or car. But the design principles that lead to the creation of those products—such as the focus on human behavior or the use of prototyping—can also be harnessed to tackle complex public health challenges. In this week’s episode you’ll learn how one of the world’s top public health researchers, Ashish Jha, dean for global strategy at Harvard T.H Chan School of Public Health and director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, and one of the world’s foremost design experts, Patrick Whitney, professor in residence in the Department of Health Policy and Management, have teamed up to think about how design methods can be used to address issues ranging from the opioid epidemic to the future of hospitals. Full Transcript: hsph.me/design-pod This episode is a collaboration with Harvard Global Health Institute.

The traditional public health mantra is that there is no safe level of lead for kids. But a new report from the Harvard Prevention Research Center on Nutrition and Physical Activity finds that many kids in the U.S. could be exposed to lead through the water they drink at school. The team from the Harvard Prevention Research Center analyzed data from 24 states that have lead testing programs in schools, plus Washington, D.C. Only 12 of the states had useable results. Among those, 12% of all water samples tested had higher-than-recommended lead levels, and 44% of schools tested had one or more samples with higher-than-recommended levels. In this week’s episode we’re talking about the report and its findings with Angie Cradock, who is the deputy director of the Prevention Research Center. Full Transcript: https://hsph.me/lead-pod

Coral reefs aren’t just beautiful. They’re the most biologically diverse ecosystems in the oceans, and can provide food, jobs, and protection from storms for coastal communities. But reefs around the world are under threat from a variety of a factors including environmental changes, pollution, and overfishing. And that could have major implications for communities that rely on these reefs for the seafood that sustains their diet. A new research project is trying to tackle that problem by taking an in-depth look at the health of coral reefs in the South Pacific island nation of Kiribati. In this week’s episode we’re speaking to Christopher Golden, the scientist leading this four-year project. Golden is an assistant professor of nutrition and planetary health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and associate director of the Planetary Health Alliance. Golden and other researchers will examine the factors affecting the health of reefs in Kiribati, identify fisheries management strategies that can promote healthier reefs, and gather nutritional data from residents to understand how changes in the health of reefs can affect the health of people living nearby. Full Transcript: https://hsph.me/reef-pod

Each year in the U.S. more than 30,000 people are killed by guns—with two-thirds of those deaths being suicide. And there are tens of thousands non-fatal injuries. Yet research into preventing firearm violence remains limited and under-funded. In a special collaborative episode with Review of Systems we’re taking an in-depth look at gun violence in America: why we know so little about the toll of firearm injuries and deaths, what researchers want to know, and how they are engaging gun owners and enthusiasts as key stakeholders in advocating for more research. Full Transcript: hsph.me/gun-violence-pod You'll hear perspectives on gun violence from the emergency room, with Megan Ranney, and from public health, with David Hemenway. Ranney is an associate professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Rhode Island Hospital/Alpert Medical School of Brown University and also chief research officer for the American Foundation for Firearm Injury Reduction in Medicine, a non-partisan philanthropy focused on filling the funding gap for high-quality, medically-focused, firearm injury research. Hemenway is a professor of health policy at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. He has written widely on injury prevention, on topics including firearms, violence, suicide, child abuse, motor vehicle crashes, fires, falls, and fractures.

Climate change will mean more extreme weather, including heat waves. And it’s not a distant threat—we’re already seeing the effects now in the United States. In this week’s episode, we explore the health threat posed by severe heat and how our society needs to adapt in the decades ahead. You'll hear from Augusta Williams, a doctoral student at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who studies how extreme heat can affect our bodies and minds. She'll explain why heat is considered a "silent killer" and how we can combat the effects of our warming world. Full Transcript: https://hsph.me/heat-pod This episode was produced with assistance from Veritalk, a podcast from Harvard University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

For many Americans, a visit with their doctor no longer requires an actual trip to the doctor’s office. More physicians are offering so-called “telemedicine” services, where they provide care to patients via smart phones, tablets, and computers. And while telemedicine is being more used more frequently across the U.S., it’s still relatively uncommon, according to a new study led by Michael Barnett, assistant professor of health policy and management at Harvard Chan School. In this week's episode we speak to Barnett about the rise of telemedicine, ways to further increase its use, and how this technology could improve health care for patients in the years to come. Full Transcript: https://hsph.me/virtual-pod

Oral rehydration solution (ORS)—a mixture of water, sugar, and salt that is administered as part of oral rehydration therapy (ORT)—is credited with preventing tens of millions of deaths from cholera and other diarrheal diseases. In this week's podcast you'll hear from two scientists who helped bring this simple, low-tech, and cost-effective treatment into worldwide use. Richard Cash, senior lecturer on global health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and David Nalin, professor emeritus at Albany Medical College, collaborated on groundbreaking clinical studies showing that ORT was remarkably effective in reversing dehydration. This episode is a collaboration with Harvard Global Health Institute.

For busy families, gathering together for a meal—whether it’s breakfast or dinner—can be difficult. But a growing body of research shows that these meals together can have an important influence on the quality of food that children and teens eat. However, there’s been less research on effective ways to encourage families to eat together more often. In this week’s episode we’re speaking with Kathryn Walton, research fellow at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and a PhD student at the University of Guelph in Toronto, about a new study that could help public health professionals target interventions at busy families. Walton and a team of researchers, including Bryn Austin, professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, found that when families sit down together for dinner, adolescents and young adults eat more fruits and vegetables and consume fewer fast-food and takeout items. What’s unique about this study is that Walton and her colleagues looked at the families participating in the meal—assessing how they communicated, managed schedules, and even bonded with children, something called family functioning. And they found that the benefits of family meals were seen regardless of how well—or poorly—a family functioned. We spoke with Walton about the findings of her study and how they could inform future initiatives to encourage families to eat together.

In this week's episode we bring you an in-depth conversation with a public health pioneer. During her five-decade career, Marie McCormick, Sumner and Esther Feldberg Professor, emerita, at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has worked on a range of issues: from the health of pre-term babies to vaccines to cannabis. McCormick began her career as a pediatrician and conducted groundbreaking research on the outcomes of high-risk infants, especially preterm infants, and the evaluation of programs to improve their health and development. During our conversation we covered all of that, plus McCormick’s views on the future of child and maternal health, including the need to address poverty’s role in childhood health.

Every day we are bombarded with health news in our social media feeds: from studies touting the benefits—or harms—of a particular food to research on a new treatment for a disease. But how accurate are those headlines? That's the question a multidisciplinary research team led by Noah Haber, ScD '19, tried to answer. And their findings showed that health news shared in social media is likely to be overstated and/or inaccurate. In this week’s episode, we speak with Haber about how that happens—and what can be done to improve health reporting.

Many of us spend hours each day on our smartphones, whether it's texting friends or using our GPS for directions. And each of those actions leaves behind a digital breadcrumb. In this week's episode we're digging into our archives to explain how researchers are mining this data to improve health. JP Onnela, associate professor of biostatistics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, will explain how harnessing smartphone information can be used to improve everything from our mental health to recovery from surgery.

Every minute 24 people around the world are forced to leave their homes—and it’s estimated that more than 65 million people are currently displaced. In this week’s episode, we explore the global refugee and migration crisis with Jacqueline Bhabha, Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Director of Research at the FXB Center for Health and Human rights. Bhabha has studied migration extensively, and focuses on potential solutions to the crisis in her new book, “Can We Resolve the Migration Crisis?” In this interview, Bhabha speaks about the myriad factors driving the current refugee and migration crisis, how rising nationalism and xenophobia worldwide is affecting migration, and the policy changes needed to build a better global migration system.

In this week’s podcast we’ll explore how America’s streets can be redesigned to benefit bicyclists and pedestrians—and we’ll explain why doing so may even help mitigate the effects of climate change. A new study from Anne Lusk, research scientist in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, analyzed how bicyclists and pedestrians responded to various placements of trees along cycle tracks—barrier-protected bicycle-exclusive paths between the road and the sidewalk. The research shows that the placement of these trees can play an important role in how people walking and biking perceive traffic, pollution, heat, and even safety. But the benefits extend beyond just those using the street—and could even be a factor in mitigating the effects of climate change. These trees may make it more likely that people will bike—helping to reduce pollution. And increased greenery can also help cool cities, which often suffer from a heat island effect, which means they’re significantly warmer than more rural areas. Lusk says all of this highlights the need to re-think how we’re designing streets to encourage more people to walk and bike instead of drive.

A new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that students who lived in dormitories without air conditioning during a heat wave performed worse on a series of simple tests compared with students who lived in air-conditioned dorms. The findings show that the effects of extreme heat are not just felt by those typically thought of as vulnerable—such as the elderly. And with global temperatures on the rise, the research underscores the need for sustainable design solutions in mitigating the health impacts of extreme heat. In this week's episode, we'll speak with the authors of that study to learn how we can  better design our buildings and cities to adapt to our changing climate. You'll hear from Joe Allen, assistant professor of exposure assessment science and director of the Healthy Buildings Program at the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment, and Jose Guillermo (Memo) Cedeño Laurent, associate director of the Healthy Buildings Program.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) helps 40 million low-income Americans afford food each month. But the program's future is uncertain as Congress debates the Farm Bill, a multi-year spending bill that will expire on September 30. The Trump administration has proposed significant changes—including cuts in funding—that could shape SNAP in the years ahead. In this week's episode we examine how changes in SNAP are likely to affect the health of food insecure Americans. You'll hear from Sara Bleich, professor of public health policy at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Hilary Seligman, a primary care physician and associate professor of medicine and of epidemiology and biostatistics at University of California, San Francisco. This episode is a collaboration with Review of Systems, from the Center for Primary Care at Harvard Medical School.

Every company has an impact on health—both positive and negative—whether they realize it or not. And in this episode we're taking an in-depth look at the links between businesses and health. Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health recently partnered with Harvard Business School to launch a new initiative called Culture of Health (COH): A Business Leadership Imperative. The goals: encourage business leaders to prioritize the protection and promotion of health and wellbeing and understand how some companies are already contributing to health—and how to encourage others to do so. You'll hear from three researchers spearheading this work: Howard Koh is the Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership and principal investigator of the Culture of Health program; John McDonough is professor of public health practice and a co-principal investigator; and Eileen McNeely is an instructor in the Department of Environmental Health and director of the Sustainability and Health Initiative for NetPositive Enterprise—or SHINE.