People across the globe are consuming far more sodium than is healthy, according to a new study led by Harvard School of Public Health and University of Cambridge researchers. In 181 of 187 countries (constituting 99.2% of the world adult population), national intakes exceeded the World Health Organization recommended 2 grams per day of sodium. In 119…

Last month marked the 20th anniversary of the publication of Harvard School of Public Health’s groundbreaking Six Cities Study, which—by revealing a strong link between air pollution and mortality risk—paved the way for strengthened U.S. regulations on fine particulate matter. Douglas Dockery, lead author of the Six Cities Study and chair of HSPH’s Department of Environmental Health, answers three questions about…

Amidst the patchwork nature of Medicaid expansion in the U.S. under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), some have worried that low-income adults in states without expanded coverage might move to states that have chosen to expand—thus placing a financial burden on those states. But a new Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) study finds little evidence…

Throughout its 140-year history, the Arnold Arboretum has advanced our understanding of biodiversity through the work of some of the most significant people in plant science. Among this select group is senior research scientist Peter Del Tredici, who retires from the Arboretum in January 2014 after 35 years. Over that time, Del Tredici has made…

On Feb. 8, more than 1,000 students and alumni will experience the fourth annual Harvard Masquerade Ball. They’ll come wearing suits and ties, formal dresses and heels; their faces hidden behind colorfully decorated masks. Since its inauguration, the ball has quickly become one of the most popular graduate School events of the year — growing from…

Adults who are covered by Medicaid use emergency rooms 40 percent more than those in similar circumstances who do not have health insurance, according to a unique new study that sheds empirical light on the inner workings of health care in the U.S. The study takes advantage of Oregon’s recent use of a lottery to assign access to Medicaid,…

“The diseases of aging are not inevitable,” geriatrician Linda Fried told a Harvard School of Public Health audience on December 16, 2013. As people live longer around the world—largely due to successes in public health over the past century—understanding the science of healthy aging is imperative, she said. Fried, the dean of Columbia University’s Mailman School of…

The Noma-Reischauer Prize in Japanese Studies traces a distinguished history to 1995, the year the award was established by Kodansha, Ltd. Publishers in honor of Professor Edwin O. Reischauer. Each year the Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies grants Noma-Reischauer prizes to the best essays authored by Harvard students on Japan-related topics. The 2013-14 awards were…

Jaime McAllister-Grande was on hold for a call when she opened an email about the Carol Ishimoto Award. She expected to read about one of her colleagues, but instead did a double take when she saw the word “congratulations.” McAllister-Grande, Harvard Library’s manager for user services and direct access processing, and Anna Anctil, senior human…

With federal research dollars declining, investigators must think of creative and flexible ways to keep their long-running cohort studies running and funded, said Bruce M. Psaty, professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Washington, at the 158th Cutter Lecture on Preventive Medicine at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) on December 5, 2013. Some of the…

Harvard School of Public Health Dean Julio Frenk discussed changes in the field of public health since the School’s founding a century ago in a December 3, 2013 article for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s NewPublicHealth blog. The article is one of several on the blog focusing on HSPH’s Centennial. “The 100 years that have passed since the School of Public…

Yahoo’s social networking website and micro-blogging platform Tumblr honored Houghton Library’s blog as one of its “New and Notable Blogs of 2013.” Houghton Library is the primary repository for rare books and manuscripts at Harvard University and is part of the Harvard College Library within the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Its blog launched in June…

In a new paper, Eric Rubin, professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard School of Public Health, and colleagues describe how tuberculosis (TB) bacteria undergo metabolic adaptation to survive attempts by immune system cells to kill them off by starving them of tryptophan. The researchers also identified a means of inhibiting tryptophan synthesis in the bacteria that…

CopyrightX — AKA ‘The MOOC the New Yorker actually liked‘ — is tooling up for a second run, expanding on its unusual, hybrid format. The twelve-week networked course, offered each spring under the auspices of Harvard Law School, the HarvardX  initiative, and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, explores the current law of copyright and the ongoing debates concerning how…

Under an academic exchange program between Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Mexico National Public Health Institute (the Instituto Nacional de Salud Publica, or INSP) that began in January 2013, four HSPH students have studied and conducted research in Mexico and two INSP students have done the same in Boston. Lu Zhang, a…

The Nieman Fellows in the class of 2014 have selected Pamela Colloff, an executive editor at the Texas Monthly, as this year’s recipient of the Louis M. Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism. Colloff was chosen for her tenacious investigations into wrongful convictions, which have exposed deep flaws in the criminal justice system.…

Twenty-five experts from around the world gathered in Boston recently to discuss the impact of chronic stress stemming from low socioeconomic status and discrimination on health disparities and premature death. The conference was organized by Michelle Williams, Stephen B. Kay Family Professor of Public Health, chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), and director…

Although the first semester of the 2013-14 academic year is coming to a close on campus and residential students are finishing up coursework and preparing for the break, the timelines are more asynchronous for students registered for 10 currently running online offerings on HarvardX. While course development teams are working to create the most stimulating learning experiences…

Caroline Buckee, assistant professor of epidemiology and associate director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), was named one of the top 100 global thinkers of 2013 by Foreign Policy (FP). Buckee was listed among what the magazine’s editors called “some of the world’s most exciting people” who are “doing nothing…

Rulan Chao Pian, an eminent scholar of Chinese music, an influential Chinese language teacher, and a mentor to students and younger colleagues in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and North America, died peacefully on November 30, 2013 at the age of 91 in her Cambridge home. Much respected and dearly beloved, Pian shaped many academic careers…

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a major infectious disease global threat, with 8.7 million new cases and 1.4 million deaths worldwide reported in 2011 alone. In the United States, an estimated 10 million to 15 million people are infected. With multidrug-resistant forms of TB in dozens of countries, it is critical to understand the differences in how the…

J. Gregory Morrisett, Allen B. Cutting Professor of Computer Science at Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), has been elected a 2013 fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). He was recognized “for contributions to mathematically-based methods for ensuring the efficient implementation and verification of practical programming languages.” The 50 ACM Fellows…

Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) today announced an ambitious new fellowship in honor of developer and philanthropist Walter Shorenstein and a name change for the research center endowed by the late Shorenstein in 1986. A gift of $5 million from Doug and Lydia Shorenstein to Harvard University will be used to fund the new Walter Shorenstein Fellowship in Media and…

A dozen experts discussed health care challenges ranging from delivering humanitarian aid to making surgery safer at a wide-ranging Global Health Summit that drew about 500 to Harvard Medical School’s Joseph B. Martin Conference Center on Monday, November 25, 2013. The summit—a joint effort of Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), Brigham and Women’s Hospital…

Equal access to quality education is a fundamental human right and yet it is beyond the reach of thousands of Roma children living in Europe today. Over 90% of European youths enroll in secondary education and over 60% enroll in tertiary education. By contrast, under 20% of Roma youths (pejoratively called “Gypsies”) enroll in secondary…

On November 6, the basement of Northwest Labs was bustling with a crowd of student performers eager to participate in the second annual Chinese Poetry Recitation Competition. The contest, organized by the Chinese Language Program within Harvard’s Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, brought together students from basic, intermediate, and advanced courses to engage…

Women in India who are forced into prostitution or sex trafficking are almost three times more likely to be HIV-infected than those who joined the industry voluntarily, according to Kathleen Wirth, ScD ’11, research fellow in the Department of Epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Botswana Harvard AIDS Institute Partnership in Gaborone, Botswana. “Involuntary sex work is not…

Obesity is associated with a worse prostate cancer prognosis among men whose tumors contain a specific genetic mutation, suggest results from a new study led by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital researchers. Among prostate cancer patients whose tumors contain the mutation, they had a more than 50% increased risk…

Abstaining from art, theater, dance, and most other forms of entertainment, the Puritans took solace “in the word.” Sermons and elegies by local ministers became a kind of glue that held towns together, especially during the hardscrabble days of an emerging nation. On November 14, in far more comfortable conditions at the Harvard Allston Education Portal,…

The federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) has failed to boost the nutritional value of food purchased and consumed by recipients or to improve food security (ensuring participants have food to meet household needs), according to a new study by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers. New policies, programs, and nutrition education initiatives are needed to…