Research has shown that using a checklist in operating rooms makes surgery safer and more successful. Now, a new study co-authored by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) student and surgeon Scott Ellner found that use of a surgical safety checklist, paired with training to improve communication in the operating room, reduced complications in the 30-day period…

Justice Clarence Thomas has become known as a quiet presence on the Supreme Court. But on Jan. 29, members of the Harvard Law School community got to hear him speak—and he did so with great humor and warmth. As part of the Herbert W. Vaughan Lecture series, Thomas participated in a conversation with HLS Dean…

For nursing mothers returning to work or pursing their education, having a  private space to allow them to continue breast-feeding their child can help ease the transition. As part of Harvard’s commitment to supporting a mother’s choice to breast-feed, a new lactation room has opened on the ground floor of Widener Library. The new room joins…

Winners of the Goldsmith Book Prizes have been announced by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy. The 2013 Book Prize winners are “Why Americans Hate the Media and How It Matters” by Jonathan M. Ladd in the academic category, and “Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom”…

Since the 1980s, infectious disease specialist Anne Goldfeld has worked to ban landmines, treat victims of tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS in Cambodia and Ethiopia, and conduct research aimed at eradicating those diseases. A professor in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard School of Public Health and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Goldfeld…

Men’s sperm quality may be significantly affected by their levels of physical activity, according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH). They found that healthy young men who were sedentary, as measured by hours of TV viewing, had lower sperm counts than those who were the most physically…

In purchasing The New Republic, Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder, said he not only wants to help stabilize the financially troubled magazine by 2015 but to put the publication in the service of a wider mission. “It’s a double bottom-line business,” he told Alex Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and…

Harvard’s Technology Products and Services announces a valentine promotion. For great savings and to enter a raffle, visit the online shopping site at and select the store that is for you (Shop for Yourself or Shop for a Department), select the “Shop Now” link, and log in with your HUID and PIN or the Campus…

The Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies (CES) is pleased to welcome 17 fellows as part of their Visiting Scholars Program during the 2013 spring semester. Every year, CES is pleased to host a number of visiting scholars on a competitive basis from the U.S. and abroad who are postdoctoral social scientists and historians…

Every year, millions of women in developing countries miss up to 50 days of work or school due to the unavailability of sanitary protection. This isn’t just a loss to the women, but it harms the economies and resources of entire communities. Elizabeth Scharpf, M.B.A. & M.P.A./ID ’06, founder and chief instigating officer of Sustainable…

This year’s World Economic Forum at Davos was a more sober, but also more optimistic affair than in recent years, which found political leaders preoccupied with the usual matters such as economic growth and environmental sustainability but also struggling to adjust to a world transformed by social media and communications. That was the consensus offered…

Carotenoids—the substances that give many vegetables and fruits their vivid red, orange, and yellow colors and are also found in many dark green vegetables—may play a key role in preventing or delaying amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, according to new Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) research. The study was…

Last week, an international group of scientists announced their intention to resume research on the potentially deadly H5N1 bird flu virus after a year’s hiatus, even as debate over the safety of the research continued. Researchers from the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam and the University of Wisconsin-Madison created new strains of bird flu to…

“I didn’t expect to work on film music at first,” says music graduate student Hannah Lewis, “but I became fascinated by the intersections between music and visual media, especially the transition from silent to synchronized sound film. “The role of music in film changed completely. When there was a live orchestra, organ, or piano accompanying…

Joseph Brain, Cecil K. and Philip Drinker Professor of Environmental Physiology at Harvard School of Public Health, launched the Harvard undergraduate course “The Human Organism” in 1971 and has taught it for all but one year since. He will step down from the course at the end of the 2013 spring semester to devote more…

We are pleased to invite Harvard faculty members and instructors to our second HarvardX Town Hall meeting on course development and research (harvardx.harvard.edu and edx.org). The Town Hall will take place on Wednesday, February 13, from 3 to 5 p.m. at Askwith Hall on the campus of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Askwith Hall…

Six finalists for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting have been announced by the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The winner of the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting, which carries a cash award of $25,000, will be announced at an awards ceremony on March 5, 2013 at the…

The Larz Anderson Bonsai Collection at the Arnold Arboretum celebrates its hundredth anniversary in America this year. The plants were originally imported in 1913 by the Honorable Larz Anderson, upon his return from serving as ambassador to Japan. The core of the collection consists of seven large specimens of compact hinoki cypresses Chamaecyparis obtusa ‘Chabo-hiba’—now…

There appears to be no clear consensus among U.S. governors regarding the Medicaid expansion as called for in the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—which could deeply affect the future of the U.S. health care system, according to a Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) perspective article appearing in the January 16, 2013 New England Journal of Medicine.…

If you’ve taken a walk by Radcliffe Yard on Brattle Street recently, you’ve probably noticed a large, empty rectangle of white stone dust next to Buckingham House. But it isn’t just a rectangle. It’s a blank slate, and it won’t be empty for long. The Radcliffe Institute launched its first annual Public Art Competition in October, inviting…

Incorporating sustainable practices into Harvard’s most energy and resource intensive spaces may seem like a daunting task, but for the laboratories on Harvard’s Cambridge and Longwood campus, green and labs are synonymous terms. For researchers, students, faculty, and staff at both campuses, sustainable lab practices just got even easier, thanks to the launch of the…

The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study today announces the launch of a new Blackwell Family digitization project supported by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC). The $150,000 grant funds a two-year project to digitize five Blackwell…

A majority of Americans put the creation of state-based health insurance exchanges at the top of the priority list for health policy in their state this year, according to a survey released January 24, 2013 by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Harvard School of Public Health. Fifty-five percent of the…

Harvard’s Institute of Politics (IOP) has announced its spring resident and visiting fellows. Resident fellows lead weekly study groups during an academic semester; visiting fellows join the institute for a shorter period and meet with students and faculty. IOP spring resident fellows include: Charlie Cook, political analyst, editor and publisher, “The Cook Political Report” and…

The Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, located at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, is pleased to announce its 2013 spring fellows. “We have an all-star group of fellows from the heights of journalism and politics and the pinnacle of digital technology, and it promises to be a semester that…

Obese and overweight women are gaining weight rapidly in low-and middle-income countries while those who are severely undernourished are not experiencing similar weight gains, according to a study by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and University of Toronto researchers. This growing divide may force governments in the developing world to care for people who…

Visiting Lecturer on Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) Michael Almereyda has won the Short Film Jury Award at the Sundance Film Festival for his U.S. nonfiction film “Skinningrove.” The film profiles photographer and VES professor Chris Killip as he shares unpublished images chronicling time spent among the fiercely independent residents of a remote English fishing…

Karen Tse, M.Div. ’00, walked into a prison in the African nation of Burundi and found children: an 8-year-old boy tossed into jail for stealing a mobile phone; 12-year-old girls imprisoned for “sex crimes”; a 2-year old girl who had spent most of her short life behind bars with her mother, who was convicted of…

Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) nutrition experts, including Walter Willett, Frederick John Stare Professor of Nutrition and Epidemiology and chair of the Department of Nutrition, were quoted widely by the media about two obesity studies published in January 2013. The association between sugar and poor health has been contentious over recent decades, with scientists and…

The complex ecosystem of the American city provides a rich source of both study and inspiration. That fact could not have been clearer than at “The City as Subject,” a Radcliffe on the Road event held in January at the Peninsula Hotel in Chicago. The lunchtime event brought together two social scientists and an artist…