The Harvard Graduate School of Education is pleased to announce its fall 2015 Askwith Forums, a series of public lectures dedicated to discussing challenges facing education, sharing new knowledge, and generating spirited conversation. This season’s forum series kicks off with U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who has long focused on critical issues in education including…

A new study led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health finds that mobile phone records can be used to predict the geographical spread and timing of dengue epidemics. More people around the world are becoming vulnerable to this deadly virus as climate change expands the range of the mosquito that transmits…

The Center for the Study of World Religions (CSWR) at Harvard Divinity School announced today that it will soon host a new annual lecture focused on the value of the Hindu view of life. The CSWR’s new “Hindu View of Life Annual Lecture” aims to constructively address the current urgent issues of our time from…

People with health insurance are more likely to have their high cholesterol, diabetes, and high blood pressure correctly diagnosed—and to have these chronic conditions under control—than similar uninsured people, according to a new study led by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Using these results and 10-year Affordable Care Act (ACA) enrollment…

What if you can save hundreds of dollars on SAT tutoring by one weird trick? Try a different ZIP code. When researching the Princeton Review website for SAT tutoring, four Harvard College students discovered that the site required a ZIP code be entered prior to learning the cost of the private online tutoring services. With…

Asians in Oakland and Berkeley, Calif., may earn on average $90 less per week or 20 percent less than white hosts when renting out similar one-bedroom apartments that they list on Airbnb’s vacation rental website, according to a study, which appears online in Technology Science, a journal published by the Data Privacy Lab at Harvard…

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Professor Atul Gawande reflected on the legacy of renowned neurologist Oliver Sacks — and the profound influence Sacks had on his own evolution as a doctor and writer — in a column published online in The New Yorker on September 7, 2015. Sacks, who died on August 30,…

The current controversy about the wisdom of conducting experiments with pathogens that are genetically engineered to be more contagious presents a unique opportunity to set an effective precedent on the issue of biological experiments that carry large-scale risks, according to a Foreign Affairs article co-authored by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health epidemiologist Marc…

Government dietary guidelines recommend that people eat fish twice a week. And we know that fish are full of omega-3 fatty acids—which can benefit both heart and brain. But is it safe to eat fish every day? “For most individuals it’s fine to eat fish every day,” says Eric Rimm, professor of epidemiology and nutrition,…

On the afternoon of April 13, 2013, after two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon, scores of severely injured people were rushed to hospitals across the city. Although three people died at the scene and many had life-threatening injuries, everyone who was transported to a hospital lived. How was it that so many people were…

Renewable electricity projects and energy efficiency measures could have health benefits worth millions of dollars a year, according to a new study published August 31, 2015 in Nature Climate Change. Researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health developed an assessment tool that calculated the public health and climate benefits of renewable or energy…

In the wake of the shooting of two journalists on live television in Virginia on August 25, 2015, several news stories have referenced gun violence research by David Hemenway, professor of health policy at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. In his 2006 book “Private…

A new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Princeton University researchers shows that data from cell phones captures population fluctuations that can predict infectious disease transmission. The researchers tracked the movements of nearly 15 million anonymous cell phone users in Kenya over the course of a year through call data,…

New advances in genomic testing have the potential to radically change the way cancer drugs are developed and prescribed, offering personalized therapy with treatment tailored to the patient’s tumor genome. With the advent of this “personalized medicine,” scientists are hopeful that drugs shown to work in a cancer caused by a specific genetic mutation that…

A widely used class of industrial chemicals linked with cancer and interference with immune function — perfluorinated alkylate substances, or PFASs — appears to build up in infants by 20%–30% for each month they’re breastfed, according to a new study co-authored by experts from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. It is the first…

Light to moderate drinking of alcohol—considered up to one alcoholic drink a day for women (about 4 ounces of wine) and up to two drinks (about two 12-ounce beers) per day for men—is associated with an increased risk of breast cancer in women and other alcohol-related cancers, according to a new study by Harvard T.H.…

When cutting saturated fats from your diet, carefully consider what you will eat instead. That’s the advice from Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in a WebMD.com article published on August 13, 2015. Hu weighed in on a recent study published in the British Medical Journal…

A new study led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health researchers found that frequent consumption of processed meats may harm a man’s ability to fertilize an egg, while eating more poultry may improve his chances. The study was published online August 5, 2015 in Fertility & Sterility. Researchers led by Wei Xia, a…

The Harvard Global Health Institute (HGHI) is pleased to announce five Harvard faculty members have been selected as Burke Global Health Fellows. The Burke Fellowships support global health research and leadership opportunities for Harvard junior faculty at critical career junctures and are made possible by the generosity of the Katherine States Burke, A.B. ’79, and T.R. Burke Fund…

Truth can be stranger than fiction, and equally readable. Two Harvard employees were among the 36 grant recipients of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ new Public Scholars Program, which awards funding to humanities writers working on research-based nonfiction works with crossover appeal to the general public. Jonathan Hansen, a senior lecturer on social studies,…

The health benefits federal officials predict would result from implementing President Obama’s proposed Clean Power Plan —which calls for reducing carbon emissions from power plants by nearly one-third of the 2005 level by 2030 —are realistic, according to Jonathan Buonocore, research associate, Center For Health and the Global Environment at Harvard T.H. Chan School of…

Eliminating racial and ethnic disparities in health in the U.S. isn’t just the job of the health care sector—it’s the job of society as a whole, argues David R. Williams, Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health. In a viewpoint article published August 11, 2015 in JAMA (Journal of the American…

An unexpected new discovery—that, in people with asthma, the cells that line the airways in the lungs are unusually shaped and “scramble around like there’s a fire drill going on”—suggests intriguing new avenues both for basic biological research and for therapeutic interventions to fight the disease. The findings could also have important ramifications for research…

The Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School is pleased to announce the appointment of their fall 2015 fellows. “This fall’s fellows are exceptional for their experience and knowledge. Bob Schieffer is one of America’s most honored and respected journalists, while David Ensor, Marie Sanz, and Paul Wood are each…

On Tuesday, August 11, 2015, Harvard launches the first issue of Technology Science with a series of original research papers with revelations about weaknesses in Facebook’s privacy policies, price differences in travel sites based on country of booking, and an unusual rate spike among the largest health insurers under Obamacare. Technology Science is founded by…

Does size matter when it comes to health insurance rates? In the latest research published August 11 in the first issue of Technology Science from Harvard University’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, two Harvard student researchers, Eugene Wang and Grace Gee, find that the largest insurers in each state have raised premiums far more under Obamacare than smaller…

A new case study released today in the inaugural edition of Technology Science published by Harvard University examines Facebook’s response to the discovery of a glaring privacy vulnerability in its popular messenger app. The case study comes from Harvard University senior Aran Khanna, who lost an internship with Facebook after discovering a vulnerability in the…

A proposed ban on the use of smokeless tobacco in Boston’s ballparks and athletic fields is aimed at protecting the health of the professional athletes who use it as well as impressionable young people who often want to emulate the behavior of their sports heroes. Mayor Martin Walsh announced on August 5, 2015 that he…

A couple’s exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, psychological stress, malnutrition, and other environmental stressors prior to conceiving a child may alter the child’s genetic structure and development, leading to increased risk of health issues later in life, according to a study led by Philippe Grandjean, adjunct professor of environmental health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of…

An experimental Ebola vaccine tested in a trial of more than 4,000 people in Guinea has shown a high level of effectiveness, according a new study in The Lancet. In the trial, experts used a “ring vaccination” strategy—the same strategy used to help eradicate smallpox—which involved inoculating clusters of adults who had come into contact…