The $25,000 Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting from the Shorenstein Center has been awarded to Carol Marbin Miller, Audra Burch, Mary Ellen Klas, Emily Michot, Kara Dapena, and Lazaro Gamio of the Miami Herald for their investigative report “Innocents Lost.” Additionally, the Shorenstein Center awarded the Career Award for Excellence in Journalism to Marvin Kalb,…

A new teaching case developed by the STRIPED program (Strategic Training Initiative for the Prevention of Eating Disorders) at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health exploring issues around eating disorders among college athletes was chosen by the NCAA Sport Science Institute as part of the educational materials it made available for universities during National Eating Disorders Awareness…

What should we eat to be healthy — and to stay that way? More fruits and vegetables. Less red and processed meat. Whole grains instead of refined. Nonfat dairy foods, legumes, nuts, and seafood. Fewer foods with added sugars or high levels of saturated fat and sodium. And foods with cholesterol, like eggs — long…

India’s air pollution is among the worst in the world, as ranked by the World Health Organization (WHO). Now, a Harvard Kennedy School professor is helping to bring the massive scale of the problem to public attention and test possible solutions. A new study published in this week’s Economic & Political Weekly shows that India’s high…

Far too often, and seemingly more and more in recent months, conversations and headlines are driven by death, fear, and hate. There’s much less focus on cooperation, service, and peace. With that in mind, and while also recognizing the need to highlight and enable peacebuilding actions around the world, Harvard Divinity School Dean David N.…

Sexual biology may be the key to uncovering why Anopheles mosquitoes are unique in their ability to transmit malaria to humans, according to researchers at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and University of Perugia, Italy. Through analysis of 16 Anopheles genomes, they found that these mosquitoes’ reproductive traits evolved along with their…

On a clear day, the air outside Anthony Cortese’s office in downtown Boston is filled with the unmistakable smell of the ocean — a pungent, brinelike perfume that hangs in the morning air. It floats in from the Inner Harbor, where fishing boats lazily motor out to lobster traps set just offshore. It’s a pure…

Bob Scalise, The John D. Nichols ’53 Family Director of Athletics, and Harvard University are pleased to announce the endowment of Harvard Athletics’ 19th coaching position: The Thomas G. Stemberg ’71 Family Endowed Coach for Harvard men’s basketball. Made possible through the generosity of Thomas G. Stemberg ’71, MBA’73, a long-standing Friend of Harvard Basketball…

Under the facade of Venetian masks, Harvard students and alumni will congregate at the Sheraton Hotel ballroom in Back Bay for the fifth annual Harvard Masquerade Ball. With over 2,000 guests expected to attend, the Feb. 28 black-tie affair is set to be the largest university-wide event of the year. Guests will be treated to…

Most lenses are, by definition, curved. After all, they are named for their resemblance to lentils, and a glass lens made flat is just a window with no special powers. But a new type of lens created at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) turns conventional optics on its head. A major…

Computer scientist Ryan Adams and applied mathematician Ariel Amir, assistant professors at Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), have been named 2015 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellows. They are among 126 Fellows, including two others at Harvard, selected from the United States and Canada this year “in recognition of distinguished performance and a…

Scientists have found a biological clock that can provide clues about how long a person might live. The researchers found that people whose biological age was greater than their true age were more likely to die sooner than those whose biological and actual ages were the same — regardless of other factors such as smoking,…

Allergies affect 30% of people around the world and asthma afflicts 10% of all children. Now, a new study has uncovered more than 30 genes that have strong effects on allergies, asthma, and Immunoglobulin E (IgE), an antibody that triggers allergic responses. Among these genes are promising new potential drug targets for treating allergies and…

Two apparently well-meaning legal initiatives from Europe aimed at fighting falsified or substandard medicines could have the unintended consequence of exposing medical researchers and drug manufacturers to criminal prosecution, according to a new commentary in the journal Harvard Public Health Review (HPHR). Under one of the new proposals, the Council of Europe (CoE) would enact…

Daniel Barcia ’15, an undergraduate studying history at Harvard, has been honored with a Gates Cambridge Scholarship. He is the founder and former editor-in-chief of the Harvard College Human Rights Review, which serves as a forum for discussing human rights violations. He is pursuing an International Relations degree at University of Cambridge next year. The scholarships…

As the Disneyland measles outbreak continues to make headlines and fuel public debate, health professionals seek more effective ways to convince parents who mistrust vaccines to get their children vaccinated, according to Barry R. Bloom, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor and Joan L. and Julius H. Jacobson Professor of Public Health at Harvard T.H. Chan…

Rose Epstein Frisch, an associate professor emerita of population sciences at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a pioneer in elucidating the biological mechanisms of fertility and cancer in women, died January 30, 2015 in Cambridge, Mass. Frisch’s discovery that the energy stored in body fat governs when a woman becomes fertile…

Curtis Huttenhower, associate professor of computational biology and bioinformatics, has been named winner of the 2015 Overton Prize from the International Society for Computational Biology. The prize recognizes early or mid-career scientists who are emerging leaders in computational biology and bioinformatics for their accomplishments in research, education, and service. Huttenhower was chosen for his groundbreaking…

Doctors who ask patients nearing the end of life about their goals and priorities can help shape decisions about the individual’s end-of-life care and help the person and their families come to terms with their questions and fears, according to Atul Gawande, professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard T.H. Chan…

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences has unanimously approved a new Ph.D. program in population health sciences, which will be based at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. This final step in the formal approval process comes after four years of extensive deliberation and careful planning, which included a vote of our own…

HILT awarded six Spark Grants of $5-$15K intended to “spark” promising teaching and learning projects this year. Awardees will: Catalyze the scholarly development of the “videographic essay.” Pierre Bélanger (GSD) will model a simple and innovative way to use videographics in the advancement of the essay and in the representation of research in three GSD…

Problems related to surgery—mostly from surgical wound infections—are the most common reason that people wind up readmitted to the hospital, according to a new study. Patient safety expert Lucian Leape says such complications are a significant problem that causes much pain and suffering. Leape, adjunct professor of health policy at Harvard T.H. Chan School of…

A new Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health co-authored study provides further evidence linking both arsenic poisoning and the chronic respiratory disease cystic fibrosis (CF) to damage in the CFTR protein. An examination of arsenic-exposed patients in Bangladesh found that they had elevated sweat chloride levels — the typical diagnostic sign of CF. While…

A pilot project designed to produce more accurate audit reports and lower pollution emissions, orchestrated by Harvard Kennedy School Professor Rohini Pande and a group of fellow scholars, is having a real impact on the ground in India. Environmental authorities in the Indian state of Gujarat reformed their environmental auditing system in January based on…

While war films date to the beginnings of cinema and the Spanish-American War, World War I’s magnification of the mutual impact of war and cinema on each other brought the relationship to an entirely new level. As the war that introduced modern technology into combat, World War I saw film and the moving image enlisted…

Anthony Covarrubias grew up in a working-class neighborhood in South Los Angeles. While celebrities in sports cars whizzed to the beach just a few miles away, Covarrubias’ neighbors waited in long lines at the local health clinic for low-quality care they couldn’t afford. Although his parents worked hard to make ends meet, access to health…

Assistant Professor Jessica Cohen is bringing a behavioral economics perspective to public health interventions in Africa. “Here’s the thing,” says Jessica Cohen. “You can design a public health program or product that works wonderfully, that will spare suffering and save lives. And you could tell people all about it, when and why they should use…

After helping bring international attention to an emerging polio epidemic in Syria, Annie Sparrow, M.P.H. ’04, has been working for the past year to help the country’s medical workers learn to diagnose and treat the disease. An Australian-born physician and professor of global health at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, Sparrow…

Stephen Gilman, associate professor of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, was appointed acting chief of the Health Behavior Branch (HBB) of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Gilman, S.M. ’99, Sc.D. ’01, researches the developmental origins of health inequalities and aims to…

The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School and the OpenGov Foundation today announced the winners of last weekend’s #Hack4Congress competition to create common-sense solutions that would make the U.S. Congress more efficient, effective, and accountable to citizens.  The two-day event drew more than 150 students, software developers, academics and…