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News

Next Week in Public Health, August 8, 2025

A couple of not-so-great breaking developments this week. First, a lot of new constraints around grantmaking. To be fair, I can get behind some of them (I’ve always thought some organizations’ indirects are bonkers), but others not so hot. You can read about it here. We also have the RFK Jr. news about cancelling mRNA […]

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Health equity

How Tackling Racism Could Reduce Chronic Illness

Imagine living in a neighborhood without parks, struggling to find healthy food, facing job discrimination, and fearing medical systems that have failed your family before. Now imagine that this daily stress doesn’t just wear on your mood—it wears on your body’s cells, your immune system, even your DNA. That’s the unsettling reality laid out in […]

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AI

AI Cannot Stop Misinformation Alone

You’re scrolling through your feed. A friend posts a study showing the safety of vaccines. Right below it, another post claims vaccines cause long-term harm, backed by a slick video and emotional testimonials. (I was actually doing this on an HHS post a few days ago) You click on the study. It’s full of stats, […]

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Health tips

89% Drop in Child Cyclist Deaths—But Adult Fatalities Tripled

Thirteen-year-old Christopher Kelley wasn’t wearing a helmet when a car struck him on a quiet Maryland road in 1989. His tragic death sparked something his community had never seen before: 50 of his eighth-grade classmates rallying lawmakers to pass a local helmet law. That single story helps explain how America’s patchwork of bicycle helmet mandates […]

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News

Next Week in Public Health, August 1, 2025

How’s your anxiety? Mine’s been at a 3-alarm fire stage for weeks. Not fun. Still trying to do the good work in spite of ongoing federal pressures. Hey, on that topic, have you seen Trawly, our AI assistant? Well, if not check out this great video we put together. You can see my lovely mug […]

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News

Next Week in Public Health, July 25, 2025

Do you follow the HHS Facebook page? I do, mainly because I think I should. But, boy, it’s adopted the bizarre self-promotional tactics of the president. I’ve always been loath to jump into the comment sections on public Facebook posts — no good can come of it. Helpfully, I work under an HHS contract, so […]

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Social media analysis

The Health Industry’s $1M Campaign to Kill Universal Care

What if the biggest threat to universal health care isn’t in Congress, but in your Facebook feed? In 2019, a coalition of private healthcare giants launched a million-dollar advertising campaign on Meta platforms, including Facebook and Instagram. Their target wasn’t a competing company or product; it was you, specifically, your perception of universal health care. […]

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Epi

420 Million Geo-Tagged Posts Reveal Pandemic Prediction Clues

Imagine trying to predict a hurricane, but your radar only works on half the sky. That’s the challenge public health officials face when trying to forecast COVID-19 surges using social media. New research published in Frontiers in Public Health reveals that politics and pandemic forecasting are more closely intertwined than previously expected. Researchers analyzed over 420 million […]

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Mental health

Why Resilience Matters in Mental Health: What Public Health Needs to Know

In the face of tough circumstances—poverty, trauma, unstable homes—some people manage to thrive. Why? What makes the difference? That’s where the concept of resilience comes in. More and more public health and mental health systems are embracing resilience as a key part of how we support people, especially those at risk of developing mental health […]

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Uncategorized

Next Week in Public Health, July 18, 2025

Hello. I know it’s tempting to chase the latest HHS news, and try to unpack what it means (e.g., Top staffers dismissed, the HHS Facebook page is meming Joe Biden? for some reason.) My ongoing theory is that these individuals are primarily seeking to consolidate wealth and power. That’s it. The health angle is merely […]

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Mental health

Rethinking “Psychopathology” for Public Health

Mental health shapes everything—from how we relate to others to how we get through the day. But understanding what qualifies as a mental disorder is not always straightforward. If you’ve ever wondered who decides what’s “normal” or when emotions become diagnosable, you’re not alone. In public health, we often use systems like the DSM (Diagnostic […]

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Health equity

Rethinking Data Through Gender Diamonds and Belonging Spectra

As our digital tools evolve, so must the methods we use to collect and visualize identity data. Two recent contributions in Nightingale, Querying the Quantification of the Queer and Datafying Mixed Social Identities: Nonbinarity as the Complementary of Intersectionality highlight how current systems fall short of capturing the fluid, layered realities of gender and other […]

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