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Society

Why Drivers Feel Safer Than They Really Are

On a busy morning in Brașov, a young driver speeds through an intersection, confident they can “handle anything.” It’s a common story—one that repeats on highways and city streets around the world. Despite rising awareness campaigns, road crashes remain a global epidemic. Over 1.19 million people die in traffic accidents every year, and countries like […]

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Uncategorized

Facebook experiment faltering

It’s quite peculiar, but I’ve already been throttled from commenting on certain posts. It doesn’t seem like I’ve been banned, but rate-limited. We’ll keep at it and keep you all updated. Also APHA is coming up , and we are looking forward to lots of conversations about needs, predictions, and yes, how cool The Week […]

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Funding

How Flexible Funding Could Strengthen Public Health

Last summer, a mid-sized county health department scrambled to respond to a record-breaking heatwave. Staff knew that residents needed cooling centers and rapid outreach, but their grant funding was locked into rigid goals—specifically, nutrition education classes, rather than emergency relief. The result? Hours lost navigating red tape while vulnerable residents sweltered. Stories like this highlight […]

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Funding

Why Hospitals Are Turning to Blockchain

It started with a gap on the shelf. When a hospital supply manager did her morning check, two portable monitors were missing—again. They hadn’t been checked out, logged, or replaced. Later that day, she learned the same facility had been hit by a data breach. Patient records and inventory files were exposed. The cost wasn’t […]

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Commentary

Taking the Fight to Facebook: A Pilot of Science vs. Spin

Public health doesn’t just happen in hospitals or labs—it happens in the comment section.At This Week in Public Health, we’re running a real-time experiment on Facebook to see whether evidence-based engagement can actually change how people talk about health online. Instead of arguing or correcting from a distance, we’re testing a structured set of conversations […]

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Resources

Seeing the Big Picture: How System Dynamics Can Transform Public Health

Public health challenges rarely have simple causes or single solutions. Obesity, addiction, pandemics, and climate change all emerge from complex systems: interacting networks of behavior, policy, economics, and environment. To make lasting change, public health leaders need tools that help them see the bigger picture. That’s where System Dynamics comes in. What Is System Dynamics? […]

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AI

The AI-Driven Infodemic Threatening Public Health

A few years ago, “publish or perish” was an academic cliché. Today, it’s being supercharged by machines. Since ChatGPT burst into the scene in late 2022, artificial intelligence has infiltrated nearly every corner of science—writing, reviewing, and even summarizing research papers. The result? A flood of AI-generated studies that could overwhelm even the most diligent […]

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Health tips

Why Connection Is Public Health’s Missing Link

“Sometimes,” a local health director recently said, “I can get someone an appointment faster than I can find them a friend.” That quiet admission captures the paradox at the heart of the new U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory, Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation. While clinical interventions like cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help individuals manage […]

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Policy

When Cannabis Laws Change, So Do Crash Risks

Picture this: It’s 1:45 a.m. on a quiet stretch of highway. A state trooper responds to a crash that looks like a tangle of metal and glass. Toxicology reports will later show what the eye cannot — both alcohol and cannabis were involved. It’s a scene that’s become increasingly familiar across the United States, where […]

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News

Next Week in Public Health, October 23, 2025

APHA is coming up, and we’ll have more details about that soon. We’re partnering with WE in the World to share tools, strategies, and methods to help continue the work from a grassroots perspective. Here’s what’s in the research. And what’s in the news. Anti-science bills hit statehouses, stripping away public health protections built over […]

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Environment

Zero-Fare Transit: Can Free Buses Improve Public Health?

I’m a Philly guy, and our public transportation system is a mess. There’s a lot of reasons for that, but I doubt you’ll find anyone who is satisfied with SEPTA. And this is a negative for public health throughout the city. But this happens in other cities, too. On a humid July morning in Kansas […]

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Wellbeing

How a Low-Budget Campaign Saved Lives in Barnet

In Barnet, a borough in North London, public health officials faced a grim reality: three-quarters of suicides in the UK are by men, yet only one in four had recent contact with mental health services. For many, help comes too late—or not at all. In 2021, Barnet launched a bold, low-budget initiative: a mix of […]

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