commentary Archives - This Week In Public Health

Commentary

Sense of Community: Why Belonging Matters for Health and Well-Being

There is a particular feeling that happens when you find yourself somewhere and think, these are my people. It might happen with your neighbors, coworkers, a sports team, a recovery group, a religious congregation, an online community, or a group of friends you have known for decades. The specific setting almost does not matter. What […]

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Commentary

Loneliness, Social Isolation, and Belonging: Why Connection Is a Public Health Issue

Think about the last time you felt lonely. What, exactly, was missing? Maybe you wanted someone to talk to. Maybe there were plenty of people around, but no one seemed to understand what you were going through. Perhaps you wanted a group where you felt like you belonged, a person you trusted, or simply the […]

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Commentary

Social Support and Mental Health: How Relationships Help Us Cope and Thrive

When people are struggling, we often assume the goal is simple: be supportive. The problem is that support is not one thing. Listening can be supportive. Giving advice can be supportive. Driving someone to an appointment can be supportive. Telling a friend that they are being too hard on themselves can also be supportive. Yet […]

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AI

Beyond Chatbots: How to Build AI That Understands Your Organization’s Knowledge

There is a big difference between giving artificial intelligence access to your content and building an AI system that actually understands how that content fits together. We recently had an organization approach us with an interesting challenge. They had a specific curriculum they wanted integrated into an AI-powered system. The goal wasn’t simply to upload […]

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Commentary

Why Peer Support Matters: Lived Experience, Recovery, and Community Mental Health

There is a deceptively simple question at the heart of peer support: Why can someone who has “been there” sometimes help in ways that a trained professional cannot? This does not mean professional expertise is unimportant. Psychologists, physicians, social workers, counselors, and other professionals develop knowledge and skills that can be enormously valuable. But there […]

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Analytics

When Everything Is a Barrier, Nothing Is

This article is part of Decision-Useful Implementation Science, an ongoing series exploring what implementation research actually tells us about putting evidence into practice. Using large-scale text analysis, natural language processing, and bibliometric methods, the project examines nearly 1.5 million PubMed-indexed publications from 1980 to 2025. Rather than reviewing individual studies, the series steps back to […]

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Commentary

Public Health Doesn’t Have a Dissemination Problem. It Has a Marketing Problem.

Every year, taxpayers invest billions of dollars in biomedical and public health research. Scientists publish hundreds of thousands of papers, systematic reviews, and clinical guidelines. Yet only a fraction of those discoveries ever change clinical practice, influence policy, or improve health outcomes. The problem is so well recognized that it has spawned an entire field […]

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Commentary

The Public Health System Nobody Thinks About Until Someone Dies

In the aftermath of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, trucks carrying bodies moved through Port-au-Prince while rumors of impending disease outbreaks spread almost as quickly as the disaster itself. Officials faced pressure to remove the remains immediately. Families searched desperately for missing loved ones. Public health experts confronted a challenge that had little to do with […]

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Commentary

Can Public Health Become Precise?

In 2003, scientists completed one of the most ambitious research projects in human history: the Human Genome Project. After more than a decade of work and billions of dollars in investment, researchers had produced the first complete map of the human genetic code. The achievement promised nothing less than a revolution in medicine. The vision […]

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Commentary

We Keep Studying Barriers. Why Doesn’t Implementation Get Easier?

Implementation science has become remarkably good at describing why change is difficult. Over the past four decades, researchers have interviewed clinicians, observed organizations, synthesized evidence, developed implementation frameworks, and published hundreds of thousands of papers documenting the obstacles to putting evidence into practice. Leadership matters. Resources matter. Organizational culture matters. Training, workflow, stakeholder engagement, incentives, […]

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Commentary

Be Safe Out There! A Collection of Various Fireworks Blog over the Years

Without fail, someone will lose a finger or worse this weekend. Here are some of the blogs we’ve written on this topic over the years.

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Commentary

Does Regenerative Agriculture Improve Public Health?

Can changing how we grow food improve people’s health—not just plants’? That question has moved from the margins of agriculture into the center of public debate. Advocates of regenerative agriculture argue that healthier soils produce healthier crops, reduce pollution, strengthen rural economies, and may even lower the burden of chronic disease. Skeptics counter that many […]

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Latest Insights & Research

Category: commentary

Sense of Community: Why Belonging Matters for Health and Well-Being

Beyond Chatbots: How to Build AI That Understands Your Organization’s Knowledge

Why Peer Support Matters: Lived Experience, Recovery, and Community Mental Health

When Everything Is a Barrier, Nothing Is

Public Health Doesn’t Have a Dissemination Problem. It Has a Marketing Problem.

The Public Health System Nobody Thinks About Until Someone Dies

Can Public Health Become Precise?

We Keep Studying Barriers. Why Doesn’t Implementation Get Easier?

Be Safe Out There! A Collection of Various Fireworks Blog over the Years

Does Regenerative Agriculture Improve Public Health?

Latest Insights & Research

Category: commentary

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every Thursday morning.