Humanitarian crises include conflicts and natural disasters that threaten civilian populations. Meeting the essential needs of these populations requires understanding crisis, and the best methods and tools for preparing and responding to crisis. Director Michael VanRooyen describes HHI’s mission: to relieve human suffering in war and disaster by advancing the science and practice of humanitarian…

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has named Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) alumna Speciosa Wandira-Kasibwe as his special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa. A surgeon who has played a key role in both public health and politics in Africa, Wandira-Kasibwe, SD ’09, is currently senior adviser to the president of Uganda on population and…

Caroline Buckee, assistant professor of epidemiology and associate director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard School of Public Health, has been named by MIT Technology Review as one of this year’s Innovators Under 35. The honor was announced August 21, 2013. Buckee’s work focuses on mining cell phone data to track how people’s movements correlate with…

The Digital Problem-Solving Initiative (DPSI) at Harvard University is an innovative and collaborative project to be piloted in fall 2013, bringing together interested students, faculty, fellows, and staff. It will enable participants to work in teams on practicable and concrete digital use cases – problems and opportunities – across the University. The pilot offers students…

For the past 25 years, a prostate cancer screening test called Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) has offered the hope of reducing deaths from prostate cancer by catching the disease early when cure is possible. But recent findings have raised concerns over whether the test’s potential to save some men’s lives is worth the side effects from…

Peter Suber, director of the Harvard Open Access Project (HOAP) and recently appointed director of the Harvard Library’s Office for Scholarly Communication (OSC), in conjunction with the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center (TBRC)—headquartered in Harvard Square—has been working  to provide global access to more than 17,000 volumes of Tibetan literature. Founded in 1999, the TBRC specializes…

Two watercolors from the Harvard University Archives by Jonathan Fisher, Harvard Class of 1795, are now on display at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine. The exhibit, “A Wondrous Journey—Jonathan Fisher and the Making of Scripture Animals,” highlights Fisher’s curious mind and his multifaceted interests and talents as a minister, mathematician, linguist, teacher and…

Harvard’s famed Science & Cooking lecture series will return Sept. 9, bringing awe-inspiring gelées, mousses, emulsions—and perhaps even the perfect paella—to a hungry public. The weekly talks will feature world-class chefs and eminent food experts, including Wylie Dufresne, José Andrés, Ferran Adrià, Harold McGee, and many others. The kickoff event on Monday, Sept. 9, features…

Based upon data gathered August 5-11, 2013, total enrollments for HarvardX courses (including past, current, and future offerings) exceeded 500,000. 509,294 to be exact. CS50x, “Introduction to Computer Programming,” remains the top enrolled course at nearly 160,000. ER22x, “Justice,” follows at nearly 70,000. The first two offerings from the Harvard School of Public Health—PH207x, “Health…

In June 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare’s mandated Medicaid expansion for low-income Americans should be optional for states. Since then, health policy experts have been paying close attention to how individual states are proceeding with the rollout of national health reform. Two of those experts from Harvard School of Public Health—Benjamin Sommers and John McDonough—were…

Current proposals to improve the coordination of health care in the United States — such as accountable care organizations and bundled payments to providers — may be at odds with policies to promote competition to lower costs, according to a new “Perspective” co-authored by Katherine Baicker, professor of health economics at Harvard School of Public Health.…

James Robins, whose work at the intersection of statistical science and epidemiology aims to estimate causal effects of exposures or drug treatments—as opposed to just associations—has received the 2013 Nathan Mantel Lifetime Achievement Award in Statistics and Epidemiology. Robins, Mitchell L. and Robin LaFoley Dong Professor of Epidemiology, who has worked at Harvard School of…

Ashish Nanda, the Robert Braucher Professor of Practice, faculty director of executive education, and research director at the Program on the Legal Profession at Harvard Law School, has been appointed director of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA), in India. Nanda’s appointment w1as announced by IIMA’s board of governors following approval by the Indian…

Just hours after news outlets reported additional revelations Thursday morning concerning the scope of information gathered by the National Security Agency, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) delivered an address at Harvard Law School on proposed legislation to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Blumenthal stressed his deep respect for the intelligence agencies and institutions whose…

People who live near foreclosed homes may be at greater risk of being overweight than those who don’t have such homes in their immediate neighborhoods, according to a new study by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers. The study was published online July 18, 2013 in the American Journal of Public Health and will appear in the September…

Gestational diabetes—diabetes that women develop while pregnant—can lead to serious health problems for both babies and mothers. Babies can be born too large or have birth injuries. Mothers can face greater risk of needing a cesarean delivery. For both mothers and babies, the risk of developing type 2 diabetes later in life can increase. But…

Harvard’s Institute of Politics (IOP) has announced its fall resident and visiting fellows. Resident fellows lead weekly study groups during an academic semester; visiting fellows join the institute for a shorter period and meet with students and faculty. IOP fall resident fellows include: Mo Cowan, U.S. senator (D-MA; Feb. 2013-July 2013) and former senior adviser,…

Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rise and fall annually as plants take up the gas in spring and summer and release it in fall and winter through photosynthesis and respiration. Now the range of that cycle is growing as more CO2 is emitted from the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities,…

Park rangers Ryan McNabb, Rob Velella and Rick Jenkins recently presented “The Tender Heart and Brave: The Politics and Friendship of Charles Sumner and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow” in Houghton Library’s Edison and Newman Room. McNabb serves with the Boston African American National Historic Site; Velella and Jenkins with the Longfellow House. “[At Longfellow House] we…

Although Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) has come under fire in that country for its failings, emerging economies are finding much to emulate in the NHS as they look to improve their own. The main reason is that the system provides a wide range of services to the entire population, regardless of people’s ability to…

Harvard’s Allston Farmers’ Market will host one of three drop-off locations for Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s pilot program to allow Boston residents to drop off compostable food scraps for free. The other two locations are Eggleston Square and Bowdoin-Geneva. The pilot program is the City of Boston’s first public composting program and kicks off Friday,…

The Harvard Kennedy School Library, in conjunction with the HKS IT/Media Services office, regularly posts “Virtual Book Tours” that spotlight HKS faculty members with recently published books. The current book tour, “Nicco Mele: The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath,” offers an opportunity for viewers to learn more about Mele…

Professors Peter Bol and Suzanne Blier have received a $320K award from the National Endowment for the Humanities’ Digital Humanities Implementation Grant for their proposal on “Extending WorldMap to Make It Easier  for Humanists and Others to Find, Use, and Publish Geospatial Information.” This work is supported by technical staff at the Center for Geographic…

About one in 20 middle and high school students who chew tobacco and use other smokeless tobacco products also smoke cigarettes, a new Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) study shows. The findings suggest smokeless tobacco products may increase – rather than reduce – health risks from cigarettes and other traditional smokes. While cigarette use…

The largest indoor sport fish hatchery in North America is the first ever recipient of the EnvisionTM Gold award for sustainable infrastructure. The award ceremony on July 24 that honored the William Jack Hernandez Fish Hatchery of Anchorage Alaska was the culmination of 6 years of collaboration by the Zofnass Program for Sustainable Infrastructure at…

The U.S. health care system needs more trained professionals and prevention specialists to take on the often overlooked―and sometimes deadly―issue of eating disorders. “Eating disorders need to be higher up on the public health agenda,” said S. Bryn Austin, associate professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH)…

With health innovations that are slow to catch on, it may be best to promote them person-to-person. In an article published online July 22, 2013 in The New Yorker, Atul Gawande, professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard School of Public Health, discussed efforts to spread safe childbirth practices — which are known to…

Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers have discovered that chemicals generated by bacteria in the colon help important immune cells known as Tregs in the colon grow and function well. The researchers also found that these bacterial metabolites reduced colitis in mice with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a chronic disease of the intestines that…

This upcoming season, fans of Harvard’s sports teams will have an all new way to follow and support the Crimson as they take on the rest of the Ivy League. The August Launch of The Ivy League Digital Network will give students, alumni and all supporters of the Crimson a unique fan experience. Harvard fans…

“Stepping Stones for New Americans,” at the Radcliffe Institute’s Schlesinger Library showcases books, photographs, audiovisual materials, and ephemera related to four Boston-area organizations founded to support new immigrants. The exhibit is a companion to Radcliffe’s conference “Gender and Immigration.” The organizations featured in the exhibit are Denison House, Window Shop, North Bennet Street Industrial School,…