A new study shows a humanitarian program focused on teaching youth affected by the Syrian war about the impacts of stress actually has a biological signature, in that it reduces levels of cortisol (dubbed the “stress hormone”) by a third. The study, “Hair cortisol concentrations in war-affected adolescents: A prospective intervention trial,” which appears in…

The National Institute of Health has announced that Harvard co-Principal Investigators Dr. Mercè Crosas and Dr. Timothy Clark are NIH Data Commons Pilot Phase Awardees. The awards are part of the National Institutes of Health’s new Data Commons program, which will be implemented in a 4-year pilot phase to explore the feasibility and best practices…

Researchers from Harvard tackled big questions in data science and explored possibilities for collaboration with executives from Elsevier—an information and analytics company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical information—during a series of roundtables sponsored by the Harvard Data Science Initiative. Held Nov. 6, 2017 at the Cabot Science Library in Cambridge, the event gave experts from…

This spring, alumni can vote for a new group of Harvard Overseers and Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) elected directors. Ballots will be mailed no later than April 1. Completed ballots must be received, at the indicated address, by 5 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, May 15, to be counted. All holders of Harvard degrees, except Corporation…

Some chemical ingredients in makeup, skin, and hair care products may cause health risks such as allergic reactions, hair loss, asthma, and cancer. But determining which chemicals are dangerous among the many consumers are exposed to in their daily personal care product use—an average of 168 for women and 85 for men—is a daunting task…

Eating a wider variety of fish, including species like hake, skate, and cusk, would help keep overall fish stocks strong, according to chef and author Barton Seaver. Diversifying in this way would help ensure that people can keep eating plenty of fish — an important source of nutrients — as well as ensure economic stability…

The Harvard Office for Sustainability has announced a call for proposals for the 2018 round of grants through the University’s Campus Sustainability Innovation Fund (CSIF). The Fund, created in 2016, supports projects that use Harvard’s campus or the neighboring community as a test bed for envisioning and piloting innovative solutions to sustainability challenges, including, but not…

Students from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and across the University came together at the Harvard iLab over the fall semester for an innovative new course—Design of Social Innovation. While some may have thought of “design” as the process of creating a building or smartphone, by the end of the course, they realized…

The Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging has announced three finalists in the competition to revise the final line of Harvard’s alma mater. The finalists were selected out of a pool of 20 longlisted entries by a panel of distinguished judges, including Professor of English Stephanie Burt ’94, Broadway conductor and director Kurt Crowley ’06, Black…

A checklist and coaching intervention to improve facility-based childbirth care and reduce deaths of women and newborns in India achieved significant gains in the quality of care during labor and delivery, but the improvements were insufficient to reduce death rates, according to a new study. The BetterBirth study is one of the largest ever conducted…

Lab equipment is expensive. When Maoyun Sun, a research fellow in the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, needed a 4D-nucleofector unit for experiments introducing genetic material into cells, he couldn’t just order one for his lab. But his problem was solved when he found out about the School’s…

When Donna Shalala decided to tackle smoking during her tenure as Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Bill Clinton, she knew that it was going to take more than a new ad campaign to get rates down. So, with data showing that keeping kids away from tobacco is the key – 9 out…

The first World AIDS Day was Dec. 1, 1988. That same year, the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health AIDS Initiative (HAI) was established to help end the epidemic. Max Essex, Mary Woodard Lasker Professor of Health Sciences and Chair of HAI, looks at the progress of UNAIDS’ 90-90-90 goals. In 2013, UNAIDS announced ambitious 90-90-90 goals: By…

The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies is pleased to announce the launch of the Mexico Innovation Fund (MIF) and a call for proposals from Harvard faculty seeking to conduct collaborative research in Mexico to be supported by the MIF. The MIF seeks to deepen research ties between Harvard and Mexican academia, in order to address Mexico’s…

Ten local public health practitioners — all graduates of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Leaders in Health program — discussed their efforts to promote health and wellness in the Boston area at a Nov. 16 capstone event for the program. The practitioners came from city health departments, community-based organizations, and local health coalitions…

The Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD) announced today that it has received a $15 million gift from Ronald M. Druker, Loeb Fellow ’76, and the Bertram A. and Ronald M. Druker Charitable Foundation. The gift provides the necessary seed funding for the GSD to launch an ambitious renewal and new building expansion of…

Our love affair with plastic — from water bottles and shopping bags … to product packaging — is taking a toll on the world’s oceans, and damaging the health of people, marine birds, and animals. The filmmakers and scientists behind a documentary exploring this problem recently joined Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health community…

On Nov. 29 the members of the Faculty Council approved the Harvard Summer School course list for 2018.  They also heard proposals on the Ph.D. program in bioinformatics and integrative genomics and on the undergraduate quantitative reasoning requirement and they discussed a motion by Professor David Howell. The Council next meets on Jan. 24. The…