Problems related to surgery—mostly from surgical wound infections—are the most common reason that people wind up readmitted to the hospital, according to a new study. Patient safety expert Lucian Leape says such complications are a significant problem that causes much pain and suffering. Leape, adjunct professor of health policy at Harvard T.H. Chan School of…

A new Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health co-authored study provides further evidence linking both arsenic poisoning and the chronic respiratory disease cystic fibrosis (CF) to damage in the CFTR protein. An examination of arsenic-exposed patients in Bangladesh found that they had elevated sweat chloride levels — the typical diagnostic sign of CF. While…

A pilot project designed to produce more accurate audit reports and lower pollution emissions, orchestrated by Harvard Kennedy School Professor Rohini Pande and a group of fellow scholars, is having a real impact on the ground in India. Environmental authorities in the Indian state of Gujarat reformed their environmental auditing system in January based on…

While war films date to the beginnings of cinema and the Spanish-American War, World War I’s magnification of the mutual impact of war and cinema on each other brought the relationship to an entirely new level. As the war that introduced modern technology into combat, World War I saw film and the moving image enlisted…

Anthony Covarrubias grew up in a working-class neighborhood in South Los Angeles. While celebrities in sports cars whizzed to the beach just a few miles away, Covarrubias’ neighbors waited in long lines at the local health clinic for low-quality care they couldn’t afford. Although his parents worked hard to make ends meet, access to health…

Assistant Professor Jessica Cohen is bringing a behavioral economics perspective to public health interventions in Africa. “Here’s the thing,” says Jessica Cohen. “You can design a public health program or product that works wonderfully, that will spare suffering and save lives. And you could tell people all about it, when and why they should use…

After helping bring international attention to an emerging polio epidemic in Syria, Annie Sparrow, M.P.H. ’04, has been working for the past year to help the country’s medical workers learn to diagnose and treat the disease. An Australian-born physician and professor of global health at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, Sparrow…

Stephen Gilman, associate professor of social and behavioral sciences at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, was appointed acting chief of the Health Behavior Branch (HBB) of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). Gilman, S.M. ’99, Sc.D. ’01, researches the developmental origins of health inequalities and aims to…

The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School and the OpenGov Foundation today announced the winners of last weekend’s #Hack4Congress competition to create common-sense solutions that would make the U.S. Congress more efficient, effective, and accountable to citizens.  The two-day event drew more than 150 students, software developers, academics and…

Conductor John Eliot Gardiner has been appointed the Harvard Music Department’s inaugural Christoph Wolff Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Music Department, supported by the Christoph Wolff Fund for Music. Gardiner—an English conductor, early music expert, and Bach biographer—is on campus to participate in a series of events February 2-8, including an open rehearsal with Harvard…

More than half of people living in four of the world’s poorest countries could be newly at risk for malnutrition if bees and other pollinating animals continue to decline, according to a new study by researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the University of Vermont. Pollinators help improve crop yields, and…

Everyone is invited to a CS50, “Introduction to Computer Science,” AMA (Ask Me Anything) with David J. Malan, Robert Bowden, Zamyla Chan, Jason Hirschhorn, and team. The AMA will take place on Wednesday, February 18, from noon-7 p.m. (EST). http://www.reddit.com/r/iama “Basically, /r/IAmA is a place to interview people, but in a new way. ‘IAmA’ is the traditional way of beginning the…

A drug already approved for treating other diseases may be useful as a treatment for cerebral malaria, according to researchers at Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. They discovered a novel link between food intake during the early stages of infection and the outcome of the disease, identifying two molecular pathways that could…

Some insurers offering health plans through the new federal marketplace may be using drug coverage decisions to discourage people with HIV from selecting their plans, according to a new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The researchers found that these insurers are placing all HIV drugs in the highest cost-sharing category in…

Anthony Saich, Daewoo Professor of International Affairs and faculty director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, has been named to Foreign Policy’s Pacific Power Index, a list of 50 of people shaping the future of the U.S.-Chinese relationship. Saich is considered a top scholar in the field of U.S.-Chinese relations, having first…

Six finalists for the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting have been announced by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The winner of the Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting will be announced at an awards ceremony on March 3, 2015, at the Kennedy School. The Goldsmith Prizes…

If you want to lose weight or maintain a proper weight, eat a healthy breakfast, Eric Rimm, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, advised in the Boston Globe January 13, 2015. Breakfast should make up 25%–30% of the average individual’s daily calorie intake, and has been shown in…

Research on extremely dangerous pathogens — on “pause” in the U.S. as scientific panels consider whether or not to continue federal funding for such work — should be stopped altogether, says Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology and director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Research on…

For the second year in a row and the third time in four years, Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has been ranked the best university-affiliated research center in the world. The ranking appears in the Global Go To Think Thank Index, produced annually by James McGann, director of the University…

Michael Hart may not be a household name, but in 1971, he made history when he hand-keyed the text of the Declaration of Independence into a computer mainframe and made it available for public download. The act was arguably the first documented instance of the digital preservation of cultural heritage, which has become an immense…

Although a recent article in the journal Science and a subsequent press release about the article led to a spate of headlines implying that most cancer is due to “bad luck,” David Hunter, Vincent L. Gregory Professor in Cancer Prevention, wrote in a January 15, 2015 Boston Globe op-ed that, in fact, most cancers are preventable. How…

Gökhan S. Hotamisligil, J.S. Simmons Professor of Genetics and Metabolism, chair of the Department of Genetics and Complex Diseases, and principal investigator of the Sabri Ülker Center at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has been selected to receive a 2015 Laureate Award from the Endocrine Society. The Roy O. Greep Award for Outstanding…

Melvil Dewey may be seen as the father of the library classification system, but he certainly wasn’t the first to conceptualize such a thing; Harvard librarians beat him out by more than 200 years. Today most Harvard libraries use the Library of Congress call number system, but before the adoption of today’s widely used standards,…

Houghton Library has seen a 200% rise in demand for object-based teaching with its special collections since 2000, a trend that is mirrored to some degree across the University and educational institutions around the country. “Teachers and students are hungry for the experience of working with objects, touching them, handling them, seeing their markings,” said…

Günther Fink, a health economist with expertise in child health and development, thinks that all countries should aim to reduce neonatal mortality by 70 percent by the year 2030. In a recent paper for the Copenhagen Consensus, he argues that this goal should be part of the new UN Sustainable Development Goals, which will be set…

In the spring of 2014 HarvardX and the Harvard Alumni Association launched HarvardX for Alumni. If HarvardX is new to you, as it was to many of our alumni, it is a University-wide strategic initiative to enable our faculty to build and create online learning experiences that would also transform residential learning and enable groundbreaking research in online…

Consuming a healthy diet was associated with reduced risk for type 2 diabetes among women in all racial and ethnic groups but conferred an even greater benefit for Asian, Hispanic, and black women, according to a new study by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “This study…

Eating more whole grains is associated with up to 15% lower mortality—particularly cardiovascular disease (CVD)-related mortality, according to a large new long-term study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The study also found that bran, a component of whole grain foods, was associated with similar beneficial effects. Bran intake was linked with up to 6% lower overall…

Between 1,500 and 2,100 U.S. Air Force reservists who trained and worked on C-123 cargo planes that were used during the Vietnam War to spread the toxic defoliant Agent Orange may have been exposed to potentially dangerous levels of the carcinogenic chemical, according to a new Institute of Medicine (IOM) report. The IOM’s findings may…

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 and must be received in Cambridge by noon on May 22 to be counted. Results of the election will be announced at HAA’s annual meeting on May…