all Department of Population and International Health stories

Smoking and solid-fuel-burning in homes in China projected to cause millions of deaths

404132862 — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:20:51 -0400

SPH professor finds Taliban inmates dying, in need of care

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:19:44 -0400

Jennifer Leaning is a professor in the Harvard School of Public Health's Department of Population and International Health. She is also one of Physicians for Human Rights' founders. In January 2002, Leaning traveled to Afghanistan to investigate the conditions under which Taliban prisoners were being held. While the investigators found no evidence that the prisoner were being tortured or intentionally mistreated, they also found that the crowded conditions and lack of resources were killing them just as surely as a firing squad. Leaning said she believes the U.S. government shares responsibility for the care of these men.

New vaccines could balance global burden of disease

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:11:52 -0400

The scientific community believes that diseases that have long plagued the world can be controlled by vaccination. But vaccines won't work unless they reach the people who need them most -- and that means mostly people in poor countries. In two articles in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Harvard School of Public Health Dean Barry Bloom addresses this problem. Bloom and his colleagues describe the most promising approaches to vaccine development and encourage an international effort for testing and distribution. "AIDS, TB, and malaria are more severe problems in poor countries than in affluent ones, and these diseases have not received an investment in research dollars commensurate with their importance," write Bloom and colleagues Norman Letvin and Stephen Hoffman.

Examining differing reproductive desires in Gambia

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:06:39 -0400

For men in rural Gambia, more than 15 kids are desirable. That's double the number of children that women are actually delivering. The number may seem high to people in the West, but in rural Gambia fertility for both men and women represents more than simple family size. Allan Hill, a researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, addressed questions about what happens when men and women want different numbers of children in "Separate Lives, Different Interests: Male and Female Reproduction in the Gambia," a paper published in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization. Hill has been overseeing a research program on the fertility and reproductive health of people in rural Gambia for several years.

Exercise reduces cancer risk

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 05:07:59 -0400

Researchers Grace Wyshak and Rose Frisch estimate that exposing women to physical activity during their college years or earlier may decrease the risk of breast cancer in women of all ages by 17 percent. That would reduce the 180,000 new cases reported in the United States each year by 30,600. For women under age 45, the proportion of breast cancers that might be prevented is even greater. "The effect was more marked among women younger than 45 years," said Wyshak, an associate professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and the Harvard Medical School. The findings came from a 15-year follow-up of 3,940 female athletes and nonathletes. Most of those in the study were graduates of Radcliffe College.