Public Health

Public Health

child mortality
In 200 years, the mortality rate for children under the age of five (per 1,000 live births) has dropped from 40% to 3.7%.
deaths of despair
Deaths of despair are skyrocketing in the U.S., while at the same time, they are falling in other wealthy countries. What are we doing wrong?
Robinson v. California helped to established a rehabilitative ideal: addiction should be dealt with as a therapeutic matter.
monkeypox
This isn't America's first rodeo with monkeypox. In 2003, the virus swept across America thanks to a shipment of exotic animals.
World War I stretcher bearers
Before the war, medical experts treated the body as a sum of its parts. Conditions like wound shock and brain damage called for a change in perspective.
Wyoming's roads are nine times deadlier than Ireland's. California's road safety is on par with Romania's.
statins
A doctor once joked that statins will be added to the water supply. Humor aside, the data shows that statins really are a "wonder drug."
What you need to know about this smallpox cousin.
Researchers believe they have found a single point mutation in an infection-sensing gene that causes the autoimmune disorder.
Thanks to genetic clues, scientists discovered that an old stroke therapy that had abandoned for decades might just work.
A new wave of preventative cancer vaccines are set to begin trials.
The same technology behind the COVID-19 vaccines may enable the first damage-reversing heart attack cure.
A study finds prescription medications and dangerous unlisted ingredients in ordinary supplements.
A baby crib at night
SIDS deaths have decreased worldwide, but research has yet to solve this medical mystery.
anxiety medication
Disulfiram is an FDA-approved drug for the treatment of chronic alcoholism. It might also serve as anti-anxiety medication.
crashes
Morbid fatality statistics on digital highway signs seem to distract drivers, thus increasing the number of car crashes.
You can’t control external threats, but you can manage how you prepare and respond to the risk.
smell COVID
Shoving platelet-rich plasma up your nose might restore your sense of smell after COVID. But whether it actually works still needs to be sniffed out.
Much of the discussion began during the pandemic, which really brought mental health issues to the forefront.
Wealth was a cushion, but even being well-off did not protect people from the harmful effects of pandemic stressors.
spillback
COVID-19 and other microbes have shed light on disease spillover from animals to humans, but we can also spillback disease to wildlife.
The good news is that scientists have found a new way to treat eczema. The bad news is that it's drinkable dust mite extract.
Breathing exercise to lower blood pressure.
A small study suggests that IMST is as effective as medications or 30 minutes of aerobic exercise.
hormonal birth control
Hormonal birth control for women may elevate the risk of depression and suicide, but so does pregnancy itself.
poisson distribution
The Poisson distribution has everyday applications in science, finance, and insurance. To compare the results of some biomedical studies, more people ought to be familiar with it.
anencephaly
The catastrophic birth defect anencephaly affects about 1 in 4,600 pregnancies in the U.S. It is largely preventable with folic acid supplements.
syphilis
The most feared sexually transmitted disease (STD) of the last half-millennium was usually named after foreigners, often the French.