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We’ve gone way beyond fitness trackers to collect information about our bodies’ physiological processes. Wearables are being designed to detect early signs of Crohn’s disease and other inflammatory diseases, identify signals of insulin resistance, and warn of blood pressure changes that could signal pregnancy complications. Some devices don’t even have to be attached to th...
The pathway to health sometimes travels through a physician’s office, but economic stability, the physical environment, access to nutritional foods, adequate schools, and social support may be even more important way stations. These and other social determinants of health need to be considered in an integrated fashion, engaging collaborators across disciplines who have not...
Human-centered architecture puts user needs at the center of the buildings in which people work, play, learn, and heal, recognizing that design decisions play a potent role in mental and physical wellbeing. In clinical settings, health-promoting spaces are easy for patients and visitors to navigate, let in natural light, minimize intrusive noise, and foster respect for hum...
More than 8% of US greenhouse gas emissions originate in the health sector. Recognizing the urgency of change, almost 1,000 hospitals, industry organizations, and trade associations have embraced the federal government’s voluntary Health Sector Climate Pledge, promising to cut their emissions in half by 2030. Practical, cost-effective actions with dramatic payoffs include...
Brain development during a child’s first five years forms the basis for lifelong learning and physical health, making enriched environments critical to success. Hospitals and clinics represent an untapped opportunity to contribute in this pivotal period. From a newborn’s first day of life to the many subsequent well-child and sick-care visits, the health care milieu offers...
Mental health disorders are rampant in America’s correctional facilities — in many cases, our prisons and jails are the main providers of mental health treatment in their municipalities. Furthermore, prisons and jails routinely subject people with mental illness to environments that radically exacerbate their condition, often to the point of suicide or self-harm. Why do so...
Vision, hearing, touch, taste, and smell are the five human senses most of us are fortunate enough to know intimately. We like to say that intuition is our sixth sense, but Emma Young, an award-winning journalist who writes extensively about science and health, delves into research that has uncovered many others. In Super Senses: The Science of Your 32 Senses and How to Us...
Jeffrey Sachs, named by The Economist as one of the world’s “three most influential living economists” is the author of End of Poverty, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, and The Age of Sustainable Development. Turning his bold and optimistic eye toward global health, he presents a compelling framework that integrates health with the environment, the economy, t...
How can we unlock the power of entrepreneurship to widen access to health care, close gender disparity, and increase prosperity in the global South? Hear from expert voices and innovators on tools to address social, economic, and environmental challenges in developing economies.
Untapped market opportunities, coupled with the recognition that many diseases exclusively affect women, or affect them differently than men, are drawing venture capitalists into women’s health. These private equity investors, often entrepreneurial women, are motivated by a commitment to gender equity, a supportive regulatory environment, and awareness that there are profi...
The health effects of climate change sound a clarion warning that we must attend to a rapidly deteriorating environment. Polluted cities, severe droughts and flooding, and devastating storms are portents of a world in which risks to the health of the planet and the health of families are closely linked. We urgently need visionary and strategic leaders who can identify and...
When it is complete, the Human Cell Atlas will be a comprehensive searchable map of our cells — a “Google map for the human body.” By combining elegant science and painstaking work in the trenches, the Atlas will portray the basic unit of life in all its staggering diversity, including every cellular subtype, how one type of cell can become another type, which genes are sw...
The complexity of indigenous cultures is underappreciated by most modern observers, yet native people have sophisticated knowledge and ways of thinking that could help heal the planet. Traditional societies seldom distinguish between the health of the environment and the health of those who inhabit it, and recognize that damage to one is damage to the other. There is much...
Universal access to health care means many things in many nations. Taxes support a single-payer system in the United Kingdom, and health care providers are reimbursed directly by the government; patients pay nothing at the point of service. In the Netherlands, the government defines a basic benefit package and regulates private insurers; everyone is required to buy coverag...
Anyone who has ever had a pet understands how deeply connected human beings are to the animals who serve as our companions, lessen our stress, and perhaps offer a buffer against cognitive decline. Puppy play date, anyone? Honeybees help to protect our food supply, vision-impaired people rely not only on seeing-eye dogs but also on seeing-eye horses, and animal research has...
Cities are responsible for 70 percent of global carbon emissions, and by 2050, two out of every three people will live in one. Fortunately, cities are getting serious about environmental footprint — New York announced its own Green New Deal, Melbourne aims to be carbon neutral by 2020, and Los Angeles will use 100 percent renewable energy by 2045. Mayors are often more nim...
Despite all of the scientific advances in genomic sequencing, genetic testing, and gene editing, science writer Carl Zimmer suggests we lack a rich understanding of what heredity means and how traits travel from one generation to the next. Cultural and environmental conditions have complex and nuanced influences on human biology, personal and family characteristics are not...
When Rochelle Walensky was appointed director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in December 2020, the pandemic had commandeered much of the agency’s attention. But its many other responsibilities never went on holiday. Even as the world’s premier public health agency developed guidance for COVID-19 testing, masking, quarantines, and vaccination, it...
Making sure that everyone has access to safe, affordable, and healthy food, is a complex task. Consider the complicated production and distribution systems, both large and small, that need to balance environmental and labor concerns, with sometimes competing business priorities. Moving away from a system that incentivizes cheap, processed junk requires not only policy so...
It is no longer possible to separate the health of the planet from the health of its people. Disease patterns are changing as the climate does, and human health is at risk from loss of biodiversity, depleted water supplies, environmental toxins, and collapsing food systems. As the Rockefeller Foundation-Lancet Commission on Planetary Health states: “The continuing degradat...