public health Archives

Doing good: Social change initiatives and ethical thinking

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graphic showing various hands reaching for a globe

Social change is complex. Program designers and implementers need to deal with complexity in ethical ways. Ms Susan Igras and Dr Anjalee Kohli at Georgetown University and their co-authors examine the power dynamics of norms-shifting interventions in fostering health improvement. Their aim is to develop an approach to designing and carrying out interventions which more systematically take into account values, […]

COVID-19 and its variants:
How N95 (hi-fi) masks can protect us

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Devabhaktuni Srikrishna reviews how high quality masks would reduce the inter-household spread of COVID-19.

One of the defining issues of the COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to prevent its spread is inter-household transmission. Among the many policies and guidelines implemented, masks have been one of the most important and are now required wearing in the public spaces of many countries. But what if the masks we currently wear aren’t good enough? Researcher Devabhaktuni Srikrishna models […]

Cities in motion: To make our urban future sustainable, reconsider car dependency

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Mark Stevenson, Professor of Urban Transport and Public Health at the University of Melbourne, warns that an increasingly urbanised world will not be sustainable unless governments reduce reliance on privately owned automobiles. Evidence from Beijing and elsewhere shows that car use results in millions of deaths from road crashes, pollution and chronic diseases. Cities should instead encourage public transport, walking […]

Climate change impacts the transmission of vector-borne diseases

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Climate change is responsible for changes in temperature and rainfall patterns as well as more frequent extreme events such as floods. These changes may cause insect displacements to regions that are more favourable to them. This can prove to be problematic for local human populations as some of these insects carry diseases: vector-borne diseases are illnesses caused by parasites, viruses […]

Water in Crisis: Delivering urban and natural water cycle symbiosis

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The Water Research Group helps safeguard drinking water quality.

The Water Research Group in the Department of Civil and Structural Engineering at the University of Sheffield is the UK’s largest urban water research team. Their research encompasses the entire water service provision including assessing the environmental impact and protection of groundwater and rivers, stormwater management and flooding, green and urban water infrastructure engineering, and management of buried assets to […]

Bacterial biofilms: A persisting public health challenge

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Bacterial biofilms are a notable public health challenge.

Foodborne and waterborne diseases are major global health threats, exacerbated by the ability of bacteria to gain new characteristics, constantly evolve towards increased fitness in their environment, and by developing resilience through biofilm formation. Utilising emerging technologies such as elevated hydrostatic pressure and application of novel bacteriocin and bactericidal compounds, Professor Aliyar Cyrus Fouladkhah and his team in the Public […]

Sense about Science: Public led, expert fed

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Policy-makers need to determine goals and rules and discuss their reasoning freely with the public.

Scientific evidence, when used responsibly, has the potential to be a great power for good. However, our lives often revolve around claims based on little, poor or poorly understood evidence. Sense about Science is changing that: they want the public to ask questions and politicians and the media to be held accountable. In this article we find out from director […]

Understanding farmers’ behaviour to better control avian influenza

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Dr Alexis Delabouglise, based at the International Center of Agricultural Research for Development (CIRAD), France, and Dr Maciej Boni, at the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics of the Pennsylvania State University, USA, want to understand how small-scale poultry farmers make management decisions involving their birds’ health. In case of an outbreak of avian influenza, for example, understanding the farmer’s views […]

Changing climate: A ‘threat multiplier’ for foodborne and waterborne infectious diseases and antibiotic resistance

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Aliyar Fouladkhah examines the risks of foodborne pathogens like Listeria monocytogenes.

Dr Aliyar Cyrus Fouladkhah of Tennessee State University is an Assistant Professor in Public Health Microbiology. His laboratory explores preventive measures for the spread of infectious diseases, antibiotic resistance, and food security in the landscape of changing climate. His research aims to provide better understanding of the ecology, epidemiology and effectiveness of control measures of enteric and environmental pathogens at […]

The importance of the autopsy in medicine

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Clinical autopsy is integral to public health, it has brought critical advances in the understanding of disease and its treatment, leading to improvements in many people’s lives and to many lives being saved. Despite this, there has been a gradual demise in the use of clinical autopsy in medical practice. Professor L. Maximilian Buja of the McGovern Medical School, University […]