Better Off

For many Americans, a visit with their doctor no longer requires an actual trip to the doctor’s office. More physicians are offering so-called “telemedicine” services, where they provide care to patients via smart phones, tablets, and computers. And while telemedicine is being more used more frequently across the U.S., it’s still relatively uncommon, according to a new study led by Michael Barnett, assistant professor of health policy and management at Harvard Chan School. In this week's episode we speak to Barnett about the rise of telemedicine, ways to further increase its use, and how this technology could improve health care for patients in the years to come.

Full Transcript: https://hsph.me/virtual-pod

Oral rehydration solution (ORS)—a mixture of water, sugar, and salt that is administered as part of oral rehydration therapy (ORT)—is credited with preventing tens of millions of deaths from cholera and other diarrheal diseases. In this week's podcast you'll hear from two scientists who helped bring this simple, low-tech, and cost-effective treatment into worldwide use. Richard Cash, senior lecturer on global health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and David Nalin, professor emeritus at Albany Medical College, collaborated on groundbreaking clinical studies showing that ORT was remarkably effective in reversing dehydration.

This episode is a collaboration with Harvard Global Health Institute.

For busy families, gathering together for a meal—whether it’s breakfast or dinner—can be difficult. But a growing body of research shows that these meals together can have an important influence on the quality of food that children and teens eat. However, there’s been less research on effective ways to encourage families to eat together more often. In this week’s episode we’re speaking with Kathryn Walton, research fellow at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and a PhD student at the University of Guelph in Toronto, about a new study that could help public health professionals target interventions at busy families.

Walton and a team of researchers, including Bryn Austin, professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, found that when families sit down together for dinner, adolescents and young adults eat more fruits and vegetables and consume fewer fast-food and takeout items. What’s unique about this study is that Walton and her colleagues looked at the families participating in the meal—assessing how they communicated, managed schedules, and even bonded with children, something called family functioning. And they found that the benefits of family meals were seen regardless of how well—or poorly—a family functioned. We spoke with Walton about the findings of her study and how they could inform future initiatives to encourage families to eat together.

In this week's episode we bring you an in-depth conversation with a public health pioneer. During her five-decade career, Marie McCormick, Sumner and Esther Feldberg Professor, emerita, at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has worked on a range of issues: from the health of pre-term babies to vaccines to cannabis. McCormick began her career as a pediatrician and conducted groundbreaking research on the outcomes of high-risk infants, especially preterm infants, and the evaluation of programs to improve their health and development. During our conversation we covered all of that, plus McCormick’s views on the future of child and maternal health, including the need to address poverty’s role in childhood health.

Every day we are bombarded with health news in our social media feeds: from studies touting the benefits—or harms—of a particular food to research on a new treatment for a disease. But how accurate are those headlines? That's the question a multidisciplinary research team led by Noah Haber, ScD '19, tried to answer. And their findings showed that health news shared in social media is likely to be overstated and/or inaccurate. In this week’s episode, we speak with Haber about how that happens—and what can be done to improve health reporting.

Many of us spend hours each day on our smartphones, whether it's texting friends or using our GPS for directions. And each of those actions leaves behind a digital breadcrumb. In this week's episode we're digging into our archives to explain how researchers are mining this data to improve health. JP Onnela, associate professor of biostatistics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, will explain how harnessing smartphone information can be used to improve everything from our mental health to recovery from surgery.

Every minute 24 people around the world are forced to leave their homes—and it’s estimated that more than 65 million people are currently displaced. In this week’s episode, we explore the global refugee and migration crisis with Jacqueline Bhabha, Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Director of Research at the FXB Center for Health and Human rights. Bhabha has studied migration extensively, and focuses on potential solutions to the crisis in her new book, “Can We Resolve the Migration Crisis?” In this interview, Bhabha speaks about the myriad factors driving the current refugee and migration crisis, how rising nationalism and xenophobia worldwide is affecting migration, and the policy changes needed to build a better global migration system.

In this week’s podcast we’ll explore how America’s streets can be redesigned to benefit bicyclists and pedestrians—and we’ll explain why doing so may even help mitigate the effects of climate change.

A new study from Anne Lusk, research scientist in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, analyzed how bicyclists and pedestrians responded to various placements of trees along cycle tracks—barrier-protected bicycle-exclusive paths between the road and the sidewalk. The research shows that the placement of these trees can play an important role in how people walking and biking perceive traffic, pollution, heat, and even safety.

But the benefits extend beyond just those using the street—and could even be a factor in mitigating the effects of climate change. These trees may make it more likely that people will bike—helping to reduce pollution. And increased greenery can also help cool cities, which often suffer from a heat island effect, which means they’re significantly warmer than more rural areas. Lusk says all of this highlights the need to re-think how we’re designing streets to encourage more people to walk and bike instead of drive.

A new study from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that students who lived in dormitories without air conditioning during a heat wave performed worse on a series of simple tests compared with students who lived in air-conditioned dorms. The findings show that the effects of extreme heat are not just felt by those typically thought of as vulnerable—such as the elderly. And with global temperatures on the rise, the research underscores the need for sustainable design solutions in mitigating the health impacts of extreme heat.

In this week's episode, we'll speak with the authors of that study to learn how we can  better design our buildings and cities to adapt to our changing climate. You'll hear from Joe Allen, assistant professor of exposure assessment science and director of the Healthy Buildings Program at the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment, and Jose Guillermo (Memo) Cedeño Laurent, associate director of the Healthy Buildings Program.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) helps 40 million low-income Americans afford food each month. But the program's future is uncertain as Congress debates the Farm Bill, a multi-year spending bill that will expire on September 30. The Trump administration has proposed significant changes—including cuts in funding—that could shape SNAP in the years ahead.

In this week's episode we examine how changes in SNAP are likely to affect the health of food insecure Americans. You'll hear from Sara Bleich, professor of public health policy at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Hilary Seligman, a primary care physician and associate professor of medicine and of epidemiology and biostatistics at University of California, San Francisco.

This episode is a collaboration with Review of Systems, from the Center for Primary Care at Harvard Medical School.