During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people unexpectedly needed critical care such as ventilators but were unable to communicate their end-of-life wishes to their loved ones. Researchers like me, who study…
Category: Anthropology
From TB to HIV/AIDS to cancer, disease tracking has always had a political dimension, but it’s the foundation of public health
Federal datasets began disappearing from public view on Jan. 31, 2025, in response to executive orders from President Donald Trump. Among those were the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s…
Daylight saving time and early school start times cost billions in lost productivity and health care expenses
Investigations into the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster revealed that key decision-makers worked on little sleep, raising concerns that fatigue impaired their judgment. Similarly, in 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil…
NIH funding cuts will hit red states, rural areas and underserved communities the hardest
The National Institutes of Health is the largest federal funder of medical research in the U.S. NIH funds drive research and innovation, leading to better understanding and treatment of diseases…
Knocking down abandoned buildings has a lot of benefits for Detroit − but it’s costly for cities
Few cities have experienced a sharper economic change of fortune than Detroit. It was one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation between 1900 and 1950. In the nearly 75…
As tuberculosis cases rise in the US and worldwide, health officials puzzle over the resurgence of a disease once in decline
An outbreak of tuberculosis, or TB – a lung disease that is often accompanied by a hacking cough – began in January 2024 in Kansas City, Kansas, and two nearby…
Philly’s street fentanyl contains an industrial chemical called BTMPS that’s an ingredient in plastic
As much as half of the fentanyl sold on Philly’s streets contains an industrial chemical used in plastics manufacturing. That’s according to our November 2024 testing of fentanyl samples collected…
COVID-19 is the latest epidemic to show biomedical breakthroughs aren’t enough to eliminate a disease
The COVID-19 pandemic transformed over the past five years from a catastrophic threat that has killed over 7 million people to what most people regard today as a tolerable annoyance…
