In E-cigarettes and the Comparative Politics of Harm Reduction: History, Evidence and Policy, Virginia Berridge, Ronald Bayer, Amy L. Fairchild and Wayne Hall scrutinise the history underlying the current debate over electronic cigarettes. Exploring th…
Category: public health
Africa’s COVID-19 statistics highlight bias in excess death modelling
Despite high levels of informality, Africa’s statistics on COVID-19 mortality have been paradoxically low in comparison to countries in the Global North. Examining studies that attribute low counts to poor statistical reporting, Kate Meagher argues tha…
Unlocking linked real-world data presents opportunities to improve public health
The COVID-19 pandemic has surfaced the potential and risks of linked real word datasets to accelerate and produce new improvements in public health. In this post, Matthew Franklin, Dan Howdon, Suzanne Mason, Tony Stone, Monica Jones, outline the opport…
4 priorities to reaffirm patient voice in the coming era of AI healthcare
Healthcare is becoming both increasingly data driven and automated. Drawing on a largescale review of artificial intelligence developments in the field of mental health and wellbeing, Elizabeth Morrow, Teodor Zidaru-Bărbulescu and Rich Stockley, find t…
After a year of COVID-19 we can still learn from the experience of AIDS
A year on from his blogpost reflecting on what could be learned from the response to the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, Donald Nicolson returns to his previous post to assess how, if at all, the hard learned lessons of AIDS and its social dimensions have …
The public places more trust in scientists and politicians, when they appear individually, rather than together, to communicate COVID-19 public health measures
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, politicians have been accompanied by scientists when communicating the need for anti-contagion measures. In this post, Mike Farjam discusses the results of a joint Italian/Swedish experiment into public attitudes towar…
The Locked-Down: We need more than headline statistics to understand the impact of Covid-19
For governments and individuals much of our understanding of the Covid-19 pandemic has been mediated through metrics of cases and deaths and shaped by heartbreaking personal stories. In this post, Leeza Osipenko argues that such metrics only scratch the surface of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and makes the case for more expansive data … Continued
Book Review: Plagues and the Paradox of Progress by Thomas J. Bollyky
In Plagues and the Paradox of Progress, Thomas J. Bollyky combines a ‘germ’s eye view’ of human history with some powerful reflections on the challenges that face us over the coming decades. This is a beautifully written book, recommends Duncan Green, packed with great one-liners and historical anecdotes. This review was originally published on the From Poverty … Continued
Don’t Just Debunk Covid-19 Myths. Learn From Them
The spread of Covid-19 across the globe has gone hand in hand with the spread of rumours and myth about the virus. In this repost, Anita Makri, discusses how social science research has played a vital role in responding to previous epidemics and argues that rather seeing Covid-19 myths as a problem of information deficit, they … Continued
The Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak is an exceptional public health emergency, but we can still learn from the experience of previous epidemics
The spread of COVID-19 poses unique challenges not only to medical researchers, but also to public health authorities and media outlets across the globe. However, the ways in which epidemics interact with human society suggest that much can be learned from previous epidemics. Drawing on the historical response to the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, … Continued