Welcome to Harvard Public Health Weekly!

Welcome to the first edition of Harvard Public Health Weekly. We’ll be hitting your LinkedIn inbox with fresh reporting and commentary on public health. I’m Christine, the senior opinion editor at HPH and I’ll be your trusty newsletter guide. Send me your comments, musings, and suggestions. We’re looking forward to the conversation.

Introducing: The Structural #Racism Issue

Just launched is Harvard Public Health’s Fall 2022 issue—a probing look at racism’s pernicious effects on #health.

Our issue opens with an essay by Mary Bassett, New York’s health commissioner, calling  #publichealth to account for its role in health inequities and pointing the way to change. She makes the public health case for reparations: wealth and health are closely tied, she writes, so closing the racial wealth gap is needed to improve health outcomes.

We also examine how redlining and systematic neighborhood disinvestment has made lead poisoning crisis in Syracuse, New York and caused food deserts and environmental hazards in Milwaukee’s Metcalfe Park.

This special issue is the third since our relaunch as an independent editorial voice about public health. We hope you’ll join us. And don’t be shy with your feedback.

What else is happening at Harvard Public Health…

Turns out that tackling the opioid #overdosecrisis is bringing out good old-fashioned NIMBYism in some towns, even as annual overdose deaths have broken 100,000, a staggering number. The ongoing crisis has prompted policymakers to tentatively embrace interventions known as harm reduction.

But even as programs like syringe services and safe spaces for using drugs make headway in some places, others are attempting to block these efforts by enacting regressive zoning laws.

Long-time harm reduction advocates Leo Beletsky, Valarie Blake, and John C. Messinger have some advice for beleaguered programs: use the Americans with Disabilities Act. The A.D.A. applies because addiction is a type of disability, so shutting down programs that serve people who use drugs is discrimination, they argue.  

Meanwhile, Dr. Kimberly Sue, the former medical director at the National Harm Reduction Coalition, and Ellie Pickering examine New York City’s safe injection site pilot and find it has reduced overdose deaths for participants to zero.

 On my reading list…

The National Association of Science Writers just announced their awards for best science writing! Over the long weekend, I sat down with Maia Szalavitz impressive feature for Wired Magazine on a murky algorithm that flags patients as “drug-seekers”—spoiler: most aren’t. Next up on my list: Mariana Lenharo's piece on the forgotten victims of #zika in Brazil for Undark Magazine.

 That’s all for this week…

If you like this newsletter, we’ll be launching an email version in the not-so-distant future. Sign up on our website. In the meantime, you’ll get regular updates from us in your inbox on our latest original coverage and the best public health news from around the web.

Until next week, 

Christine

P.S. If you want to learn more about us, be sure to visit us online at www.harvardpublichealth.org.