Public Health

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other public health organizations periodically create lists of significant public health achievements in the United States and globally. More

In this commentary, we applaud Gearhardt and colleagues’ focus on the negative health effects of consuming ultra-processed foods but suggest that the bigger dietary contributor to obesity risk is American consumers’ lack of access to a diverse range of gut microbiota-accessible foods. More

Four decades ago, I and Gerald Markowitz published an article in the American Journal of Public Health that attracted a fair amount of attention. The article was about the history of the introduction of tetraethyl lead into gasoline in the 1920s.  The article detailed the controversy over putting lead, even then a known industrial poison and neurotoxin, into the gasoline that was powering the new automobile, particularly those that were produced by the General Motors Company. More

Affordability pressures increasingly shape health risk in the United States, influencing both the upstream conditions that sustain health and the downstream ability to access health promoting resources. Financial stability is a key driver of health, affecting patterns of health, health care use, and the tradeoffs people must make among competing needs. The economic policy landscape aimed at improving financial security for Americans is expansive, complex, and often difficult to organize, making it challenging to discuss how different policies influence financial resilience and population health. We propose the Earn–Keep–Grow framework as a practical way to organize and guide discussion of these policies in population health research and policy decision-making. More

America’s public health system is being eroded. Proposed federal cuts would slash core programs by half, even as communities face rising infectious disease outbreaks, worsening chronic disease, and shrinking access to basic prevention. More

In our bitterly partisan age, where science and public health are distrusted, even denigrated, there is a better part of America. More

With each passing day, the United States federal government introduces yet another policy that threatens, rather than promotes, the health and… More

US adults’ awareness of actions threatening public health and science declined between March and September 2025, according to a new survey. More

If repetition is the mother of learning, then I am learning that the second Trump administration likes to use the term “gold standard science.” It is… More

Throughout my career, I have chaired and been a member of countless scientific and health policy advisory committees for the federal… More