March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month and CDC’s Division of Cancer Prevention and Control is sharing activities and resources to leverage the observance. Dr. Lisa Richardson, Director of the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control at the CDC will be speaking at the National Colorectal Cancer Roundtable (NCCRT) Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month webinar on March 23. Join NCCRT on Thursday,...

A new joint mission between NASA and Italy’s space agency will seek to assess the health effects of airborne pollution in some of the world’s largest cities. The Multi-Angle Imager for Aerosols (MAIA) mission, a cooperation between NASA and its partners at the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), marks a mission first by the space agencies with its focus on public health with a satellite effort. Wi...

The House unanimously approved a bill last Friday that would require the director of national intelligence (DNI) to declassify information related to the origins of COVID-19, sending the measure to President Biden’s desk for final approval. The legislation, titled the COVID-19 Origin Act, passed in a 419-0 vote, just over a week after the Senate approved the bill by unanimous consent. The White...

A new recommendation from the CDC says all adults should be screened at least once in their lifetime for hepatitis B, an illness that’s linked to liver disease and cancer. The CDC estimates 580,000 to 2.4 million people live with hepatitis B, known as HBV, and two-thirds might not know about their infection. The CDC’s previous recommendation was made in 2008 and urged testing for people at high...

Three years ago, on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the coronavirus that causes COVID was officially a pandemic. Three years later the WHO has recorded more than 6.8 million COVID deaths, though studies of global excess mortality, or deaths above and beyond the expected amount in a given time, suggest the actual number is more than double that amount. Despite ...

Amid growing rumors of a 2024 presidential bid, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has reversed his stance on life-saving COVID vaccines and hand-picked surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, who has hewed closely to the governor's anti-vaccine rhetoric and health misinformation. Ladapo has touted a dubious analysis that claimed mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are linked to an increased risk of cardiac-related deat...

More than one-third of Americans say cost has prevented them from filling a prescription. That’s according to a poll completed by 1,500 U.S. adults in March 2023. Of these, 37 percent said they’ve not filled a prescription due to cost. Another 10 percent preferred not to answer the query. Both women and individuals with an annual family income less than $50,000 were more likely to say they’ve s...

A social demographer investigated sources of bias in the use of body mass index (BMI) to determine risk of mortality. He found that factoring in weight history and body shape influences the relationship between BMI and mortality. These biases from body shape and weight history may account for the “obesity paradox” where previous research has shown a survival benefit from overweight and lower le...

Health Affairs began publishing a cluster of research papers focused on lessons for public health policy and practice arising from the COVID-19 pandemic experience in the U.S. The first article was released earlier this week and is titled, “Trust In U.S. Federal, State, And Local Public Health Agencies During COVID-19: Responses And Policy Implications.” The study describes how in February 2022...