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Healthcare

How Public Health Transformed Human Life

For National Public Health Week, Dr. Howard Forman surveys two centuries of interventions that together doubled human life expectancy, a triumph of science, policy, and collective action.

A vintage drawing of the construction of the London sewer system
  • Uncovering Healthcare’s Hidden Climate Impact

    The healthcare industry produces 8.5% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions as well as other forms of air pollution. Yale's Dr. Jodi Sherman says the first step to making healthcare sustainable is to understand the scope of the problem.

    An anesthesia mask from the point of view of a patient in surgery
  • Video: Identifying with a Team Helps Prevent Stress and Burnout among Healthcare Workers

    A Yale study conducted in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic found that feeling like part of a team reduced reported stress and burnout—an insight with implications for how any kind of organization can weather a crisis.

    A group of healthcare workers preparing for surgery
  • Does the Location of a Hospital Room Affect Quality of Care?

    Using data from infrared location tracking tags, Yale SOM’s Lesley Meng and her co-authors determined that nurses visit rooms that are farther from the nurses station less frequently, but for longer.

    A nurse standing outside a hospital room
  • Bringing Private-Sector Values to the Public Sector—and Vice Versa 

    Professor Teresa Chahine talks with Roderick Bremby, who led a dramatic turnaround of Connecticut's Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Today, he is an executive at Salesforce, which has provided contact tracing and vaccine management during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Roderick Bremby in 2008, when he was Kansas's secretary of health and environment, discussing his decision to deny permits for two proposed coal-fired power plants. Photo: AP Photo/Chuck France.
  • Does Health Insurance Improve Individuals’ Financial Health?

    In a new paper, Yale SOM’s Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham and his co-authors find that when Americans turn 65 and start to receive health insurance through Medicare, there is a measurable decline in debt, particularly in the South and among those with the greatest debt.

    An illustration of balloons with healthcare symbols lifting a woman out of a pile of bills
  • To Extend Vaccines’ Reach, Distribute Them through Dollar Stores

    A new Yale study says that a partnership with the Dollar General retail chain, which is being considered by the CDC, could bring vaccination sites substantially closer to low-income, Black, and Hispanic households in many parts of the United States.

    A Dollar General Store in Selma, Alabama. Photo: Barry Lewis/InPictures via Getty Images.
  • To Convince the Vaccine Hesitant, Understand Their Underlying Motivations

    What will change the minds of those reluctant to get the COVID-19 vaccine? Yale SOM’s Vineet Kumar and two Yale doctors used the tools of consumer marketing to survey hesitant healthcare workers and analyze their responses.

    An illustration of a puzzle in the shape of a head and a syringe
  • How Connecticut Accelerated Its Vaccinations

    Josh Geballe ’02, Connecticut’s chief operating officer, explains the state’s controversial decision to switch to age-based eligibility for COVID vaccines—and says it likely saved lives.

    A drawing of a woman taking a selfie while getting a vaccination.
  • How COVID Has Worsened the Opioid Epidemic

    There is another epidemic we cannot lose sight of: the opioid epidemic, which has become only more acute in the United States and elsewhere amidst the disruptions and stress caused by COVID-19.

    Family members of people who died after taking fentanyl pills at a press conference in Los Angeles in February 2021. Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images.
  • Can Legalizing Cannabis Curb Deaths from Opioids?

    A new study co-authored by Yale SOM’s Balázs Kovács uses new data to uncover a striking association: the more legal cannabis dispensaries there are in a given county, the fewer opioid overdoses.

    A cannabis shop in Leicester, Massachusetts, in November 2018, when the sale of recreational marijuana became legal in the state. Photo: Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe via Getty Images.