Heyy guys,

About which aspects of health and wellbeing should more people talk? Which parts of a good and healthy lifequality should be researched more? What public health topics should politics care more about?

I am looking forward to the discussion!

I am so unbelievably tired of anti vaxxers

Seriously, how are we still doing this?

We spent decades making measles so rare in the United States that most people my age have literally never seen a case of it. Now it's 2026 and we've already had more than 2,700 confirmmed cases this year.

Pennsylvania is dealing with hundreds of cases and just reported its first measles associated deaths in decades.

And somehow, instead of people looking at this and saying, "Wow, maybe getting rid of measles was actually a good thing," we're STILL arguing on the internet about whether the vaccines is secretly dangerous.

the most frustrating part is that vaccines work so well that people forget what the diseases were actually like.

Nobody remembers children in iron lungs, measles wards, babies dying from whooping cough, or parents terrified of polio. So now we have the luxury of pretending the vacccine is scarier than the disease.

There are some groups of people that are so willfully ignorant that they they fuck the rest of us. I have kids man, fuck these guys.

sorry for rant.

I’m really interested in hearing from moms, nurses, midwives, doulas, doctors, social workers, mental health professionals, and anyone else who has firsthand experience with pregnancy/postpartum healthcare.

If you could change three things about the way pregnant and postpartum women are cared for, what would you change?

This could be anything — hospital policies, informed consent, birth plans, continuity of care, postpartum follow-up, mental health support, pain management, how concerns are taken seriously, partner/family involvement, breastfeeding support, childcare, financial barriers, access to midwives, advocacy, education before birth, support after going home, etc.

For moms specifically: What did you need that you didn’t have? What would have made pregnancy, birth, recovery, or the first few years of motherhood feel safer or less overwhelming?

For healthcare workers: What do you wish you were able to offer patients, but the current system, policies, staffing, funding, or scope of practice makes difficult? Are there policies you think actively need to change?

And if you could completely redesign maternal healthcare instead of working within the current system, what would ideal care look like from pregnancy through postpartum and the early years of a child’s life?

I’m asking because I’m exploring a future in maternal healthcare and health policy, with a long-term goal of helping create a more comprehensive model of care for mothers and children. I don’t want to base that vision only on what I think women need — I want to hear from the people who have actually given birth, supported someone through it, or worked inside the healthcare system.

There are no wrong answers. Even something that seems small could be incredibly important.

If you only got three wishes, what would yours be?

What health topics do you think need more attention right now—and why?

For example: access to care, mental health, substance use, chronic disease, environmental concerns, etc.

If you’re comfortable, feel free to share:

• Why you think this is important

• Who it affects most

• Any barriers or challenges people face

Has anyone gone through the internship application process with the WHO? How long did it take to hear back? Did you need to have a connection?

Hi everyone! I’m part of a team that founded Second Pulse, an initiative focused on helping first-generation immigrants and underserved communities better understand their rights and access within healthcare.

We recently created a free introductory course on healthcare policy for students and community members interested in healthcare, law, public policy, or simply learning more about how healthcare policies affect our communities.

The course was developed with guidance from professionals in healthcare and policy, and we wanted to make the information accessible and easy to understand for people who may not have a background in these areas.

If you or someone you know might be interested, you can sign up here:

https://forms.gle/JSsbSzh2ot6FK2p66

We’d really appreciate any feedback from those who participate, and feel free to share this with anyone who might find it useful!

On August 14, NIH unveiled a plan to blind grant applicants and their program officers to the scores determined by peer reviewers.

Large changes to peer review typically develop as multiyear efforts, soliciting input from working groups of extramural scientists, internal NIH committees, IC directors, and the public. In an unprecedented move, an anonymous internal working group created this new plan.

Anonymous current and former NIH staff* outline how these changes reduce transparency, enabling political appointees to have complete control over grant funding, ultimately removing opportunities for oversight and covertly implementing the proposed OMB rule. The authors breakdown the steps you can take to support transparency in peer review.

*opinions their own

I'm modelling inspection outcomes as
five hidden states: Pass, Pass-with-conditions, Fail, Establishment gone/not-ready, and a residual 'other'.

My question is about the second one is 'Pass with conditions' a genuinely distinct state that changes what happens next, or is it treated operationally as a pass with paperwork? If it's really a pass, I should collapse it, and my whole uncertainty estimate drops.

Hey everyone,

If you are using the CDC WONDER web interface for epidemiological research, you might be unintentionally excluding thousands of mortality records from your cohorts.

The CDC's automated coding system applies linkage rules that merge certain comorbid conditions (like Hypertension + CKD) into single combination codes on the Record Axis. When you run a strict search for standalone ICD-10 codes on the WONDER portal, you will miss all the deaths where your target disease was rolled into a combination code. Depending on the specific epidemiologic question and cohort definition, this can cause your mortality counts to drop significantly.

I’m a 19-year-old balancing med school with a data science degree, and I built a Python pipeline to bypass this interface limitation. Instead of relying on the post-processed Record Axis, my script directly parses the Entity Axis in the raw NVSS text files. This captures the initial ICD-10 codes exactly as they were placed on the death certificate before any automated linkage rules are applied.

I recently used this architecture to extract liver mortality trends for an accepted American Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology paper, turning hours of manual Excel filtering into minutes of automated execution.

I open-sourced the repository so you can extract accurate, large-scale clinical data for your own manuscripts:https://github.com/okiaarav/NVSS-CDC-Wonder-Data-Extraction

Let me know if you run into any extraction issues or want to collaborate on structuring the boolean logic for your specific ICD-10 cohorts!

New announcement excluded seven fields. Political science, public policy, cultural anthropology and science education will no longer be eligible for national science foundation fellowship.

Where do bacteria hang out when they aren't making us sick?

The bacterium *Yersinia pestis* was once the scourge of Eurasia, depopulating entire cities, upending political systems, and inflicting human suffering on an unimaginable scale. Now it causes fewer than 2,000 human cases each year.

Many once-common diseases have become rare. But a larger mystery remains: *Why do rare infectious diseases persist at all?*

Why hasn't plague gone extinct if it struggles so severely to infect human hosts? Where is plague hiding? And how has it remained endemic in the United States for more than a century if only a handful of Americans catch it each year?

https://youtu.be/sslutOzWFsg?si=msUEis-O4PlbhGi4

Never thought I would genuinely be passionate about a political figure (especially one from a different state). It’s such a breath of fresh air to see an expert from our field represented in federal politics that isn’t a health-related role. How are y’all feeling about it? Are there any other politicians that have a health-related background in non-health-related roles (that actually benefit us…looking at you Cassidy and Rand Paul)? It would be interesting to see what is up at the state and local level too!

im 31 with no degree.i am going back to school & public health /nutrition programs interest me for sure. however i’ve been doing research on the job market and yeah. lol. i also been looking into other health roles. my dilemas are im a holistic girl. i wouldn’t say im anti vax but i am pro be cautious. (i have every vax but covid) is that contradictory to a public health career? is there a holistic side to this? im also interested in data analytics & was looking into the tech side of health administration. please dnt attack me for my beliefs 😭I do need some guidance though.

Just think it is interesting that APHA released a statement on her passing.

From the PA department of health:

"DOH confirmed both individuals were unvaccinated residents of Lancaster County. To protect the privacy of the individuals and their families, DOH will not release any additional details that could personally identify these individuals and their families. Protecting Pennsylvanians' privacy is a core responsibility of DOH. DOH has confirmed 393 cases in 28 counties thus far in 2026."

Link to the news release: https://www.pa.gov/agencies/health/newsroom/pennsylvania-department-of-health-confirms-two-measles-associate

Hi friends.

I’m seeking examples of research that tracks and analyzes total funding (private public philanthropic) to a field, with the goal of advancing said issue. Ideally public health / healthcare but open to any field.

A great example is by Treatment Action Group (TAG) work on tuberculosis. A decades-long research project called TB Research Funding Trends

Not wholly sure what I’m looking for or how to describe it. Throwing out a net

Thank you!

Unsure who else here has been following the baby formula lawsuits involving Similac maker Abbott and thousands of parents, but a big move’s been made as Abbott reached agreements this week to settle the lawsuits for around $670 million. Happy that the parents and families affected are set to receive compensation after their children contracted necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) from having Similac.

There’s still a long road ahead for the lawsuits though. While this settlement covers around 10K+ infants who were affected, there are still about 1,700 lawsuits out there involving nearly 13,000 infants that aren’t involved in the settlements. I wonder if this settlement is a sign that those still on the outside looking in will also be taken care of soon as well. As someone who’s been watching these suits for a few years now, I’m very hopeful for them.

Here’s the summary of the settlement, for those who wanna get up to speed.