In recent weeks, much has rightly been written about the forced separation of families and children at the US border. As details of the separations emerged, it became clear that we were witnessing an act of wanton cruelty carried out by an administration that has already done much to mainstream callousness in American life. Many of the detained children were being held in warehouse facilities; some, appallingly, were placed in cages. As former First Lady Laura Bush wrote in The Washington Post, images of these facilities were “eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in US history.”
Thinking Better About the Unthinkable | Dean's Note
In recent weeks, a series of events have brought suicide to the forefront of the public debate. The subject was highlighted by a recent CDC report, which found suicide in the US increased by more than 25 percent since 1999. According to the report, suicide rose in nearly every state in the country. The report also found that suicides increased by more than 30 percent in over half of states, and about 45,000 people died from suicide in 2016 alone. The suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain put a pair of well-known faces to these alarming numbers, and the public mourning that followed these deaths prompted not just reminiscences of the lives lost, but renewed efforts to understand the intractable, unpredictable public health hazard that claimed them.
Health, Law, and the LGBT Community: An Unfinished Story | Dean's Note
On Monday, the US Supreme Court decided the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop vs. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The origins of the case lay in a baker’s religion-based objection to serving a same-sex couple wishing to buy a cake for their wedding. The Court’s decision favored the baker, ruling on procedural grounds that he did not receive a fair hearing from the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, members of which had used language that Justice Kennedy, writing the Court’s majority opinion, said constituted evidence of “hostility to religion.” In this sense, the ruling was quite narrow, leaving unresolved the larger question of whether or not it is constitutional for businesses to deny services to LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) Americans. I refer the reader to the Viewpoint in SPH This Week by Professors Raifman and Ulrich, who discuss the legal basis of the court case in more detail.
How the Trump Administration’s Immigration Policies Harm Health | Dean's Note
Throughout his political career, President Trump has defined himself in large part by his antipathy towards immigrants, from his disparaging remarks about Mexican immigrants at the start of his presidential campaign, to his administration’s ban on immigrants from several majority-Muslim countries, to his more recent obscene characterization of Haiti and African countries. Even in this context, however, his administration’s decision to separate from their parents the children of immigrants arriving at the country’s border stands out as an especially cruel, mean-spirited act. As Ali Noorani (SPH’99), executive director of the National Immigration Forum, has said, “Separating parents and children in an attempt to deter people who are fleeing violence from legally seeking asylum is cruel to families, harmful to children, and wholly contrary to American values.”
Guns and the Health of the Public | Dean's Note
Next weekend, Americans will wear orange to mark Gun Violence Awareness Day and advocate for changes to our laws that could help stem the tide of firearm violence in this country. The recent shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas, which killed 10 people, underscored the need for reform, as did the many shootings that came before it, as will the many shootings that will follow if we persist in our collective inaction. With this in mind, we today rerun a modified version of a Dean’s Note on guns and public health. It is no accident that the original version of this note was one of the first I wrote when I became dean of the School of Public Health in 2015. I have come to believe that gun violence is among the preeminent public health challenges of our time, a belief shared by many in our field, and, hearteningly, an increasing number of people outside of it. The growing acknowledgement that gun violence is indeed a public health problem opens the door to public health solutions, and a commonsense, data-informed approach to this challenge, as the gun debate continues to unfold.
Why Public Health? Three Stories That Reflect Our Core Mission | Dean's Note
As we send this SPH This Week to print, news is emerging of yet another school shooting, this time in Texas, with 10 people so far confirmed dead. It is worth remembering that these shootings are not random, not inexplicable.They are outbreaks of a preventable disease we could cure with commonsense gun safety legislation. Each day we choose not to is tantamount to allowing an epidemic to rage while we keep the vaccine on ice. We can do much better that this. I have written previously, always sadly, about this before.
Why There Can Be No Health Without Social Justice | Dean's Note
Next Saturday, members of the School of Public Health class of 2018 will walk across a stage at the BU Track and Tennis Center, and, in the presence of family and friends, receive the degrees they have earned. Reflecting on their accomplishment, I have found myself thinking about the central mission of public health. Our aim is to improve the social, economic, and environmental conditions that shape health, with special focus on closing health gaps and caring for the health of vulnerable populations. This mission is, at heart, a call to correct the underlying injustices in our society that can manifest as disease and injury. With each passing year, I become more convinced that there can be no health without social justice, and that public health must address injustice if it is to create a world that generates health, rather than a world that too often undermines it. With this in mind, we today rerun a modified Dean’s Note on the link between health and social justice, in the spirit of the class of 2018, with high hopes for all they will do to build a healthier, more just world.
Disasters and Public Health | Dean's Note
Before beginning today’s note, an acknowledgement of the recent tragedy in Toronto. Last Monday, 10 people were killed, and more than a dozen were injured, when a man drove a van into pedestrians. While the investigation into what caused him to allegedly commit this crime is still ongoing, he appears to have been motivated by hatred against women. I have written previously about the public health consequences of hate; sadly, there has been ample cause to revisit these thoughts in recent years, from the mass shootings we have regularly seen, to bombings like last Sunday’s attack in Kabul, to the hate that has infused much of our political discourse, both in the US and abroad. In this context, it is all the more important that we continue working to reduce hate and promote the values of empathy and community that are the basis for a healthy world.