scholarly journals Assessing the public health impacts of legalizing recreational cannabis use: the US experience

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wayne Hall ◽  
Michael Lynskey
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Cannabis Use ◽  
Health Impacts ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Us

scholarly journals Strengthening the Public Health Impacts of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Through Policy

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 453-480
Author(s):  
Sara N. Bleich ◽  
Alyssa J. Moran ◽  
Kelsey A. Vercammen ◽  
Johannah M. Frelier ◽  
Caroline G. Dunn ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ◽  
Health Impacts ◽  
Supplemental Nutrition ◽  
Assistance Program ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Us ◽  
Nutrition Assistance

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the cornerstone of the US nutrition safety net. Each month, SNAP provides assistance to 40 million low-income Americans—nearly half of them children. A number of changes could strengthen the public health impacts of SNAP. This review first presents a framework describing the mechanisms through which SNAP policy can influence public health, particularly by affecting the food security, the diet quality, and, subsequently, the health of SNAP participants. We then discusspolicy opportunities with the greatest potential to strengthen the public health impacts of SNAP, organized into three areas: ( a) food production and distribution, ( b) benefit allocation, and ( c) eligibility and enrollment. For each section, we describe current policy and limitations of the status quo, suggest evidence-based opportunities for policy change to improve public health, and identify important areas for future research.

Evaluating the public health impacts of legalizing recreational cannabis use in the United States

Addiction ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 111 (10) ◽  
pp. 1764-1773 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wayne Hall ◽  
Michael Lynskey
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cannabis Use ◽  
Health Impacts ◽  
The Public

Revealing public opinion towards COVID-19 vaccines with Twitter data in the United States: a spatiotemporal perspective (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tao Hu ◽  
Siqin Wang ◽  
Wei Luo ◽  
Mengxi Zhang ◽  
Xiao Huang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Sentiment ◽  
Spatiotemporal Trends ◽  
The Us ◽  
Key Events

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed a large, initially uncontrollable, public health crisis both in the US and across the world, with experts looking to vaccines as the ultimate mechanism of defense. The development and deployment of COVID-19 vaccines have been rapidly advancing via global efforts. Hence, it is crucial for governments, public health officials, and policy makers to understand public attitudes and opinions towards vaccines, such that effective interventions and educational campaigns can be designed to promote vaccine acceptance OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to investigate public opinion and perception on COVID-19 vaccines by investigating the spatiotemporal trends of their sentiment and emotion towards vaccines, as well as how such trends relate to popular topics on Twitter in the US METHODS We collected over 300,000 geotagged tweets in the US from March 1, 2020 to February 28, 2021. We examined the spatiotemporal patterns of public sentiment and emotion over time at both national and state scales and identified three phases along the pandemic timeline with the significant changes of public sentiment and emotion, further linking to eleven key events and major topics as the potential drivers to induce such changes via cloud mapping of keywords and topic modelling RESULTS An increasing trend of positive sentiment in parallel with the decrease of negative sentiment are generally observed in most states, reflecting the rising confidence and anticipation of the public towards vaccines. The overall tendency of the eight types of emotion implies the trustiness and anticipation of the public to vaccination, accompanied by the mixture of fear, sadness and anger. Critical social/international events and/or the announcements of political leaders and authorities may have potential impacts on the public opinion on vaccines. These factors, along with important topics and manual reading of popular posts on eleven key events, help identify underlying themes and validate insights from the analysis CONCLUSIONS The analyses of near real-time social media big data benefit public health authorities by enabling them to monitor public attitudes and opinions towards vaccine-related information in a geo-aware manner, address the concerns of vaccine skeptics and promote the confidence of individuals within a certain region or community, towards vaccines

Epidemiological Forecasting: A Crystal Ball for COVID-19 and Future Pandemics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saketh Sundar ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Disease Control ◽  
Crystal Ball ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Us ◽  
Control And Prevention ◽  
The Media

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, headlines ranging from “Coronavirus forecasts are grim: It’s going to get worse” to “Covid-19 cases and deaths in the US will fall over the next four weeks, forecast predicts” have dominated the news (Achenbach, 2020; Kallingal, 2021). The weekly-published Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) COVID-19 forecasts have become the go-to forecasts for the media, the public, and various levels of government (Cramer et al., 2021). These projections, generated from epidemiological forecasting, not only inform the public’s caution towards the pandemic but are also crucial for officials to create public health guidelines and allocate resources in hospitals (Gibson et al., 2020). But where do these predictions come from?

scholarly journals Quantifying the Public Health Benefits of Reducing Air Pollution: Critically Assessing the Features and Capabilities of WHO’s AirQ+ and U.S. EPA’s Environmental Benefits Mapping and Analysis Program—Community Edition (BenMAP—CE)

Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 516 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Sacks ◽  
Neal Fann ◽  
Sophie Gumy ◽  
Ingu Kim ◽  
Giulia Ruggeri ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Air Pollution ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Environmental Benefits ◽  
World Health ◽  
Health Impacts ◽  
Analysis Program ◽  
Common Input ◽  
The Public ◽  
Software Packages

Scientific evidence spanning experimental and epidemiologic studies has shown that air pollution exposures can lead to a range of health effects. Quantitative approaches that allow for the estimation of the adverse health impacts attributed to air pollution enable researchers and policy analysts to convey the public health impact of poor air quality. Multiple tools are currently available to conduct such analyses, which includes software packages designed by the World Health Organization (WHO): AirQ+, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA): Environmental Benefits Mapping and Analysis Program—Community Edition (BenMAP—CE), to quantify the number and economic value of air pollution-attributable premature deaths and illnesses. WHO’s AirQ+ and U.S. EPA’s BenMAP—CE are among the most popular tools to quantify these effects as reflected by the hundreds of peer-reviewed publications and technical reports over the past two decades that have employed these tools spanning many countries and multiple continents. Within this paper we conduct an analysis using common input parameters to compare AirQ+ and BenMAP—CE and show that the two software packages well align in the calculation of health impacts. Additionally, we detail the research questions best addressed by each tool.

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