The bicycle helmet, a common piece of safety equipment and one of our 100 objects that shaped public health, is in need of a radical redesign. While studies have shown that helmets can prevent severe brain injury, such as fracturing or brain bruising, they don’t do as…
Road traffic fatalities plague Brazil’s northeastern cities despite moves to tighten safety laws over the past decade. Researchers from 2 Brazilian universities examined the situation in Arapiraca, a city of about 200,000 that saw 76 road traffic fatalities per 100,000…
Believe it: Falls—such as slipping in the shower or tripping down stairs—kill over 420,000 people worldwide each year. Steps to prevent falls include cleaning up spills and treating slippery surfaces like bathtubs and icy walkways, staying alert during your daily routine…
US motorcyclists who love “riding free” have pushed for the right not to wear a helmet for several decades. But with evidence mounting that mandated helmet use saves lives, pro-helmet public health advocates have stopped the loosening of laws in 10 states this year and…
Tackling obstetric fistula in a speech at a Kenyatta University conference on Monday, Kenya’s First Lady Margaret Kenyatta urged those suffering to seek assistance and called for more resources—both financial and human—to prevent this devastating condition. Many women…
First Nations people in the small Canadian town of Attawapiskat recently faced an epidemic of more than 100 suicide attempts—the latest in a long series of hardships for the community. Photographer David Maurice Smith visited the town from August to October, 2016 to…
Millions of children in Bangladesh live in a world with no fence or protection from nearby ditches and ponds—and the leading cause of death among children 1-4 years old is drowning.
We have the winners: Unintentional burns in Nepal, submitted by Emaline Laney, and deafness in developing countries, proposed by Christi Batamula and by Matthew Yau, are the Untold Global Health Stories of 2017.
Telling kids to “shake it off” after getting tackled in a football game might not be the safest advice. An imaging study posted yesterday in the journal Radiology revealed that the brains of football players ages 8 to 13 showed signs of traumatic injury even if the…
