Among the pandemic’s biggest challenges for public health experts have been just how novel it is, how hard it’s been to come by sufficient useful data, and how few tools scientists have for accurately tracking and predicting its spread. A recent study looking at information gathered by an app that 500,000 people use to log daily symptoms, health status, and exposures to COVID-19 hints at the possible role crowdsourced big data can play in understanding...

Light therapy is safe and has measurable effects in the brain, according to a pioneering study by researchers from the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Senior investigators Rajiv Gupta, director of the Ultra-High Resolution Volume CT Lab at MGH, and Benjamin Vakoc at the Wellman Center led the study, which was supported by a grant from the Department of Defense (DOD) and published in JAMA Network Open Sept. 14. This study...

In its Three Questions, Three Answers series, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Laura Kubzansky discusses the link between optimism and hypertension. Kubzansky, who is co-author of the study, is the Lee Kum Kee Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences and co-director of the School’s Lee Kum Sheung Center for Health and Happiness. Q&A Laura Kubzansky Chan School: What did your study find? Kubzansky: In a population of relatively young and healthy U.S. Army...

Dementia is a growing problem for people as they age, but it often goes undiagnosed. Now investigators at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have discovered and validated a marker of dementia that may help clinicians identify patients who have the condition or are at risk of developing it. The findings are published in JAMA Network Open. The team recently created the Brain Age Index (BAI), a model that relies...

TestBoston, a large-scale research study that will facilitate at-home testing for both the SARS-CoV-2 virus and antibodies against it, is accepting applications from 10,000 current and former Brigham and Women’s Hospital patients. Researchers from Harvard-affiliated Brigham, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and the MGB Center for COVID Innovation said the test will detect active COVID-19 cases, evidence of previous infection, and changes in the rates of both. Over the course of six months,...

Joseph Allen shakes his head over the fact that so many of the nation’s K-12 students are still attending some or all of their classes online due to COVID concerns. Allen, a Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health associate professor of exposure science who runs the School’s Healthy Buildings Program, argued early on that last spring’s pivot to online learning showed the many ways in-person education is superior to online and that there are...