A Bird Flu Timeline, Big Alcohol and Pride, and Heart Disease in Haiti

June 14, 2024

Better health begins with ideas

Editors' Note

Every June, millions of people around the world celebrate Pride Month to commemorate LGBTQ+ pride and the Stonewall Riots. This week, the O'Neill Institute's Patricio López Turconi urges readers to consider how Big Alcohol's sponsorship of parades is a deliberate attempt to induce cravings in a group already at a disproportionately high risk of developing alcohol use disorders.

Turning to the ongoing U.S. bird flu outbreak, Director of AI + Life Sciences Samuel V. Scarpino, in partnership with Global.health, delivers a timeline of H5N1 events to help bridge the gaps between disjointed data systems, better track the effectiveness of interventions, and monitor the evolving risk to humans and livestock.

Next, a team of researchers based in Utah discusses how climate change is causing the state's Great Salt Lake to shrink, uncovering its lakebed and increasing harmful dust particles in the air.

To close this edition, journalist Susan Kreimer recaps the first population-based study to estimate the number of people living with cardiovascular disease in Haiti. The findings reveal that 12% of participants from Port-au-Prince have early-onset heart failure—a rate more than 15 times higher than previous estimates and at least three times greater than among Black Americans.

Until next week!—Nsikan Akpan, Managing Editor, and Caroline Kantis, Associate Editor 

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