Graduate school of public health

The photo above is used with permission from vaping360.com/juul/juul-vapor-review.•  •  •The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has launched a campaign to discourage e-cigarette vaping. While it targeted all e-cigarette vaping, the campaign makes a powerful visual reference to Juul, a device that can be recharged in a computer USB drive and has been reported to be gaining popularity among youth, even though Juul Labs created it for adults who want to stop smoking. The HHS campaign depicts seemingly emotionless teenagers with USB ports where their mouths should be. The campaign is part of a long, successful history of fear-based campaigns that have effectively “denormalized” smoking. But, in the case of Juul, is it a new public health threat? Or is it a disruptive technology that threatens to make combustible tobacco products, which kill half of all smokers, obsolete? In short, could it help or hurt public health? HARM REDUCTION OR … [Read more...] about Juul: Why a trendy e-cig is causing a social – and public health – commotion

A new resource available online is providing a look at the relative state of Philadelphia's health – and the diagnosis could be better. The City Health Dashboard, which is making available community-level health, social and economic data by zip code, allows comparison of individual cities to a 500-city average of the largest U.S. cities. For example, the dashboard for Philadelphia shows that:• Chronic absenteeism, defined as missing 15 or more days of class per school year, is much higher in Philadelphia public schools – 31.3 percent than the 500-city average 17.1 percent. • Nearly 37 percent of city children live in poverty, a figure 1.5 times greater than the 500-city average of 23.6 percent. • Violent crimes, including murder, aggravated assault, robbery and forcible rape, numbered 995.8 offenses per 100,000 population, while the national average was 511.2 offenses. • The number of deaths due to opioid overdose was 32.5 per 100,000 of population, … [Read more...] about Philadelphia’s health lags most big cities in America