Harvard Medical School

The health of each individual is inextricably connected with the public health of the space and society in which that person lives. At Harvard Medical School (HMS), physicians, instructors, and students partner with public health experts, social activists, politicians, policy experts, and urban designers to shape individual health through a focus on the broader community. Through clinical, molecular, and technological research and problem solving, members of the HMS community seek to tackle many challenges in world health. Medical students have the opportunity to learn about broad social factors that contribute to health through workshops, clinical rotations, and experiential learning. The Medical School at Harvard includes a broad range of residency and fellowship programs as well as a Department of Global Health and Social Medicine.

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Featured Resource

This article from the Harvard Medicine Magazine features a Q&A with Ann Miller speaking about a study on how speaking a minority or indigenous language can impact child health. The study found that children in families who did not speak the dominant language scored worse on global child development measures, even when controlling for other socioeconomic factors.

Featured Resource

This article from Harvard Medical School covers a newly published paper that discusses the problem of “blood deserts”—areas where the clinical need for blood cannot be met in 75 percent of cases. The authors of the paper outline several stopgap measures that could be taken to mitigate the lack of blood in the short term while policymakers work on more permanent solutions.