We need to apply a political economy lens to these policy decisions and their proponents. What actors are colluding to undermine evidence-based policy? What are their interests (creating a marketplace for alternatives, their own brand)? What strategies are they employing to advance these interests?

Sadly, environmental exploitation of rural, and nonwhite areas in particular, is neither new nor unusual. Structural urbanism and generations of under-representation. #PowerOfRuralCats

How do you think about the vaccine policy changes? #Science #Politics contributors EJ Sobo and Emily Brunson explain why & how vaccine decision making has changed through time. Hints: social disagreements about vaccines aren't new, and they are largely political. sciencepolitics.org/2026/01/07/v...

🧵This needs to be said. There were many in ID who during Covid agreed along with the current leaders of NIH & FDA in their naysaying, and collaborated with them (remember urgency of normal?) who are now being quoted in the press saying, “By golly we don’t agree now!” www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/o...

Pediatric ID Physician here. I‘ll never forget the young adult who lost her limbs to disseminated meningococcal ds, I‘ll never forget the healthy children who did not get the flu vaccine and were well one day, and dead the next. The HHS is the biggest threat to children’s health.

The doctors who broke from the consensus to prescribe ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine accessed a cash-pay economy with 500% revenue premiums. The organizations that fundraise on vaccine injury have professional staffs, 8-figure budgets, and executives earning more than most hospital administrators

This👇! Framing “it seems personal freedom has become an even greater value in people’s health decision making” completely ignores how this equation was/is built by self-interested actors. Push back w more science & information, will fail if we don’t build political strategy based on actors involved

Social science research can help us to understand why doubt and disinformation find a landing strip in some communities. Community-level research and interventions will not alone overcome the political economy of disinformation and doubt fueling these trends. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/o...

His advice is to look beyond the now: "If you have political will that is designed to destroy and they have the power to destroy, it is almost futile to try to push against the destruction. Instead, you have to get through the dark age by sort of deciding what the Renaissance is going to look like"

"I was particularly appalled by the testimonies of Inuit women that reported being subjected to IUD by Danish healthcare providers without their knowledge or consent some as young as 12 years old." UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, 2023 www.ohchr.org/sites/defaul...

The worst part is studies like this further sow mistrust in the scientific process and impact uptake on vaccines and the acceptance of other proven health interventions. There are examples of this through history. As someone who studies vaccine hesitancy and health misinformation in Africa

What would be the real world impacts of the loss of federal funding for Housing First programs? We modeled it: an additional 44,590 ppl beyond anticipated growth due to economic factors. @jabarocas.bsky.social @kirkfetters.bsky.social @ucsfbhhi.bsky.social url: jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Here are the people and institutions that gave me hope in 2025. 1/ www.thenation.com/article/soci...

given rising global populism — and tendency to demonize people with little power in society — worth reflecting that the hero in Australia's mass shooting was a Syrian refugee, and the key witness in the Brown University shooting was a homeless man

Read @boghuma.bsky.social’s piece on RFK Jr’s HBV vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau. bktitanji.substack.com/p/how-unethi...

Sam the rural health advoCATe endorses the myth-busting in this discussion. He would add that rural racial/ethic diversity has historic roots (eg Black persons in the rural South) that contribute to discrimination & under-funding of health care. #PowerOfRuralCats www.yahoo.com/news/article...

We don't talk enough about how these kinds of institutional failures make parents more skeptical of medicine and public health by putting more of the onus on them to keep their kids healthy and safe.

Farmer and organizer Suzan Erem reflects on the importance of individual and collective action in the age of Trump and the power to be realized when rural and urban people come together. barnraisingmedia.com/this-is-how-...

What direction will we take the future of our field of public health? We are at a crossroads Dr. Mary Bassett represents the best of us, and I hope will continue to be supported in leading the way forward Heartened to see much support for her on this petition docs.google.com/document/d/e...

1/4. The U.S. continues to be a place where people’s life experiences and outcomes differ dramatically by social positioning. How does that affect the way people make meaning of what is happening around them? Those questions guided this new paper. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Dr. Mary T. Bassett is one of the bravest people I have met in my lifetime - her moral compass and commitment to justice are unmatched. Shame, shame, shame on Harvard. Her ouster is shocking yet unsurprising and on brand for the University. www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

"We don't have to have all the answers to call for change...We just need courage." Dr. Mary Bassett, "Why your doctor should care about social justice," TEDMED 2015. www.ted.com/talks/mary_b...

So glad I got to chat with Beth Macy about PAPER GIRL for @pghreviewofbooks.bsky.social. Talking to Beth is like talking to a neighbor back home. <3

My latest for @thenation.com: "Public Health Needs a New Motto: No Apologies, No Surrender" It’s time we stopped flinching at the assaults of the far right—and started fighting back. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

1. All babies need safe, secure nutrition. 2. It's up to governments (not individual women) to invest in policies that make it possible for people to meet their breastfeeding goals. 3. All families deserve transparent, evidence-based information about nutrition -- instead of stigmatizing rhetoric.

Today in the absurdities of the American Health Care Market, Vermont Redditors are advising on how to reduce your taxable income to 400% of the poverty line so that your monthly insurance premium only goes up 220% instead of 800% www.reddit.com/r/vermont/co...

Enjoyed discussing rural politics & the place-based divide w/ @mikealbertus.bsky.social! open.substack.com/pub/michaela...

Today is World AIDS Day. Activism was key to how the public came to know about AIDS and why $ and resources were dedicated to addressing the epidemic. My book documents some of the activists who brought about changes to science, medicine, and law.  www.cambridge.org/core/books/r...   #WorldAIDSDay

On #WorldAIDSDay we remember the incredible activism that turned the tide on this deadly epidemic in the past I’m sad that funding cuts by G7 nations are making such activism necessary yet again www.forbes.com/sites/madhuk...

This piece is really good- on why rural hospitals close, why there are a lot more closures coming, and what happens next (accelerating economic and population decline)

Here's the newsletter post I wrote today about the CDC vax page and MAHA as marketing buttondown.com/abbycartus/a...

It's hard to express what it meant to watch Maurice, Natalia, Celeste, and Rhea tell their stories—in their own voices—this morning. The segment revealed a brutal reality: homelessness at this scale isn't about personal failure. It's the result of policy choices and systems built to exploit people.

“Lots of people have had to eat without SNAP, so they’ve used their rent money and their utility money, [so] we are likely to see a wave of evictions and utility shutoffs. I think we’re going to see a lot of disruptions in people’s lives for months to come.” prospect.org/2025/11/14/s...

I’m devastated by @sfdirewolf.bsky.social’s passing. Alice was an incredible advocate, writer, and human. I miss her so much already and am grateful for our time together but mostly for the legacy she left us all. Her memory is a huge blessing. www.facebook.com/share/14QATF...

Lottie, a 15yo in Pike County, KY, writes for @kentucky.com about the impact of SNAP delays in her community, which is still recovering from flooding. Cars line up hours before the church where she volunteers begins giving out food: "I see this line growing longer and longer month after month..."

It’s time for us to reconnect with the radical, system-changing spirit that was once at the heart of our field. #publichealth #episky #medsky #activism www.thenation.com/article/acti...

"A family of four in Vermont making $130,000 per year — more than four times the federal poverty level — can expect to see a premium hike of nearly $33,000 annually, the report said." www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/31/b...

Just so we're clear: This administration's blatant, unapologetic choice to deny food to 42 million people—to have the money sitting there and say, "No, we'll let them go hungry"—is simply a more overt display of why homelessness and poverty keep worsening in this country. Because it's *decided.*

This @nytimes.com piece on the "Vision for Homelessness" in Utah should horrify all people. This NYTimes piece on the "Vision for Homelessness" in Utah should horrify all people. 1/x 🧵 www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/u...

With millions at risk of losing SNAP in the coming days, a reminder: hunger doesn't happen in isolation. When food assistance disappears, families use rent money to eat. Then come evictions and homelessness. Housing, food, healthcare—it's all connected. Cut one thread and the whole thing unravels.

I will also say while I’m at it, that for every argument that you can make for the need to have new / younger / different reps, you can and should dissect how those arguments are ableist and ageist. I’d rather hear how “X” elected is disconnected than trotting out their age like they’re disposable.

Read this: "Nothing is Holy," by Ava Razavi. I taught a course on writing about the Trumpocene. Ava said, "I don't want to think about it." But she couldn't stop thinking about it. Gorgeous, heartbreaking prose by a new writer on looking for answers. callingallsyllables.substack.com/p/nothing-is...

One of many village centers lined with protesters in rural Vermont. #NoKings

Tolerating bigotry until it becomes a political liability is not principled and courageous leadership.

EIS outbreak investigators, Africa-based staff on Ebola, editors of main journal updating health officials, gone. Administration is doing all it can to enable viruses. This isn’t mysterious: people this administration is actually accountable to can largely exit, stay home. Inequality=>Pandemics

Community safety comes from ensuring that everyone has a safe and secure place to live. Community safety comes from ensuring that we have well-funded, high functioning schools. Community safety comes from ensuring everyone has access to the healthcare that they need.