Amy Hagopian joins us to discuss war, public health, the American Public Health Association, and hope. She is professor emeritus at the University of Washington School of Public Health and served on the editorial board of the American Journal of Public Health and as chair of the International Health Section of the APHA. This interview took place amidst an increasing anti-war movement, this time against a United States war with Venezuela. Amy shared her perspectives in front of a background adorned with art, family photos, a Ceasefire Now poster, and the Armenian flag.
On December 2, 2025, a grassroots organizing movement made up of incarcerated people called the Free Alabama Movement, announced their plan for a statewide shutdown of the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC). This was in response to decades of unlivable, cruel, and inhumane living conditions and treatment of incarcerated people in Alabama prisons. The Free Alabama Movement illustrates how Alabama
Micro-practices function as tools that help children regulate stress, build emotional awareness, and cope in environments where access to formal care is often limited or delayed. When rooted within broader ecosystems of care—such as families, schools, community programs, and health infrastructure—their impact is amplified, supporting children between, alongside, and sometimes in the absence of clinical intervention.
Food insecurity in the United States is not an unfortunate behavioral choice, it is a tool of social control, engineered through greed, austerity, and the deliberate abandonment of the poor. The catastrophic physical, psychological, and social consequences of food insecurity, rampant diabetes and hypertension, maternal depression, childhood behavioral and developmental harm, and the stunting of educational potential, are not incidental.
By Paul J. Fleming
“Health care is one of the most obvious areas where the policies we choose are about life and death. The current US system is not producing the health outcomes that peer countries are enjoying. Frankly, it is producing more deaths than it should, given how much US taxpayer money goes to it. To get the life and health benefits we deserve, we need to use our imagination, envision a different system, and work toward integrating a prevention mindset to transform the system at the roots.”
As I reflect on the current state of the world and the United States’ active role in many issues—immigration rights, abortion rights, trans rights, access to healthcare, police brutality, incarceration, censorship, fascism, imperialism, to name a few—I remind myself that these issues are all coming from the same systems of oppression. The lens of reproductive justice helps us see how
Chennai must adopt a health equity-centered approach to disaster response that prioritizes community governance, which can offer a critical roadmap for reimagining flood response in the city. The government currently employs a top-down approach to decision-making, in which an administrative body outside the community dictates next steps to disaster response.
Behavioural science has become an increasingly popular discipline to address public health issues and gaps. The use of behavioural science for public health stems from the perspective that behaviours are crucial in shaping health outcomes. The World Health Organization’s (WHO) website on behavioural science for health mentions right at the beginning, “Human behaviour affects health outcomes.” When behavioural science is
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