2023

Fall/Winter 2023

AI has dominated recent popular press, but this issue’s special section digs deeper into the technology’s potential to shape public health—for better or worse. Our experts share cautionary notes, particularly about AI’s “baked-in bias,” but also excitement about AI-fueled work that is helping to decipher cellular communication, alert people to emerging health conditions, assess environmental risks, and more. Also in this issue: How Indigenous peoples are reclaiming the health of children and families, how psychological autopsies can inform suicide prevention strategies, autism’s “outside influences,” and the resilience and healing power of transgender communities in the face of threats to their health.

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Summer 2009

Delivering inexpensive and science-based mental health care in developing countries; a special report on H1N1; the role of basic science in public health; why the U.S. minimum legal drinking age should not be lowered; keeping Howard County healthy; and more.

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Spring/Summer 2023

Catch up with the latest on infectious disease, the theme of this issue’s special section—and a field that demands more than “safe, small-minded science,” writes an infectious disease expert and contributor to the magazine. We explore the “risk or reward” debate around gain-of-function research, the vexing mysteries of long COVID and other persistent post-acute illnesses, and how research on the bacterium Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, a relative of the plague pathogen, may help to overcome drug resistance. Plus: Xylazine and the new overdose crisis, a statistician’s critique of firearm forensics in the courtroom, and efforts to protect mental health in Ukraine.

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