all Harvard Kennedy School stories

Chu urges U.S. to anticipate its energy future

705287540 — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 10:52:41 -0400

Political and philosophical differences aside, it’s the economic crisis that’s driving the current national health care reform debate.

“Every day the president gets an envelope [that] says, ‘Whoa! Bigger [deficit] this day than yesterday,’” noted Robert J. Blendon, professor of health policy and management, speaking at the Harvard School of Public Health on Tuesday.

New study assesses quality and cost of care at nation’s hospitals

50443248 — Thu, 21 May 2009 10:06:06 -0400

Costly care isn’t necessarily better care at the nation’s hospitals. New research conducted by a team including Harvard Kennedy School Professor Amitabh Chandra represents one of the first nationwide analyses of quality and spending at the level of individual hospitals in the United States. The study is published on the Health Affairs Web site.

Energy policies: ‘Forty-year failure’

50443248 — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:44:02 -0400

In 1973, four weeks after the Arab oil embargo, President Richard Nixon went on national television to talk about an energy crisis that had been mounting for two years. He asked Americans to turn off their Christmas lights.

In a gesture of greater substance, Nixon also pledged that within seven years the United States would be independent of foreign oil.

Since then, eight presidents and 18 congresses have aimed to deliver on this 1973 promise. In the last four years alone, four ambitious energy bills were signed into law.

Yet Americans, more than ever, are still at the mercy of foreign oil. Nearly 70 percent of oil supplies are imported today, up from 30 percent in the Nixon era.

What happened?

Narayanamurti named director of Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at Belfer Center

50443248 — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 11:48:43 -0400

Venkatesh “Venky” Narayanamurti will be the new director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

Harvard Catalyst grants encourage greater faculty collaboration

50443248 — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 12:28:22 -0400

Scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics are measuring how patients’ posture affects MRI imaging of their breathing.

For science adviser, dogged work against global perils

404132862 — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 08:56:21 -0500

John P. Holdren named President-elect Obama’s Science Advisor

404132862 — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:13:59 -0500

President-elect Barack Obama today announced that he has selected Harvard’s John P. Holdren to serve as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology in the new administration. The post, popularly known as “the President’s science advisor,” also includes directorship of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President and requires Senate confirmation.

Obama chooses Harvard physicist

404132862 — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 11:52:06 -0500

A strong voice on CO2 as science adviser

404132862 — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 11:53:32 -0500

John Holdren to advise Obama on science, reports say

404132862 — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 11:55:34 -0500

Julius B. Richmond, giant in public health and pediatrics

404132862 — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 16:03:02 -0400

Julius B. Richmond, a seminal figure in the history of American public health and pediatrics, and the first national director of the Head Start program, who held professorial positions at three Harvard Schools, died Sunday at his home in Chestnut Hill, MA. He was 91.

As U. S. Surgeon General in the Carter Administration, Dr. Richmond issued the momentous 1979 report Smoking and Health. As Surgeon General he also set targets for the health of the American public with the Healthy People report.

NIH awards Harvard Medical School $117.5 million, five-year grant for patient-centered research

404132862 — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:42:32 -0400

The National Institutes of Health today announced that Harvard Medical School (HMS) will receive $117.5 million over the next five years for the establishment of a Clinical and Translational Science Center (CTSC) that will transform patient-oriented, laboratory-to-bedside research at HMS and its affiliated hospitals.

Presidential election will bring change in federal stem cell policy

404132862 — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:21:10 -0400

Embryonic stem cell research will likely have a more sympathetic ear in the White House after November’s presidential election, but a panel of speakers said last night that an era of tight budgets may limit the practical changes researchers see.

Warren Wollschlager, founding chair of the Interstate Alliance on Stem Cell Research and chief of the Office of Research and Development in the Connecticut Department of Public Health, cautioned that one danger facing stem cell research in a new presidential administration is that support from states and other sources will decline with the assumption that the federal government will begin funding research it has been reluctant to under President George W. Bush.

Policy can empower technological climate change solution

404132862 — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 15:12:00 -0400

The chair of the U.S. House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming struck an optimistic tone about the planet’s climate crisis last night, saying that an energy revolution is in the offing if government can just get the policy right.