Leading with Science: One Year After Hurricane Maria

On the first year anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, several of the senior authors of the May 2018 New England Journal of Medicine paper “Mortality in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria”  discussed the motivation and rationale for the study, the significance of their findings, the impact of their research, and their decision to release all their data and code online. The September 21 panel,  Beyond…

The Environmental Legacy of War: Human & Environmental Health Consequences on Vieques, Puerto Rico

James W. Porter, Ph.D. Meigs Professor of Ecology, Emeritus Odum School of Ecology University of Georgia For more than 60 years, Vieques, Puerto Rico was used for weapons testing and military exercises by U.S. and Allied Forces.  Although there has been a cession of bombing (2000) and the declaration of Vieques as a Super-Fund Site (2002), long-term residents on Vieques still suffer significantly elevated cancer rates.  There is also gathering…

Beyond Maria: Leading With Science

In late May this year, a collaborative team from Harvard FXB Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and Carlos Albizu University in Puerto Rico published “Mortality in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria” in the New England Journal of Medicine, their study which suggested that the then official Puerto Rican death registry numbers of 64 excess deaths…