The Office of the Provost, in conjunction with the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study, sponsors year-long fellowships for Brown University faculty members to conduct research on Brown University's historical legacy.

This fellowship in University History represents Brown's ongoing commitment to uncovering and understanding its institutional history through scholarly research and community engagement. One fellowship is awarded per year.

In support of work on their project, the fellow receives one-course release during the fellowship year, research funds of $2,500, and the support of one Undergraduate Teaching and Research Award (UTRA) to assist with research activities. Fellows become integral members of the JNBC scholarly community, participating in seminars and other intellectual activities.

Peering into wastewater for public health has a history dating back at least to the late 19th century, when a biologist in Boston cultured sewage in beef jelly, bouillon, boiled potatoes, and milk to see if anything would grow. Later, scientists in Scotland looked at wastewater to assess the spread of typhoid. After injecting monkeys with sewage in the 1930s, American researchers realized that wastewater polio virus concentrations correlated with community infections. It was the COVID-19 pandemic, however, that led to skyrocketing investment in wastewater disease surveillance in the United States—this time with the aid of modern biotechnology and without bouillon or monkeys.

As COVID transitioned from a deadly novelty to something closer to a mundane nuisance, testing for the virus fell off a cliff. Wastewater surveillance became central to public health officials’ ability to track COVID. The same is true for other threats, like H5N1 avian influenza. Bird flu has now spread from wild birds, to poultry, to cattle, and, worryingly, to a wide variety of other mammals, including people. Still testing remains limited. The federal government has invested at least $500 million in building wastewater-surveillance capacity since 2021. But that funding expires in September. Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist who is the director of The Brown University Pandemic Center, told me we may soon be left with an even murkier understanding of how diseases like COVID and bird flu are spreading.

With the United States facing its largest single measles outbreak in 25 years, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will direct federal health agencies to explore potential new treatments for the disease, including vitamins, according to an H.H.S. spokesman. The decision is the latest in a series of actions by the nation’s top health official that experts fear will undermine public confidence in vaccines as an essential public health tool.

The announcement comes as Mr. Kennedy faces intense backlash for his handling ofthe outbreak. It has swept through large areas of the Southwest where vaccination rates are low, infecting hundreds and killing two young girls. On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 930 cases nationwide, most of which are associated with the Southwest outbreak.

Eight Brown faculty members were elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences this year alongside 240 other individuals, the Academy announced on April 23.

The Academy, which was founded in 1780, honors interdisciplinary scholars who are innovative leaders in their fields. Every year, the Academy elects new members who will engage in “cross-disciplinary efforts to produce reflective, independent and pragmatic studies that inform public policy and advance the public good,” according to its website.

In this episode, Joseph Harris explores the actions taken by the Trump administration to dismantle U.S. foreign aid and the consequences that these actions will have for global health. He sits down with Dr. Beth Cameron, a former Senior Adviser to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); Nidhi Bouri, former Deputy Assistant Administrator at USAID; Dr. Brooke Nichols, Associate Professor of Global Health at Boston University and creator of as U.S. aid freeze impact tracker; and Sheena Adams, Global Communications Director for The Accountability Lab, which launched its own Global Aid Freeze Tracker.

Soon after President Donald J. Trump took office for his second term, thousands of health websites run by the federal government that kept the public informed about infectious diseases, mental health, vaccines and more were taken offline.

Many eventually returned — in large part because a judge ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to temporarily restore the pages — but some had been altered, with sections on topics such as health equity and teen pregnancy deleted. The changes, along with uncertainty around the future of these sites, has led some public health experts to question whether the websites can still be trusted as the gold standard of trustworthy health information, as they’ve long been regarded.

Federal health agencies are already facing a crisis of confidence. When a recent national poll asked respondents how much trust they had in the C.D.C. to make the right health recommendations, more than one-third replied “not much” or “not at all.” Nearly half said the same about the Food and Drug Administration.

Experts fear that with less trust in public health institutions, more people seeking medical information might turn to social media, where misinformation is rampant. That has made it all the more valuable for the public to find evidenced-based sources of health information.

Here are five websites run by independent organizations that have accurate, easy-to-understand information.

The vacuum left by the US threatens irreparable damage to global health institutions, with the WHO bearing a disproportionate burden. The organisation must view this crisis as an opportunity to develop into an entity that is leaner with greater agency to carry out its most essential, life-saving tasks.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is in a moment of crisis. The decision by the US to withdraw from the organisation leaves the WHO with a deficit of about 15% of its total funding through the end of 2025 and 45% projected for 2026-27.

Significant changes to the way commercial operations raise and product poultry may need to occur to stop the current outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI).

“Farms were built for efficiency. They were built for production. They weren’t necessarily built for disease control or biosecurity in mind,” Kay Russo, DVM, partner/veterinarian, RSM Consulting, said during the April 12 webinar, “What we know (or don’t) about H5N1 transmission on farms,” hosted by The Pandemic Center, part of the Brown University School of Public Health.

WASHINGTON, April 22, 2025: The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) announced today that Dr. Elizabeth (Beth) Cameron and Dr. Stephanie Psaki have been appointed as non-resident senior advisers with the CSIS Global Health Policy Center.

Cameron and Psaki are global leaders in health security and biodefense with experience across academia, nonprofit organizations, and in government, including establishing global health security missions at the White House. Dr. Cameron is a professor of the practice and senior advisor to the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health. Dr. Psaki recently joined the Brown School of Public Health as a distinguished senior fellow and formerly served as special assistant to the president and the inaugural U.S. coordinator for global health security at the White House.

According to attendees at Stanford’s first-ever Forum on Sustainable and Healthy Buildings, clean and well-ventilated indoor air should be considered as essential to public health as clean water. From March 30 to April 1, the conference served as a rare cross-sector convention focused on advancing national indoor air quality (IAQ) by minimizing indoor pollutants.

Over two days, 24 stakeholders from institutions like the California Department of Public Health, U.S. Green Building Council and the International WELL Building Institute debated the most effective actions to implement IAQ guidelines that could soon be monitored in commercial and residential buildings.

Influenza epidemics, a major contributor to global morbidity and mortality, are influenced by climate factors including absolute humidity and temperature. Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and severity of climate extremes, potentially impacting the duration and magnitude of future influenza epidemics. However, the extent of these projected effects on influenza outbreaks remains understudied. Here, we use an epidemiologic model adapted for temperate and tropical climates to explore how climate variability may affect seasonal influenza. Using climate anomalies derived from historical data, we found that simulated periods of anomalous climate conditions impacted both the projected influenza outbreak peak size and the total proportion infected, with the strongest effects observed when the anomaly was included just before the typical peak. Effects varied by climate: temperate regions showed a unimodal relationship, while tropical climates exhibited a nonlinear pattern. Our results emphasize that the intensity of weather extremes is key to understanding how climate change may affect influenza outbreaks, laying the groundwork for utilizing weather variability as a potential early warning for influenza activity.