The WashU Public Health Moment

October 19, 2025

Featured

Food futures forum tackles problem of transforming global food systems

The global food systems that keep more than 8 billion people fed come at a huge cost to public health and the environment. As the global population continues to grow, these systems are becoming unsustainable. At WashU Public Health's FARM Food Futures Forum, keynote speaker Agnes Kalibata, PhD, advocated for transformational change that centers public health and is rooted in good science.

News & features

Public Health Ideas, with Susy Stark

Dean Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH, talks with Susy Stark, MS, PhD, a WashU Public Health professor, about how to modify where people live to reduce the risk of falls and help older people and those with disabilities maintain their independence.

Public Health People: A conversation with Professor Rodrigo Reis

With expertise in how environments affect people’s active lives, WashU Public Health Professor Rodrigo Reis leads WashU's People, Health & Place Unit. There, he leads innovative research projects focused on the intersections of physical activity, urban environments, health equity, and climate resilience.

Talking Public Health

The weekly Talking Public Health seminar series features presentations by leading thinkers in public health at WashU and elsewhere. Rodrigo Reis, MS, PhD, a WashU Public Health professor, gave a talk October 15 titled, "Advancing People, Health and Place Research and Impact."

At noon Wednesday, October 22, Ross Hammond, PhD, the Distinguished Professor in Public Health System Science at WashU Public Health, will give a talk titled, "Toward Precision Prevention in Population Health: Leveraging Agent-based Models." The talk will be in the Cortex district’s Dorris Building, 20 South Sarah Street, in the first-floor Showroom, and also will be available over Zoom.

Notables

WashU Public Health faculty, staff give public health training in Austria

Ross Brownson, PhD, the Steven H. and Susan U. Lipstein Distinguished Professor, and Stephanie Mazzucca-Ragan, PhD, an assistant professor, this month gave four days of training on evidence-based public health to master's students at Management Center Innsbruck in Innsbruck, Austria. The training was supported by training coordinators Carol Brownson, MSPH, and Linda Dix.

In the News

This federal experiment is pouring money into mental hospitals. Will it work?

As states explore new ways to support people with serious mental illness, WashU Public Health’s Morgan Shields joins the conversation examining a federal pilot project funding institutional psychiatric care. (Source: Tradeoffs)

How new foreign worker visa fees might worsen doctor shortages in rural America

The U.S. has struggled for decades to train enough physicians to meet its needs – and, in particular, to provide care in rural and underserved communities, writes Olin Business’ Patrick Aguilar, MD, a secondary faculty member at WashU Public Health. (Source: The Conversation)

iHeard

Nearly half of St. Louis adults surveyed (48%) were “not sure” if they support or oppose the idea of building an AI data center in the old Armory Building in the city of St. Louis. Among the remaining respondents, supporters (15%) were outnumbered by those opposed (38%). Support was higher among those ages 50 and older compared with those under age 50 (24% vs 9%).

iHeard is a listening project of WashU Public Health's Health Communication Research Laboratory. iHeard surveys about 200 people who live or work in St. Louis weekly to find out what they know, believe and care about in regard to health.

Papers of note

Ginger McKay, MA, PhD, an assistant professor at WashU Public Health, was the corresponding and senior author of, "Establishing Priority Pediatric Antimicrobial Stewardship Interventions in the U.S.: Findings from a Delphi Consensus Study,” published in Antibiotics. Co-authors include WashU Public Health's Harry Obeng, an MPH student; Emmanuel Tetteh, MD, a research assistant professor; and Sarah Malone, MSW, PhD, an assistant professor.

WashU Public Health Dean Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH, and Mohammed Abba-Aji, MD, MPH, the special projects manager at WashU Public Health, co-authored, "The health implications of US federal changes to non-health structures and policies," published in the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law.

Kevin Y. Xu, MPH, MD, an assistant professor of psychiatry at WashU Medicine and a secondary faculty member at WashU Public Health, was the corresponding author of, "Discontinuation of treatment for alcohol use disorder during pregnancy and postpartum in the United States," published in Alcohol Clinical and Experimental Research.

Spotlight

WashU School of Public Health hosted an event Tuesday, Oct. 7, centered on the release of the book “Novel Virus, Old Divides: How COVID-19 Touched Every Piece of Life in St. Louis.” The event featured the book’s creators alongside community leaders in a discussion about the pandemic’s impact on St. Louis.

See more photos from the event on Instagram →

Podcast

In this episode, host Salma Abdalla, MBBS, DrPH, speaks with Paul Fleming, PhD, MPH, an associate professor at the University of Michigan, about his new book, “Imagine Doing Better: Why Policies Backfire and How Prevention Thinking Can Change Everything.” They discuss how prevention can reframe our approach to health care, education, prisons, policing, and the environment — and what it means to plan for the world that our descendants will inherit seven generations from now.

"Com plicati ng the Narrative” is hosted by Abdalla, an assistant professor at WashU Public Health, and supported by WashU Public Health and the Frick Initiative.