May 24, 2026

The Food and Agriculture Research Mission (FARM) at WashU Bursky School of Public Health has announced the launch of an annual $1 million grants program to spur the translation of promising agrifood innovations into commercially viable solutions. 

A panel discussion hosted Wednesday, May 20, in Geneva by the Bursky School of Public Health centered on some of the key challenges facing global health: sustainable funding, shifting power dynamics, new partnership models, and how best to generate and use knowledge to improve population health.

Chris Towle and his daughter, Hannah Barthelmess, have pledged to support two postdoctoral fellowships at the Bursky School's Food and Agriculture Research Mission (FARM) to advance its interdisciplinary research agenda.

As network manager of Bursky School of Public Health's Food and Agriculture Research Mission (FARM), Doyle works to catalyze research at the nexus of public health, food and agriculture, and advance solutions for healthier communities and a healthier planet.

The dean spoke with physician-scientist and biostatistician Barry R. Davis regarding a new book Davis authored focused on stories of individuals who shaped prevention as a public good. The book is titled, "The Preventioneers: Diseases, Disasters, and the Discoveries That Changed Our World."

Media coverage of WashU Bursky Public Health's people, research, and other news.

"This program is a lifeline for people who might have no other opportunities to get retrained for work," said the Brown School's Cal Halvorsen, a member of the Bursky School's secondary faculty and an expert in healthy aging. (Source: CNBC)

A study by the Bursky School's Lindsay Stark and Ilana Seff revealed that disease outbreaks are linked to increased risk of gender-based violence. (Source: Climate, Gendered)

Over 85% of St. Louis adults surveyed reported hearing that “There is a hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship.” In 246 consecutive weeks of iHeard surveys in St. Louis, 85% awareness is the third highest rate for any survey item in its first week, behind “Monkeys on the loose in St. Louis” (January 2026) and “COVID vaccines will not protect against the new omicron variant, so why get vaccinated?” (an inaccurate claim, December 2021). 

iHeard is a listening project of the Health Communication Research Laboratory at WashU Public Health.  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.

Anusha Vable, an associate professor at the Bursky School, is the senior author on, “Lifetime patterns of Earned Income Tax Credit eligibility and cognition: a sequence analysis approach,” published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

WashU Medicine’s Margaret Kruk, a Bursky School secondary faculty member, is the senior author on, “Quality of antenatal and delivery care and postnatal care use: a multi-country observational study of 400,000 births,” published in PLoS Medicine.

Bursky School MPH student Emmanuel Agyei co-authored, “Gene–environment interactions between metabolic risk factors and socioeconomic adversity in U.S. cardiovascular epidemiology: a narrative review,” published in Sarcouncil Journal of Applied Sciences.

WashU Medicine’s Burel Goodin, a member of the Bursky School secondary faculty, is the last author on, “Living with HIV and insomnia: implications for sleep quality, experimental pain sensitivity, and clinical pain severity,” published in The Journal of Pain.

Dean Galea's latest post in The Healthiest Goldfish — a piece co-authored by longtime colleague Nason Maani, is titled, "Ideas that crowd out alternatives: Why the most prominent ideas are not necessarily the best."