June 21, 2026

At WashU, undergraduate students in the Public Health & Society program are connecting health to design, policy and the experiences that shape everyday life.

A Bursky Public Health research network recently participated in a national summit hosted by WashU. The summit convened sustainability leaders from universities across the country to discuss how higher education can advance global sustainability solutions. 

Partnerships involving engineering and public health have proven beneficial in advancing public health. Such partnerships are taking shape at WashU, where several McKelvey faculty members are now members of the secondary faculty at Bursky Public Health.

Abba-Aji’s journey from the military in Nigeria to public health has shaped a career focused on advancing population health through research, dissemination and teaching.

A WashU Medicine assistant professor of medicine, Fiala talks to Dean Galea about disparities in cancer care, as well as cancer and artificial intelligence, policy and other topics.

Between the loss of federal subsidies and a sicker, smaller pool of insured people, health insurance premiums have been rising dramatically, said the Bursky School's Tim McBride, an expert in healthcare policy and economics. PDF (Source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch)

WashU's Student Life newspaper reports on the recent $200 million commitment from the Bursky Family Foundation to the newly named Andrew M. and Jane M. Bursky School of Public Health. (Source: Student Life)

Adults in St. Louis were asked if they thought U.S. rates of six health issues — measles, depression, use of hallucinogenic drugs, gun homicides, drug overdose deaths, and youth suicide — were rising, falling, or staying the same, or if they didn’t know. 

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

Ross Hammond, the Distinguished Professor in Public Health Systems Science at the Bursky School, is the last author on, “Start from the end: Policy exploration to inform effective and consistent interventions applied to COVID-19 in St. Louis,” published in PNAS Nexus.

Bursky School faculty members Rachel Tabak, Derek Brown and Lora Iannotti, along with WashU Medicine’s Cynthia Rogers, a member of the Bursky School secondary faculty, co-authored, “African American food environments and anti-inflammatory intake in pregnancy,” published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

Mark Manary, the James P. Keating Professor of Pediatrics at WashU Medicine and a Bursky School secondary faculty member, is the senior author on, “War and famine,” published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

WashU Medicine’s Juliet Iwelunmor, a member of the secondary faculty at the Bursky School, is the last author on, “Examining perceptions, social, and policy factors influencing hepatitis B birth-dose vaccine uptake: a PEN-3 cultural model mixed-methods study of healthcare workers in Nigeria,” published in Frontiers in Health Services. Bursky School MPH student Caven Ngoe and PhD student Maria Afadapa are co-authors.

The latest post in The Healthiest Goldfish was co-authored by Dean Sandro Galea, and WashU Bursky Public Health colleague Salma Abdalla. In this Purple Public Health post, they write about "Disagreement as a starting point; Studying and practicing public health amid real values divides."

They write: How do we advance a practical philosophy of health so that we can lean into the goals and aspirations of public health? At a foundational level, that is the central goal of the Purple Public Health Project. We have written on the values that may animate us, and the importance of trust necessary to engage populations to be able to do the work we need to do. All those are building blocks of the context on which we can build the work of public health. ... Continue reading