An important paper about protecting science from political interference. Europe needs to defend its science against the kind of attacks unfurling in the US. By Martin McKee, Christina Pagel & Tiago Correia in the European Journal of Public Health: academic.oup.com/eurpub/artic...

Europe must learn from America’s assault on science

In June 2026, several prominent diabetes researchers, including Steven Kahn, editor-in-chief of Diabetes Care, were removed by police from the annual meeti

academic.oup.com

1,747 excess deaths in Belgium due to the second heat wave of 2026 (June 18 to July 1), according to preliminary estimates from our public health institute (+48%). As our defense minister cynically puts it: “Enjoy the beautiful weather. And go live your life!” www.sciensano.be/fr/coin-pres...

Did the iPhone *really* cause the baby bust? A more skeptical reading of the new viral study from LCDS Deputy Director @drjenndowd.bsky.social jenndowd.substack.com/p/did-the-ip...? #demography #econsky #causalsky @nuffieldcollege.bsky.social @oxpop.bsky.social

Did the iPhone Cause the Baby Bust?

I'm not so convinced. An interesting new paper highlights the power and pitfalls of simple stories

jenndowd.substack.com

"The Trump administration has struck what some see as the final blow to PEPFAR, the vaunted US program that has saved the lives of 26 million people living with HIV. The State Dept now says that as of 30 September, CDC support for PEPFAR will end in most countries." www.science.org/content/arti...

Trump administration cuts CDC’s key role in global program to stop HIV

State Department would send PEPFAR money directly to countries, which could then pay fees to health agency for help

science.org

📢JOB OFFER Postdoc fellowship within the project “Climate change-related #mortality in different population groups in urbanized Belgium” (TEMPUR), funded by the FNRS and FWO. 🔎Full details: euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/399708 📆Deadline: 15/02

Postdoctoral Fellowship in Demography, Center for Demographic Research (DEMO), Louvain University, Belgium

The Centre for Demographic Research (DEMO) at UCLouvain invites applications for a full-time postdoctoral fellowship (2 years) within the research project “Climate change-related mortality in differen...

euraxess.ec.europa.eu

Today, launching the World Urbanization Prospects 2025 with new UN estimates and projections of urbanization for 237 countries and areas of the world & 12,000+ cities with 50,000+ inhabitants in 2025. www.un.org/development/... - see also new online datasets and plots: population.un.org/wup/

🚨 The Economist has been telling you for years that polygamy causes civil war by locking men out of marriage. A new article with @rebeccasear.bsky.social and @anthrolog.bsky.social explains that the demography of marriage markets doesn't actually work that way. 🧵 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

High rates of polygyny do not lock large proportions of men out of the marriage market | PNAS

There is a widespread belief, in both the scholarly literature and the popular press, that polygyny prevents large numbers of men from marrying by ...

pnas.org

Our new editorial in Bulletin of the WHO about ongoing initiative to improve the measurement of adult mortality in low-and-middle-income countries, where major data gaps have recently been compounded by US decision to end support for Demographic & Health Surveys pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

Mobile phone surveys are a promising tool for rapid measurement of age-specific mortality in settings where face-to-face surveys are difficult to implement. Researchers computed mortality levels from national MPS conducted in 2021–2022 in Burkina Faso. www.demographic-research.org/articles/vol...

Our study estimates excess deaths in children and parental loss due to the war in Gaza in 2023. From Oct 8 to Dec 31, 2023, 8120 children <18 were killed due to the conflict, 15127 children lost a father, and 9886 children lost a mother -in 3 months pophealthmetrics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

A demographic assessment of the impact of the war in the Gaza Strip on the mortality of children and their parents in 2023 - Population Health Metrics

Background Following Hamas’s 7 October attack, Israel launched extensive aerial bombardments in the Gaza Strip, followed by a large-scale ground invasion. During the first 3 months of the conflict, up...

pophealthmetrics.biomedcentral.com

I’ve struggled to find the right words following Musk/Trump’s decision to end the Demographic and Health Surveys Program (the OG DHS). While nothing is inevitable, there is no denying this is a huge blow personally, professionally and for the world. /1 dhsprogram.com

Surreal read of the day: a paper using USAID-funded and now terminated Demographic & Health Surveys to count the huge number of lives saved by the now frozen US PEPFAR program to fight HIV, co-authored by current US admin’s nominee to lead cuts in health research jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

HIV Development Assistance and Adult Mortality in Africa

To determine the effects of the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), Bendavid and coauthors conducted analyses of adult mortality using person-level data from the Demographic and He...

jamanetwork.com