A Health Horror Story in CAR Safety Surprise Installing new doors and windows and cleaning up trash and weeds at abandoned houses in Philadelphia led to a substantial drop in nearby gun violence, according to a new study by researchers at Columbia Mailman School and the University of Pennsylvania. For this study, 258 abandoned houses across Philadelphia were put into one of three groups. The first received new windows and doors, trash cleanup, and weeding; the second received trash cleanup and weeding only; the third received no interventions. When compared to areas around homes that received no intervention, blocks around homes that received the full intervention showed a 13.12 percent reduction in gun assaults and a 6.96 percent reduction in shootings. (Trash cleanup and weeding alone showed no change in gun violence.) “This is powerful scientific evidence showing that place-based interventions can improve health and safety, even for some of our most challenging crises like gun violence,” says Charles Branas, PhD, Gelman Professor and chair of Epidemiology.
$303.5M
Amount of government grants to the School in 2023
8
COLUM B I A P U BLI C H E A LT H
Researchers at Columbia Mailman School, in partnership with a global team of other experts, are sounding the alarm about the health and humanitarian emergency in the Central African Republic (CAR). Their findings, from a nationwide mortality survey of almost 700 households conducted in 2022, suggest that CAR has the world’s highest nationwide mortality rate, a rate that is four times what the United Nations estimated in 2010. The researchers estimate that 5.6 percent of the population is dying each year. (The U.S., in contrast, has a death rate of 1 percent per year.) This crisis is likely due not only to COVID-19 but also to human rights abuses by Russian paramilitary organization the Wagner Group, which has been fighting rebel groups in the country. In addition to a high death rate, with malaria and diarrhea rampant, 82.3 percent of households reported eating less than one meal per day, and the country has relatively few children under age 3, a warning sign possibly linked with malnutrition and high risk of pregnancy loss. “The crisis level mortality rate suggests that the needs in CAR are being largely unmet,” note the authors, a group that includes Les Roberts, PhD, professor emeritus of Population and Family Health.
84%
Increase in private grant funding since 2019
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Eligible older adults who participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program had about two fewer years of cognitive aging over a decade compared with those who do not participate, Epidemiology researchers report in Neurology.
70%
Proportion of the School’s research that is interdisciplinary
2023–2024 EDITION
