THE TRUE MEASURE By Jocelyn C. Zuckerman
H
istorians looking to sum up 2020 will invariably use the word “catastrophe.” But for all its suffering, our annus horribilis brought with it a significant public health triumph: In 2020, for the first time in U.S. history, the number of citizens over age 65 rivaled that of children under 15. Worldwide, the average human life expectancy has doubled in the past century, largely due to advances in public health. Dean Linda P. Fried, MD, MPH, likes to say that public health has “raised the floor and the ceiling of health,” with reduced deaths in childbirth and infancy setting the stage for lives extended by vaccines, antibiotics, and other modern public health interventions. Research by Columbia Mailman School faculty is tackling challenges at both ends of the spectrum. If, as the saying goes, the true measure of a society can be determined by the way it treats its most vulnerable, then the School is truly measuring up.
Protecting the Littlest Lives As a young Columbia professor in the 1980s, Frederica Perera, MPH ’76, DrPH ’82, PhD ’12, studied how exposure to environmental contaminants could result in damage to DNA and eventual disease. A pioneer in molecular epidemiology, she
