Do MPH programs prepare graduates for employment in today's market? Mostly yes, but who is hiring may be surprising

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Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health

Public health degree programs provide key competencies demanded by employers, but graduate employability could be improved by using more real-time data from employer job postings, according to a new study at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. This could help public health schools and programs ensure that graduates obtain specific technical skills listed in job postings, meet current employer needs, and prepare graduates for the demands of today’s labor market. The findings are published in the American Journal of Public Health.

The competencies required for the MPH curriculum are established by the Council on Education in Public Health (CEPH). Competencies are generally in alignment with current employer needs.

This the first study to use real-time data from a large-scale data set of job postings to analyze the top skills, certifications and software in demand by current employers seeking to hire Master of Public Health graduates, while comparing them with the competencies required by the accreditation body, CEPH.

“Our research revealed labor market competition for public health degree graduates, as well as certain technical skills desired by today’s employers, while showing that the CEPH competencies do, in large part, match current employer demands,” noted Heather Krasna, PhD, EdM, associate dean of Career and Professional Development at Columbia Mailman School.

Using a dataset of 70,343 job postings for MPH graduates from Lightcast, which collects, and analyzes millions of job postings per year, the researchers contrasted skills from the postings with CEPH competencies. They used real-time job postings data, to validate whether required competencies match employer needs, and to illustrate ongoing labor market competition for public health graduates.

Lightcast uses machine learning and natural language processing tools to deduplicate job postings, to code the job postings by occupation type, job title, company name, industry, and  skills, and to provide a list of salary ranges. Lightcast assesses job postings for “sequences of words that indicate skills,” and matches them to a “comprehensive taxonomy of over 32,000 skills collected from hundreds of millions of job postings, resumes, and online profiles,” to categorize skills.

Employers currently seeking to hire MPH graduates are predominantly in for-profit industry, followed by academia/research, and healthcare. Only 12% of unique job postings were in government agencies, illustrating ongoing labor market competition for public health graduates from other sectors, especially from higher-paying industries like consulting, insurance and pharmaceuticals. “The job market for MPH graduates seems to continue moving towards for-profit companies such as insurance firms and healthcare, which is in alignment with other research on employment outcomes of public health graduates,” said Krasna. “Public health graduates’ skills are in demand in many sectors where they can make a positive impact on the public’s health.”

Noteworthy is that job postings from employers seeking to hire MPH graduates did not appear to prioritize diversity and inclusion, health equity, policy, advocacy, and other related skills which are required competencies by CEPH. According to Krasna there are several possible explanations for this. “It is possible that the large proportion of job postings in for-profit corporations (26%), healthcare/hospitals (14%), and academia/research (26%) and the relative scarcity of job postings in government or nonprofits (12%) as well as the skewing of job titles towards analytical, technical and epidemiological roles meant that technical and statistical skills were more in-demand than skills in community partnerships and diversity.”

Even if health equity skills are not listed as the top requirements in job postings, graduates with training in health equity will bring these skills to the employers seeking a public health perspective in their workplace. “Since health equity is at the center of the Essential Public Health Services, ensuring public health graduates receive these skills is crucial, regardless of where graduates find jobs,” said Krasna.

The most common titles from Lightcast Job postings collected July 2022-Feb. 2023 were Epidemiologists at 1,344 and biostatisticians at 1,323, followed by Environmental Health and Safety Specialists at 1,185.

Competencies in communications and management and applied leadership skills were considered critically important for communicating public health content.

“We believe our study is a thorough analysis on first-destination employment outcomes of public health graduates and offers valuable insights into the alignment between academic training and industry needs and complements articles on labor market competition for public health graduates,” said Krasna.

Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health

Founded in 1922, the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health pursues an agenda of research, education, and service to address the critical and complex public health issues affecting New Yorkers, the nation and the world. The Columbia Mailman School is the fourth largest recipient of NIH grants among schools of public health. Its nearly 300 multi-disciplinary faculty members work in more than 100 countries around the world, addressing such issues as preventing infectious and chronic diseases, environmental health, maternal and child health, health policy, climate change and health, and public health preparedness. It is a leader in public health education with more than 1,300 graduate students from 55 nations pursuing a variety of master’s and doctoral degree programs. The Columbia Mailman School is also home to numerous world-renowned research centers, including ICAP and the Center for Infection and Immunity. For more information, please visit www.mailman.columbia.edu.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Journal

American Journal of Public Health

DOI

10.2105/AJPH.2024.307834) 

Article Title

Employer Demand and Desired Skills for Public Health Graduates: Evidence From Job Postings

 

Hoarding disorder: ‘sensory CBT’ treatment strategy shows promise

A novel treatment strategy for hoarding disorder has demonstrated its potential in a pre-clinical study.

University of New South Wales

Rehearsing alternative outcomes of discarding through imagery rescripting shows promise as a treatment strategy for people who hoard, a study by UNSW psychology researchers has shown.

Hoarding disorder is a highly debilitating condition that worsens with age. People who hoard form intense emotional attachments to objects, accumulate excessive clutter, and have difficulty discarding possessions. Many avoid treatment.

People who hoard also experience more frequent, intrusive and distressing mental images in their daily lives, says Mr Isaac Sabel from the Grisham Research Lab, an experimental clinical psychology research group at UNSW Sydney.

“Negative memories and feared outcomes, such as an item rotting in landfill, catastrophic regret or the disappointment of a loved one, can induce anxiety and block the discarding process. Our best evidence-based treatments aren’t getting the outcomes we’d like,” says the psychologist and PhD candidate at UNSW.

“While one in three people who hoard may experience symptom improvement, less than a third of people experience clinically meaningful change. Additionally, there are high rates of dropout and treatment refusal.”

Imagery rescripting is an experiential technique, often used in cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), where participants introduce positive or benign information to ‘rescript’ the outcomes of negative mental imagery, in this instance worst-case scenarios of discarding.

“It’s typically used to reduce distress associated with negative memories, however, it’s had success with other disorders characterised by future-focused mental imagery, such as generalised anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD),” Mr Sabel says. 

This study in 176 people aimed to determine whether rescripting a negative future-focused narrative of discarding helped people with high hoarding traits discard. Participants took part in an online intervention using an item they’d had difficulty discarding. They wrote down their imagined outcome of throwing it away and then completed an exercise based on one of four treatments.

The response to imagery rescripting was compared with cognitive restructuring (learning to identify and disregard irrational, harmful thoughts); imaginal exposure (engaging with anxiety-provoking images/narratives to reduce their impact over time); and dwelling on positive mental imagery to improve their mood (as a control). Participants were then asked to discard their item.

The study found that participants who engaged in imagery rescripting were happier, more motivated and more likely to discard their items. Imagery rescripting was also more effective at reducing anxiety, sadness and anger and increasing feelings of happiness and relaxation around discarding, relative to imaginal exposure and cognitive restructuring.

A participant’s ability to visualise impacted how well imagery rescripting worked, the study found. Rescripting participants completed the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ), self-rating the vividness of elements within prescribed scenarios, such as a rising sun or a rainbow. Higher creative visualisation abilities were associated with greater readiness and motivation to discard.

These results have been replicated in a second therapist-led study, yet to be published, that compares imagery rescripting with thought listing, a technique found to be effective in facilitating discarding in people with hoarding problems.

Preliminary findings show rescripting outperformed thought listing in key areas, with participants more motivated to discard and more positive about the discarding experience. These findings will now be tested in a clinical trial.

The high costs and treatment challenges of hoarding

Hoarding disorder affects 2.5 per cent of the working-age population, around 715,000 Australians. People who hoard often have a very poor quality of life. The associated psychological distress and social impairment are considered equivalent to living with schizophrenia.

The condition can lead to unsanitary and unsafe living conditions, social isolation, health problems and the inability to work. Hoarding can also contribute to fire, housing, pestilence, falling and other hazards. The cost of returning homes to a liveable state is estimated at more than $87K per hoarding household.

Clutter can make it hard to do things most of us take for granted, such as eating at the table or sleeping in bed, says Professor Jessica Grisham who leads the Grisham Research Lab.

“In the gravest cases, homes are completely unsanitary, either because it has become impossible to clean or because the person saves garbage. The strain on families can be extreme.”

Associated stigma can prevent people who hoard and their families from seeking support. Often hoarding is not addressed until the condition is well established. Additionally, people who hoard have difficulty regulating and tolerating negative emotions, which may reduce engagement with and increase dropout rates from exposure therapy, she says.

“There's so much pressure and often interpersonal conflict for people to get rid of things, hoarding clients can feel quite badgered. They may or may not have a lot of motivation or insight and they feel really stressed and reactive,” she says.

“In this preliminary study, imagery rescripting seems to reduce some of that reactivity. Rather than a direct approach – [asking] what's keeping you from throwing this away … and exploring and challenging those beliefs – it has more of a creative, emotional style that has a lot of potential for hoarding clients.”

Anecdotal evidence suggests people who hoard may have greater creative tendencies. “We know that imagery acts as emotional amplifier. It enables us to access people's emotions, [and engage with] the neural features responsible for processing memories and emotions within the brain,” she says.

“Imagery rescripting emphasises sensory-rich details to create an emotionally evocative and immersive experience. And we think that's in part responsible for the results we've seen.”

The study’s ultra-brief online delivery also has potential as a part of treatment in rural and remote areas where access is an issue and as an early intervention, she says.

Why do people hoard?

Collecting excessive amounts of objects, many worthless by objective standards, may seem difficult to understand, says Prof. Grisham. “However, most of us become attached to at least a few possessions. Perhaps we love the way they look, or they trigger fond memories. Hoarding involves this same type of object attachment, as well over-reliance on possessions and difficulty being away from them.”

While research has shown genetics play a part, hoarding is more likely caused by a range of psychological, neurobiological and social factors. Hoarding disorder has been linked to early trauma, life stress and emotional deprivation.

“People who hoard often report excessively cold parenting, difficulty connecting with others, and traumatic childhood experiences. They may end up believing people are unreliable and untrustworthy, and that it’s better to rely on objects for comfort and safety,” she says.

Their experiences have taught them their self-identity is tangled up in what they own; that if they part with their possessions, they will lose themselves, she says.

Hoarding disorder is also associated with high rates of attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. Difficulties with planning, decision-making and categorising can make it hard to organise and discard possessions, says Prof. Grisham. “The person ends up avoiding these tasks, which leads to unmanageable levels of clutter.”

Imagery rescripting is particularly exciting because of its potential to address both the foundational traumas that inform our future-focused narratives – an area of research interest for the lab – as well as tackling intrusive distressing mental images that interfere with discarding in the present, she says.

“Images can link our past, present and future. Rescripting memories that may have triggered hoarding – going back and meeting those needs – may open up the doorway for greater treatment outcomes and greater positive impact on clients’ lives.”

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Journal

Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment

DOI

10.1007/s10862-024-10171-y 

Method of Research

Randomized controlled/clinical trial

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Imagining Letting Go: a Preliminary Test of Written ImageryRescripting to Facilitate Discarding in a High Hoarding Sample

Article Publication Date

3-Oct-2024

 

Houston Methodist part of national consortium to develop vaccine against herpesviruses

Computational design expert Jimmy Gollihar Co-PI on ARPA-H award for developing America’s SHIELD

Houston Methodist

 

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Jimmy D. Gollihar, Ph.D. is the head of the Antibody Discovery & Accelerated Protein Therapeutics (ADAPT) laboratory at the Houston Methodist Research Institute. The ADAPT lab is a modern synthetic biology and protein engineering lab.

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Credit: Houston Methodist

Houston Methodist researchers will be part of a national consortium funded by an up to $49 million award from the U.S. Government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to develop a vaccine against two of the most common and destructive strains of herpesviruses that latently infect a majority of Americans and can lead to acute infections, multiple forms of cancer, autoimmune disease and birth defects.

 

The award is part of ARPA-H’s Antigens Predicted for Broad Viral Efficacy through Computational Experimentation (APECx) program and will fund the America’s SHIELD project to develop prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines against the β-  and γ- herpesviruses. Through the SHIELD (Strategic Herpesvirus Immune Evasion and Latency Defense) program, researchers will develop an integrated computational toolkit for antigen engineering with the potential to transform vaccine development against a myriad of pathogens.

 

These two herpesvirus subfamilies include human cytomegalovirus and Epstein-Barr virus, respectively, which clinically impact the largest proportion of the U.S. population, dormantly infecting Americans at an annual cost of at least $4 billion.

 

Epstein-Barr causes significant disease in adolescents and young adults as the cause of mono and also can later cause lymphomas, gastric and nasopharyngeal cancer, multiple sclerosis and diseases like non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and certain leukemias in transplant patients. The human cytomegalovirus is the leading cause of congenital birth defects, as in-utero infection can result in permanent hearing loss or more profound neurodevelopmental impairments that disproportionately impact socioeconomically disadvantaged children.

 

Jimmy D. Gollihar, Ph.D., who is a protein engineer, synthetic biologist and head of the Antibody Discovery & Accelerated Protein Therapeutics (ADAPT) laboratory at the Houston Methodist Research Institute, is a co-principal investigator with Erica Ollmann Saphire, Ph.D., M.B.A., president, CEO and a professor with the La Jolla Institute for Immunology and project leader of the consortium. They are among a team of leading scientists from 19 laboratories across the U.S. that are working on herpesviruses.

 

As one of the artificial intelligence and machine learning experts of this consortium, Gollihar will generate new gene sequences encoding viral antigens for these mRNA vaccines through the ADAPT lab, which is a modern synthetic biology and protein engineering lab. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gollihar’s group was directly involved in genomic surveillance, antigen production, serological testing and use of convalescent plasma, as well as monoclonal antibody discovery and engineering.

 

“A critical and innovative aspect to our strategy is the targeting of antigens essential to distinct stages of viral infection – beyond initial entry – to also include cell-to-cell spread, immune evasion and the reactivation stages linked to cancer, autoimmune disease and other complications,” Gollihar said.

 

Joining Gollihar from Houston Methodist are co-investigators John P. Cooke, M.D., Ph.D., who is the medical director of the Center for RNA Therapeutics, and Francesca Taraballi, Ph.D., who is the director for the Center for Musculoskeletal Regeneration and also works closely with Cooke as a faculty member in the Center for RNA Therapeutics.

 

Led by Cooke, the Houston Methodist Research Institute’s RNA Core, which has the capacity to synthesize molecular targeted drugs for first-in-human clinical trials under tightly controlled FDA regulations, will generate these mRNA herpesvirus vaccines. Taraballi, who also is an adjunct faculty member with the Department of Nanomedicine, will provide a nanoscale drug delivery platform with her group that will encapsulate the vaccines in lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for testing and validation by the other investigators.

 

By integrating advanced computational models with immunological data, this comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach will not only accelerate herpesvirus vaccine development, but also will enable the rapid design and optimization of immunizing agents to trigger an immune response in the body against a myriad of other viruses. This will facilitate swifter responses to emerging viral threats, potentially transforming vaccine development and preparedness for future pandemics.

 

For more information about Houston Methodist, visit our newsroom or our social media pages on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok or our On Health and Leading Medicine blogs.

 

Houston Methodist prepares for next pandemic as part of national NIH-funded consortium

Houston Methodist

 

image: 

Jimmy D. Gollihar, Ph.D. is the head of the Antibody Discovery & Accelerated Protein Therapeutics (ADAPT) laboratory at the Houston Methodist Research Institute. The ADAPT lab is a modern synthetic biology and protein engineering lab. Gollihar will discover and engineer monoclonal antibodies to viruses in the Nairoviridae, Hantaviridae and Paramyxoviridae families, as well as contribute to the generation of gene sequences encoding stabilized viral antigens for potential mRNA vaccines through his ADAPT lab. 

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Credit: Houston Methodist

The question isn’t if, but when, the next pandemic will hit. Research and observation have identified strong potential for the next pandemic-causing virus to come from one or more of five different virus families. Houston Methodist scientists will focus on three of these as part of a national research consortium funded by the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The consortium is led by Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

 

Scientists from the Houston Methodist Research Institute will work to develop efficacious vaccines and therapeutic antibodies for viruses in the Nairoviridae, Hantaviridae and Paramyxoviridae families. The potential exists for a virus member in one or all of these families to be the cause of the next major pandemic. The specific viruses in these families that will be looked at by Houston Methodist researchers include:

• Nairoviruses (primarily caused by ticks)
  • Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever
  • Hazara virus
  • Andes
• Hantaviruses (caused by exposure to urine, saliva or droppings of infected rodents)
  • Sin Nombre
  • Hantaan virus
• Paramyxoviruses (respiratory viruses that occur in animals and humans spread through respiratory droplets or direct contact) 
  • Menangle
  • Tioman
  • Sosuga
  • Nipah virus

 

“To prepare for potential outbreaks of these target viruses, we will investigate the antigenic determinants of these viruses, similar to what was done with the years of research into coronaviruses that led to vaccine developers being able to rapidly provide solutions to the SARS-CoV-2 virus,” said Jimmy D. Gollihar, Ph.D., one of PROVIDENT’s co-principal investigators and head of the Antibody Discovery & Accelerated Protein Therapeutics (ADAPT) laboratory at the Houston Methodist Research Institute. “We propose to target viruses within these families by manufacturing and testing monoclonal antibodies and RNA vaccines that can effectively treat and prevent disease caused by these viruses. Our work will provide the foundational knowledge to develop effective medical countermeasures in response to a potential outbreak and pandemic.”

 

Gollihar will discover and engineer monoclonal antibodies to these viruses, as well as contribute to the generation of gene sequences encoding stabilized viral antigens for potential mRNA vaccines through his ADAPT lab, which is a modern synthetic biology and protein engineering lab. His team will also collaborate with the RNA Core, led by John P. Cooke, M.D., Ph.D., medical director of the Center for RNA Therapeutics, to construct, encapsulate and validate them. Working with Cooke on this will be Francesca Taraballi, Ph.D., who is the director for the Center for Musculoskeletal Regeneration and works closely as a faculty member in the Center for RNA Therapeutics. She will provide a nanoscale drug delivery platform that will encapsulate the vaccines in lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for testing and validation by the other investigators.

 

The use of mRNA encapsulated in LNPs was also something that greatly enhanced the ability of vaccine developers during the COVID-19 pandemic to rapidly provide the public with an effective vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

 

Led by Kartik Chandran, Ph.D., at Albert Einstein College of Medicine under a five-year grant of $14 million per year (award number 1U19AI181977-01), the PROVIDENT (Prepositioning Optimized Strategies for Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics Against Diverse Emerging Infectious Threats) consortium is part of the Research and Development of Vaccines and Monoclonal Antibodies for Pandemic Preparedness (ReVAMPP) Network, focusing its research efforts on representative pathogens from virus families known to infect humans. By studying and developing solutions for these high-priority pathogens with the potential to cause deadly diseases, the scientists in the PROVIDENT consortium will build a knowledge base with the potential to be applied to other related viruses.

 

For more information about Houston Methodist, visit our newsroom or our social media pages on X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and TikTok or our On Health and Leading Medicine blogs.

 

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New MSU research sheds light on impact and bias of voter purging in Michigan

Michigan State University

MSU has a satellite uplink/LTN TV studio and Comrex line for radio interviews upon request.

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EAST LANSING, Mich. – In recent years, some states have prioritized purging their voter rolls of those who have passed away or moved out of state. During election season, there is often increased discussion about the necessity and impact of these actions. Voter purging can be an important step for creating election integrity, but others have raised concerns about how the process is conducted and who it targets.

So, are there negative effects of voter purging? Researchers from Michigan State University wanted to find out — especially due to the minimal data that exists about who is purged at local and state levels. What their research suggests, published in the journal Social Science Quarterly, is that voter purging in Michigan disproportionately targets underrepresented and lower-income communities. Recently, the Michigan Senate recently passed a bill to expand voter rights and accessibility in the state.

Richard “Dick” SadlerRichard Sadler an associate professor in the departments of Public Health and Family Medicine at the College of Human Medicine, and Thomas “Wally” Wojciechowski is an assistant professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the College of Social Science. Together, they teamed up with community partner Eileen Hayes from Michigan Faith in Action to examine Michigan’s voter purging data and found troubling elements.

“Wally and I are both methodology experts: he knows statistics, I know spatial analysis,” Sadler said. But our disciplinary expertise in criminal justice and public health is also complementary, because the political system is intimately intertwined in both of these areas. Understanding the potential implications of which voters are being purged and where is important because protectors of democracy need to stay ahead of the ball when it comes to voter disenfranchisement, and it’s not always clear which purges are legitimate and which purges target oppressed population subgroups. And so, when my community partner (Eileen) reached out to me to study this issue, I jumped at the chance and knew Wally was the right collaborator for the project.”

Background on voter purging

Voter rights are an essential component to America’s democracy, but there has been a complicated history of disenfranchisement through poll taxes, literacy tests and other barriers to voting access. More modern forms include gerrymandering by cracking voters into districts, expelling members of chambers and now, voter purging when it comes to who it targets.

Voter purging is a practice that removes duplicate voter records, voters who are deceased, voters with felony convictions, or those who have moved to a different jurisdiction, among other reasons.

Key modern examples include Georgia, where 100,000 voters were purged prior to the 2016 presidential primary, which impacted the 2018 gubernatorial race, and North Carolina purged 10% of its total voters after the 2016 election. There have also been cases in Michigan where outside groups tried to purge voter rolls in places like Detroit.

In these cases, the intent or result was that it influenced who participated in the election because many living people were purged erroneously, so the purpose was not just to maintain accurate voter rolls.

Method of data examination

In Michigan, the Bureau of Elections maintains a qualified voter file and voter records are canceled for the reasons noted earlier. Michigan uses the Electronic Registration Information Center, also known as ERIC, to uphold integrity by maintaining roles and notifying voters if they are not registered.

For their study, Sadler and Wojciechowski analyzed the just over 175,000 voters purged from the qualified voter file from Nov. 4, 2014, to Nov. 5, 2018, which equated to 2.5% of the 6.7 million voters in Michigan during that time.

They then brought in data considering four associated factors: total population density, racial composition, socioeconomic status and population residing in urban areas. From this data they established the percentage of voters purged according to their area-based racial community, socioeconomic status and the 2020 election results.

“There are legitimate reasons why voter rolls periodically need to be purged, as people move and die over time and we need to remove them from the voter rolls,” Wojciechowski said. “However, when we included community mortality rates and the rates at which people were moving in and out of communities, communities with a greater proportion of Black residents still experienced increased levels of voter purging.”

Key findings and results

From the analysis, two key findings emerged. First, there was a clear urban-rural divide where cities tended to have higher purge rates than suburban or rural areas. For these cities, there was a strong correlation between the percentage of Black voters and the percentage of individuals voting for the Democratic nominee for president. During this period, there was a Republican legislature majority in Michigan.

Second, a regional pattern was observed where border areas had higher purging rates, namely at the southern part of the lower peninsula and the western part of the upper peninsula of the state.

The characteristics of places where voters were purged included locations where 17% of the population were Black, the average income was just under $50,000, life expectancy was just under 70 years, and the neighborhoods, purged had an average, were made up of 55% Democratic voters.

Since the data was on population, it is only known that they live in neighborhoods with those aggregate characteristics. That said, there were correlations between purges and more Democratic areas, which have more population density, lower life expectancy and more Black residents.

Recommended next steps

Outside the key findings, Sadler and Wojciechowski underscore how a majority party can disproportionately purge voters of the other party by using similar geographic techniques (i.e., focusing on certain parts of the state where they know opposing voters may live), including with higher voter purging rates during election years.

Additionally, there are also public health implications in how health and socioeconomic status can be tied to political power and voter disenfranchisement.

“Support for social programs known to make people healthier and happier and save taxpayer money should not be a political issue. Unfortunately, too much in public health has become politicized, as we saw with COVID-19,” Sadler said. “It matters who we elect to hold office because there is currently an imbalance in the value given to health and economic experts between the two major political parties.”

Importantly, this data only covered one four-year period and the reasons why people moved out of state were not known.  

Sadler and Wojciechowski suggest that a review of data purging should be done in all states to determine how the party in power is operating and if discriminatory practices are in place. This would be a good first step, as well as states making sure data is accessible and does not come with costs or additional barriers.

States can also implement new election laws such as early voting periods and same-day registration that encourage people to exercise their franchise to vote, both of which have now gone into effect in Michigan.

Learn more about the structure of Michigan’s election system here.

Read on MSUToday.

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Journal

Social Science Quarterly

DOI

10.1111/ssqu.13447 

Article Title

Spatial and statistical predictors of voter purge rates in Michigan

 

People are skeptical of headlines labeled as AI-generated

PNAS Nexus

 

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Some of the headlines shown to study participants. 

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Credit: Sacha Altay & Fabrizio Gilardi

News consumers are averse to AI-generated headlines, which are seen as potentially inaccurate. AI-generated content is proliferating online, and social media companies have started to label it. Sacha Altay and Fabrizio Gilardi conducted two preregistered online experiments among 4,976 US and UK participants to investigate the effect of labeling headlines as AI. Respondents rated 16 headlines that were either true, false, AI- or human-generated. In Study 1, participants were randomly assigned to conditions in which (i) no headline was labeled as AI, (ii) AI-generated headlines were labeled as AI, (iii) human-generated headlines were labeled as AI, and (iv) false headlines were labeled as false. The results show that respondents rated headlines labeled as AI-generated as less accurate and were less willing to share them, regardless of whether the headlines were true or false, and regardless of whether the headlines were created by humans or AI. The effect of labeling headlines as AI-generated was three times smaller than labeling headlines as false. The authors also investigated the mechanisms behind this AI aversion by experimentally manipulating definitions of AI-generated headlines. The authors found that AI aversion is due to expectations that headlines labeled as AI-generated have been entirely written by AI with no human supervision. Despite wide support for the labeling of AI-generated content, the authors argue that transparency regarding the meaning of the labels is needed as the labels may have negative unintended consequences. According to the authors, to maximize impact, false AI-generated content should be labeled as false rather than solely as AI-generated. 

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Journal

PNAS Nexus

Article Title

People are skeptical of headlines labeled as AI-generated, even if true or human-made, because they assume full AI automation

Article Publication Date

1-Oct-2024

 

Water fluoridation less effective now than in past

The dental health benefits of adding fluoride to drinking water may be smaller now than before fluoride toothpaste was widely available, an updated Cochrane review has found.

Cochrane

The dental health benefits of adding fluoride to drinking water may be smaller now than before fluoride toothpaste was widely available, an updated Cochrane review has found.

The team of researchers from the Universities of Manchester, Dundee and Aberdeen reviewed the evidence from 157 studies which compared communities that had fluoride added to their water supplies with communities that had no additional fluoride in their water. They found that the benefit of fluoridation has declined since the 1970s, when fluoride toothpaste became more widely available.

The contemporary studies were conducted in high-income countries. The impact of community water fluoridation in low- and middle-income countries is less clear, due to the absence of recent research.

Fluoride, used in many commercially available toothpastes and varnishes, is known to reduce tooth decay. Governments in many countries have added fluoride to the drinking water supply to improve population oral health, although there are polarized views on whether this is the right action to take.

“When interpreting the evidence, it is important to think about the wider context and how society and health have changed over time,” says co-author Anne-Marie Glenny, Professor of Health Sciences Research at the University of Manchester. “Most of the studies on water fluoridation are over 50 years old, before the availability of fluoride toothpaste. Contemporary studies give us a more relevant picture of what the benefits are now.”

Results from studies conducted after 1975 suggest that the initiation of water fluoridation schemes may lead to slightly less tooth decay in children’s baby teeth. Analysis of these studies, covering a total of 2,908 children in the UK and Australia, estimates that fluoridation may lead to an average of 0.24 fewer decayed baby teeth per child. However, the estimate of effect comes with uncertainty, meaning it’s possible that the more recent schemes have no benefit. By comparison, an analysis of studies with 5,708 children conducted in 1975 or earlier estimated that fluoridation reduced the number of decayed baby teeth, on average by 2.1 per child.

The same contemporary studies (conducted after 1975) also looked at the number of children with no decay in their baby teeth. The analysis found that fluoridation may increase the number of children with no tooth decay by 3 percentage points, again with the possibility of no benefit.

The review was only able to draw conclusions about the impact on children’s teeth, with similar findings across both baby and permanent teeth. There were no studies with adults that met the review’s criteria.

“The evidence suggests that water fluoridation may slightly reduce tooth decay in children,” says co-author Dr Lucy O’Malley, Senior Lecturer in Health Services Research at the University of Manchester. “Given that the benefit has reduced over time, before introducing a new fluoridation scheme, careful thought needs to be given to costs, acceptability, feasibility and ongoing monitoring.”

Advocates have suggested that one of the key benefits of water fluoridation is that it reduces oral health inequalities. This updated review sought to examine this question and did not find enough evidence to support this claim, although this doesn’t necessarily mean there is no effect.

The review’s findings accord with recent observational studies including the LOTUS study, which compared anonymised dental health records with water fluoridation status for 6.4 million adults and adolescents in England between 2010 and 2020. People in fluoridated areas needed slightly fewer invasive dental treatments, with no significant impact on inequalities.

“Contemporary evidence using different research methodologies suggest that the benefits of fluoridating water have declined in recent decades,” says Tanya Walsh, Professor of Healthcare Evaluation at the University of Manchester, co-author on both the Cochrane review and the LOTUS study. “Oral health inequalities are an urgent public health issue that demands action. Water fluoridation is only one option and not necessarily the most appropriate for all populations.”

“Whilst water fluoridation can lead to small improvements in oral health, it does not address the underlying issues such as high sugar consumption and inadequate oral health behaviours,” says co-author Janet Clarkson, Professor of Clinical Effectiveness, University of Dundee. “It is likely that any oral health preventive programme needs to take a multi-faceted, multi-agency approach.”

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Journal

Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews

DOI

10.1002/14651858.CD010856.pub3 

Method of Research

Systematic review

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Water fluoridation for the prevention of dental caries

Article Publication Date

3-Oct-2024

COI Statement

The authors' interests as declared in the review are as follows: ZIE has declared that they have no confl ict of interest. TW is a co-author on Goodwin 2022 and Co-Director (since July 2023) of the Colgate-Palmolive Dental Health Unit based at The University of Manchester. She has been Statistical Editor for Cochrane Oral Health. TW did not participate in the assessment of Goodwin 2022. SL is a former Deputy Co-ordinating Editor for the Bone, Joint and Muscle Trauma group; she has had no role inthe editorial process for the review. PR is Deputy Co-ordinating Editor for Cochrane Oral Health; he has had no role in the editorial process for this review. DB has declared that they have no conflict of interest. JC is Joint Co-ordinating Editor for Cochrane Oral Health; she has had no role in the editorial process for thisreview. HW was previously Joint Co-ordinating Editor for Cochrane Oral Health/Statistical Editor; she has had no role in the editorial process for this review. AMG is Joint Co-ordinating Editor for Cochrane Oral Health; she has had no role in the editorial process for this review. LO'M has declared that they have no conflict of interest.