5 Great Blogs for Health Professionals
- Public and Environmental Health – Journal of the American Medical Association
- Well – The New York Times
- Public Health Matters Blog – Center for Disease Control and Prevention
- Healthy Living External – Huffington Post
- HealthBlawg – David Harlow
Public health blogs are a great way for busy professionals to stay current with a rapidly changing public health landscape. Whether your interests lie with evolving privacy and insurance laws or changes to technology and education outreach, a diverse set of blogs can keep you connected to the major trends in the field. While there are hundreds of quality blogs on public health online today, these five are a good start for loading up your reader.
1. Public and Environmental Health – Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
If your goal is to stay connected to the national conversation on health care, this blog brings the best highlights of research, opinions, and resource reviews that touch on every topic in public health. With frequent updates and plenty of links for deeper dives into the topics, the JAMA blog serves as a sampler platter for public health. It offers a taste of everything without overwhelming. Drawn from primary and cutting edge research and featuring authors from across the public health spectrum, this blog is not afraid to question what comes next in the future of modern medicine.
2. Well – The New York Times
Written for a lay audience or the general public with a science interest, this blog translates research into easy to digest essays with clear take aways for the average citizen. Recipes, questions to ask your doctor, or tips for improving personal health are heavily featured, but always given appropriate scientific context. This blog is a good bet for those who need easy read resources to share with patients or social media.
3. Public Health Matters Blog – Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
As the major international research body engaged in studying and fighting disease across the globe, this blog is a must for anyone interested in infectious diseases, emergencies or disasters. Written for a variety of audiences, any reader will find something useful here. For researchers, data about recent epidemics or mortality rates from natural disasters are available along with tracking tools to follow developing outbreaks.
4. Healthy Living External – Huffington Post
Known for both their reporting and accessible writing, the Huffington Post public health blog is written for a general audience. Topics run the gamut, from issues affecting infant mortality rates, to genetic modification, or even what the long term effects of tooth whitening may bring. For readers with a more casual interest in public health, this blog will keep things varied and light enough to enjoy over your morning coffee.
5. HealthBlawg – David Harlow
Unlike the other blogs on this list, HealthBlawg is written by a single author. David Harlow is a lawyer who has specialized in public health law for a quarter century. His daily blog answers questions big and small about the paperwork, regulations, and red tape that individuals and businesses face in the health care system. For practitioners and educators who often focus on the care or disease data itself, this blog can offer a glimpse into the financial world that often prevents a barrier to care.
Related Resource: 5 Great Research Careers in Public Health
Public health is both inspiring and fascinating in part because it is ever changing. Forbes reports that recent advances have changed the landscape of public health in ways that would be unrecognizable to people living just decades ago. This same quality can make it difficult, if not impossible, to keep up with trends and advancements in the field. By sampling a range of public health blogs you can stay up to date with the latest ideas.