@benjaminmasonmeier.bsky.social
Professor of Global Health Policy at the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill | Working at the intersection of #GlobalHealth & #HumanRights benjaminmasonmeier.com
🚨The US EPA says climate pollution is no longer a public health issue — and moves to stop regulating greenhouse gases.
☠️A major legal and policy shift with global health consequences.
@cleanairfund.bsky.social @thelancet.com @wmo-global.bsky.social @docsforclimate.bsky.social
📖⬇️ & 🔁🙏
Once more: Columbia could have fought; it chose not.
14.02.2026 13:48 — 👍 1409 🔁 260 💬 22 📌 5
#CDC has had a full-time director for less than a month in Trump 2.0. People watching the situation think it's unlikely there will be another Senate-confirmed CDC director in this term.
With Jim O'Neill's firing, it doesn't have an acting director either. www.statnews.com/2026/02/15/c...
🚨 New from @hrw.org: #UN member states should select a champion of #HumanRights as the next UN Secretary-General as the UN faces a crisis amid a global retreat on rights & democracy. - by Widad Franco
12.02.2026 14:16 — 👍 17 🔁 12 💬 0 📌 0Too often when discussing trans rights, we’re forced to be on the defensive, as Republicans wage attacks.
Today, we take the opportunity to look forward by introducing my Trans Bill of Rights, a comprehensive vision to provide protections for all trans and nonbinary people.
BREAKING: Four states led by Democrats sued the Trump administration on Wednesday, aiming to halt deep cuts in federal public health funds that had already been allocated.
Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/h...
Oh man, the amount of buzzwords in this… It is hilarious to see this introduced as a “data-driven quest” before the actual text of the article acknowledges: “The safety gains are difficult to quantify.” (Are there even any safety gains at all? It’s not clear to me.)
@profgoldberg.bsky.social
Opinion: Emblazoned on the jumbotron behind Bad Bunny at the Super Bowl 60 halftime show were the words 'THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE.'
09.02.2026 03:00 — 👍 2 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0BASH: Is this measles outbreak a consequence of the administration undermining support for vaccines?
DR OZ: I don't believe so. Secretary Kennedy has been advocating for measles vaccines
BASH: Oh, come on
More than half the drugs on the TrumpRx site have a cheaper generic version on the market.
Pristiq, an antidepressant, is available with a TrumpRx coupon for ~$200 for a 30-day supply.
A generic version is on GoodRx for less than $30 and Mark Cuban's CostPlusDrugs for $16.65.
Brilliant legal analysis by my friend Larry Helfer (UN Human Rights Committee member & a law prof who co-directs Duke’s Center for International and Comparative) & Jean Galbraith, Law Professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School
www.justsecurity.org/129914/us-wi...
Documented measles cases in the US
2024: 285
2025: 2,276
2026: 730+ (through Feb 6)
while new documents obtained by @rcfp.org contradict RFK Jr's testimony to Congress about the purpose of his trip to Samoa amidst a deadly measles outbreak.
bsky.app/profile/rcfp...
Remember when Emily Oster said listeria isn’t a big deal?
“A newborn baby has died in New Mexico from a Listeria infection that state health officials say was likely contracted from raw (unpasteurized) milk that the baby’s mother drank during pregnancy.” arstechnica.com/health/2026/...
What began as a crisis of resources now risks becoming a crisis of direction for global health governance.
My latest op-ed argues for the World Health Assembly to initiate a time-bound, member state-led process to unify fragmented global health architecture reforms.
blogs.lse.ac.uk/globalhealth...
Quacks who promote raw milk conveniently omit the many infectious pathogens it can contain. Some of these cause infections so severe they can lead to death.
Raw milk has no unique health benefits > pasteurized milk but it sure can make you sick.
Don't drink it!
www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...
Come be my colleague @dukesanford.bsky.social!
I'm chairing this search for the inaugural Rosen Family Professor of the Practice--an experienced scholar-practitioner--and am happy to field questions via the email in the job post.
More details in the posting below 👇👇👇
🇺🇳 Opinion: ‘Europe has greater responsibility in the World Health Organization without the United States’ - Writes Professor Ilona Kickbusch in @bmj.com
‘Europe must become a proactive system stabiliser as the principal guarantor of @who.int ’s operational continuity’
www.bmj.com/content/392/...
The past year has shaken the foundations of U.S. leadership in global health governance amid:
* attacks on public health science,
* abandonment of U.S. foreign assistance &
* threats to global health governance.
The global health landscape is rapidly shifting — to the exclusion of the United States.
The US government has lost more than 10,000 people with PhDs in the STEM or health fields since Trump 2.0 took office — 14% of the federal civil servants with PhDs in those areas, a @ScienceMagazine analysis shows.
What could possibly go wrong? www.science.org/content/arti...
Threats to funding and cuts to diversity efforts are putting pressure on the pipeline of new scientists. https://scim.ag/3LIs63S
27.01.2026 17:31 — 👍 33 🔁 8 💬 0 📌 2
A bird's-eye view of a former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp showing a wide dirt pathway flanked by parallel rows of barbed-wire fences. Groups of visitors walk along the path, surrounded by the remnants of brick structures and barracks, now reduced to foundations. Green grass contrasts with the somber history of the site, as the path leads toward a guard tower in the distance.
Auschwitz was at the end of a process. We must remember that it did not start from gas chambers.
This hatred gradually developed: from ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder.
Auschwitz took time.
⚠️ Health experts warn it is unethical to withhold a proven vaccine from newborns!
🍼 The halted trial would have given only half of 14,000 babies a hepatitis B vaccine at birth — despite strong evidence early vaccination saves lives.
✍️ @kerrycullinan.bsky.social
@by-cjewett.bsky.social
📖⬇️ & 🔁🙏
🇺🇳 US withdrawal from World Health Organization ‘Risks Global Safety’, #WHO says in strong response.
@who.int defends itself against accusations made by the #Trump administration including of ‘failures’ during COVID 19 pandemic.
www.who.int/news/item/24...
Emblem of the World Health Organization on a glass door.
WHO statement on notification of withdrawal of the United States
WHO regrets the United States’ notification of withdrawal from WHO – a decision that makes both the United States and the world less safe.
Full statement: bit.ly/46dT0HF
William Foege (1936-2026)
Offering hope to a world threatened by infectious disease, Bill ensured American public health leadership throughout the world.
We have lost an impactful American leader...at a moment when we are rapidly losing American leadership.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...
Stupid headline (the WHO is an international organization, California can’t join). Real content is good news: CA will join GOARN, the WHO-operated outbreak data and surveillance system. Good for everybody’s heath security, good to see US democrats thinking about global health.
23.01.2026 20:52 — 👍 14 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0
Proving that the Texas measles outbreak that began last January is the source of the current outbreaks in Utah and Arizona or South Carolina is turning out to be more complicated than officials had expected.
www.nytimes.com/2026/01/19/w...
Half the battle with this guy is just reiterating government can and already does good things that are so ubiquitous they’ve become invisible. He’s able to remind you in a way that you understand that good government can exist outside of a 24/7 vengeance operation, and in NYC already does.
18.01.2026 22:47 — 👍 16499 🔁 2916 💬 164 📌 53
Governments are seldom this brazen when obscuring the true costs of air pollution.
On January 12, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced it will stop assigning economic value to lives saved and illnesses avoided when considering air pollution controls.
www.hrw.org/news/2026/01...
