Natalie Linton

I lived with my dad when I was very young and he didn’t apply for food stamps or free school lunches, though we qualified.

So, I went hungry. It was awful. I begged neighbors for saltine crackers. I can say it was the worst time of my life.

Children shouldn’t go hungry. Restore SNAP benefits.

With federal maternal health database in limbo, a risk to mother and infant health | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Rita Hamad explains why losing PRAMS puts the health of mothers and infants at risk, and how she hopes to help keep its data accessible.

Rita Hamad, professor of social epidemiology and public policy, explains why losing the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System puts the health of mothers and infants at risk, and how she hopes to help keep its data accessible. “Without data, we can’t fix problems,” says @ritahamad.bsky.social

If the ostriches are not culled, Canada will violate its trade agreements for managing avian flu outbreaks. This could cause our trading partners to ban Canadian poultry imports and cut off the entire $2B poultry export market. Three countries have already restricted Canadian imports on this basis.

The 2020 US election shows how state election policies can fuel conspiracy theories about voting | USAPP States that allowed pre-Election Day processing saw a reduction of over a third in expected misinformation compared to states with restrictive rules.

Recently published work from colleagues Morgan Wack (postdoc at University of Zurich) & Joey Schafer (UW PhD candidate) showing how state election policies that delayed vote counting fueled rumoring and conspiracy theorizing around the 2020 election: blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/20...

ICE Targets Unaccompanied Immigrant Children, Offering Payment for Deportation ICE confirmed its plan to pay unaccompanied immigrant children in exchange for their agreement to be deported.

With deportation continuing apace amid the federal government shutdown, advocates speculated that the latest scheme to pay off immigrant children was deliberately timed by ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, to minimize public attention.

Opinion | These 6 Charts Explain Why the Government Shut Down

In my latest for @nytopinion.nytimes.com, I break down the health care provisions Democrats are fighting for in this government shutdown. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/o...

Any eta for the upload?

Shared this on and was asked: "does it only work for energy score? Does it cohere with forecasting hub targets?"

Any answers for those questions handy?

Philanthropies Strike a Promising Deal to Turn Back H.I.V.

A drug that provides near-perfect protection against HIV with shots just twice a year will be made available at $40 per patient annually in low- and middle-income countries, offering new hope for ending the HIV epidemic.

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/24/h...

There is only one major company in the world that makes monovalent measles vaccine: Serum Institute of India. The only reason it continues to do so is that, until recently, 19 countries in the world had not yet introduced rubella vaccination to their national schedules 1/

To be clear, there are no data that provide a link between short-term use of Tylenol during pregnancy and autism. In fact, one of the best prospective studies w/ sibling controls, if anything, pointed to a protective effect for use less than 7 days
acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Hepatitis B infection case totals by year showing when risk-based vaccination was implemented, followed by vaccination to babies of positive parents, followed by universal vaccination showing almost all of the decline occurred after universal vaccination recommendation

When the vaccine first came out, the US actually only vaccinated “high-risk” individuals and children born to Hepatitis-B-positive parents. And it didn’t work out well. Disease rates only declined - by ~99% - after making the vaccine a universal recommendation on Day1 www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcn...

California-specific: myturn.ca.gov

New ‘hyperlocal’ forecasts aim to give Indian cities early warning of monsoon floods In Mumbai, new tools provided up to 3 days notice of dangerous downpours

Hyperlocal forecasting that provides real time, practical information for people to use when navigating extreme weather events is perhaps one of the first steps in climate adaptation today. An institute in Mumbai, in partnership with the local met department, is on it
www.science.org/content/arti...

it’s hard to overstate:

-how beneficial vaccines are

-how massively overwhelming the evidence is showing no link between vaccines and autism

-how impossible it is that RFK will somehow “find the cause” (at all, let alone in his first year)

-how much RFKjr want to get rid of childhood vaccines

Must read for all teams consulting infectious diseases #idsky #idmeded #meded #stewardship #voicesofID @cidjournal.bsky.social
academic.oup.com/cid/advance-...

Vaccination may reduce elevated risk of airway diseases in COVID survivors

www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/vac...

The Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, or CBER, was one of the hardest hit divisions. It ensures the safety and quality of biological products for human use, like red blood cells, immunotherapy, and vaccines. Since January, the center has lost about 500 people, or 26% of its workforce.

The Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, or CBER, was one of the hardest hit divisions.

It ensures the safety and quality of biological products for human use, like red blood cells, immunotherapy, and vaccines.

Since January, the center has lost about 500 people, or 26% of its workforce.

Alas not going to be able to pop over to the UK for this. Any chance of a recording or virtual access?

Countrywide natural experiment links built environment to physical activity - Nature By analysing the smartphone data of 2,112,288 participants, in particular observing and comparing the activity of the same individual in two different environments, we find that increases in the walka...

A natural experiment provides evidence for promoting moderate-vigorous physical activity: the importance of walkable cities
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Do you also have this published somewhere that does not require hoops to jump through? (login, even if you login limited article access otherwise paid). The whole non-open journal model is problematic at this point for health communication even among health communicators...

Bird Flu May Be Airborne on Dairy Farms, Scientists Report

Concern for airborne H5N1 on US dairy farm…(🎁 article) #IDSky

Not yet peer reviewed 👉
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/h...

Can COVID rekindle cancer? Yes...in mice. And *maybe* in people too.

A fascinating new paper in @nature.com found that infection w/ influenza or SARS-CoV-2 caused dormant breast cancer cells in the lungs to “awaken” & grow...*IN MICE*.

The data for people was *suggestive* but not super compelling IMO. #episky #medsky #idsky

jenndowd.substack.com/p/can-covid-...

Don’t Wait for Permission to Write for the Public You don’t need a public engagement grant or media team to begin. Here’s how—and why—to share your expertise now.

Advice for academics on finding their public voice: www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Clinical Overview of Infant Botulism This page provides health care providers with clinical information about infant botulism.

BIG-IV ordered on Day 5 and administered on Day 10... hope there can be some improvements made to get BIG-IV administered faster in the future (or it was just a series of unfortunate delays that would not be repeated). www.cdc.gov/botulism/hcp...

Peanut butter confirmed as the source in a case of infant botulism, United Kingdom, 2024 A 6-month-old infant was hospitalised with suspected infant botulism after being given peanut butter to reduce their risk of developing peanut allergy. Clostridium botulinum type A was detected in the...

Unsettling case: A UK baby develops #botulism after eating peanut butter. Father is peanut allergic; parents were trying to lower baby's risk of peanut allergy by gradually introducing peanut to its diet, per medical guidance. Baby was very ill but recovered. www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2...

Thanks for this useful thread.
What about changing of the focus from immunity, the outcome of NPIs or other changes to pathogen circulation, to *infection*, the actual thing that is causing an impact. So...
"Infection pause" works best here I think. 1/2

Doxycycline to prevent bacterial sexually transmitted infections in the USA: final results from the DoxyPEP multicentre, open-label, randomised controlled trial and open-label extension Doxy-PEP was effective in reducing bacterial STIs in this population of men who have sex with men and transgender women, including during an open-label extension when doxy-PEP efficacy was known. Doxy...

📃Follow-up of UCSF's DoxyPEP trial published.

TL;DR
✅std care STI ↘️when started PEP -of course!🤷‍♂
✅no difference between arms for doxy R in N. gono 🥳
✅no change in S. aureus/MRSA carriage😅
❌doxy R in S. aureus ↗️ in doxy arm 😬
#AMR #AntimicrobialResistance #IDSky

www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Mass starvation stalks Gaza as deaths from hunger rise Aid agencies warned for months that Israel’s harsh limits on food aid would bring acute malnutrition and widespread suffering to Gaza’s 2.1 million people.

“Their small bodies are shutting down — they can’t breathe, their immune systems are collapsing.” Children are dying from starvation.

Nearly 1 in 3 people are going days without food. This is preventable. They need food, water, care — urgently.
#BlueSky #MedSku #NewsSky #PedsSky #NurseSky

Interesting randomised controlled trial that found use of AI tools (i.e. Cursor) made developers about 20% slower on time-to-completion. Included a nice accompanying visualisation of possible reasons for discrepancies between RCT and other findings... metr.org/blog/2025-07...