The European Commission has developed a medical intelligence system that constantly collects and sorts information from more than 1000 news and 120 public health websites in 32 languages.

The U.S. obesity prevalence increased from 13 percent to 32 percent between the 1960s and 2004, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Human Nutrition. The prevalence of obesity and overweight has increased at an average rate of 0.3–0.8 percentage points across different sociodemographic groups over the past three decades.

To many people, tuberculosis evokes images of 19th-century sanatoriums. It seems like an old-fashioned disease that was conquered long ago. Or else TB is seen as a "marginal" illness affecting only the down-and-out.

Climate change is an emerging threat to global public health. It is also highly inequitable, as the greatest risks are to the poorest populations, who have contributed least to greenhouse gas emissions. The rapid economic development and the concurrent urbanization of poorer countries mean that developing-country cities will be both vulnerable to health hazards from climate change and, simultaneously, an increasing contributor to the problem.

The European Union's disease control agency said Thursday that while tuberculosis and HIV remain a concern the emergence of drug-resistant microbes poses a growing threat to public health in Europe.

Today President Bush selected Ambassador Robert Zoellick as his candidate to head the World Bank. Robert Zoellick is the former US Trade Representative.

It is still unknown how a soldier - China's last case of bird flu -contacted virus that remains a public health threat, the World Health Organization said Monday.

Leading global experts provide insight into protecting public health and promoting health equity in urban settings in a supplement to the May/June 2007 issue of The New York Academy of Medicine's Journal of Urban Health. The 15 reports in the supplement were issued by the Knowledge Network on Urban Settings of the World Health Organization's (WHO) Commission on the Social Determinants of Health.

Anyone who has experienced chronic pain knows that it affects the ability to work, sleep and perform other activities essential to leading a full life. Now researchers at the University of Alberta have confirmed that chronic pain doesn't just cause physical discomfort; it can impair your memory and your concentration.

Medical research scientists in public health and other areas routinely make ethical value judgments, even if they're not aware of it, according to a new Weill Cornell Medical College research study. And not only do these judgments not lead to bias necessarily, but they can make for better research.

The epidemic rates of chronic disease such as diabetes, stroke and heart disease, as well as cancer and HIV/AIDS in many low-middle income countries, means they are experiencing a greater need for palliative care than most western countries.

In the first study ever to evaluate urban sediment after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, scientists from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine & Atmospheric Science have published their findings in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, pointing to the need for rapid environmental assessments.