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Cornell University

Public Health News

Sustainability. Equity. Engagement.

New York State

February 18, 2025

News and guidance on avian influenza is scattered across government and state agency websites, and rampant misinformation is spread across the internet. In response, Cornell has launched a comprehensive resource that offers a one-stop clearinghouse for the most current and trustworthy information on bird flu. A new online Avian Flu Resource Center provides reliable and accessible information for members of the general public, farmers, wildlife professionals, state and public health agency partners, and veterinarians…

February 10, 2025

On Feb. 7, New York Governor Kathy Hochul issued an order to temporarily close live bird markets after cases of avian influenza, or bird flu, were detected in seven markets in Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx in the past week. The closures apply to all bird markets, including those that didn’t report any cases, in New York City, Westchester, Suffolk, and Nassau counties. The order requires market owners to sell or otherwise remove all live birds and conduct a thorough cleaning and disinfection of their facilities—even if bird flu wasn’t detected there. All markets must remain closed for five days after the cleaning to confirm they are free of the H5N1 bird flu virus so that the virus won’t spread again when live animals are…

January 21, 2025

Lauren Singh was interested in tickborne diseases before she applied to Cornell Public Health. “I remember coming across Dr. Goodman’s lab and her work with ticks while researching different public health programs,” she says, “and it immediately caught my attention.” Singh joined the lab this summer and began working on an effort known as the New York State Tick Blitz. Supported by the Northeast Regional Center for Excellence in Vector-Borne Diseases (NEVBD) and USDA, the goal of the Tick Blitz is to identify and track the expansion of different tick species throughout the state due to climate change and urbanization…

January 13, 2025

Dr. Gen Meredith, Associate Professor and Associate Director of Cornell Public Health, first discovered the field of public health 25 years ago, while looking for a way to improve social justice. Since then, she has shown a deep commitment to identifying and exploring barriers to health access, and working with local experts to envision and test feasible and sustainable strategies that achieve positive impacts. To support this outcome, much of Dr. Meredith’s work focuses on optimizing public health systems and processes to help equip the public health workforce with both skills and confidence.

December 4, 2024

Research from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and universities across the state have found manmade chemicals known as PFAS are being found in our ecosystem and hurt public health. “PFAS are a whole category of thousands of different types of chemicals and they’re known as forever chemicals because they are really hard to break down,” said Professor of Public Health at Cornell University Alistair Hayden. “We use them in many different processes, a lot of plastics manufacturing…

November 7, 2024

For decades, public health systems in many parts of the world have been under-equipped In response, government and partner organizations are working to ensure integrated and adaptive systems, and to expand the skilled workforce to meet growing demands Universities have...

October 10, 2024

Residents of Southside, a historically Black community that lies along Six Mile Creek in Ithaca, now live in an area recently recategorized as a “special hazard flood zone” by the Federal Emergency Management Agency “When we get weeks of rain, people’s...

September 19, 2024

The College of Veterinary Medicine and NY FarmNet, in partnership with Rural Minds, has launched a free online course, “Mental Health and Suicide Prevention in Rural America,” designed to give learners practical support strategies and resources to navigate mental...

September 11, 2024

Be first, be right, be credible That’s the crisis communication mantra for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention But it’s hard to save lives with the right message when you’re competing with a flood of misinformation and noise To help local health...

July 15, 2024

In September 2020, Alistair Hayden’s house filled with smoke from the Bobcat Fire, one of the largest wildfires on record in Los Angeles County, which scorched nearly 116,000 acres “We were all watching – students and others – wondering whether the fire was...

July 10, 2024

Cornell researchers have created a web tool that estimates county-by-county mortality from wildfire smoke in real time, to help local emergency managers assess the magnitude of the danger The new Mortality Estimation Tool blends federal data from several sources and...

June 3, 2024

As a registered nurse and director of patient services for the Chautauqua County Health Department in western New York, Wendy Douglas conducted case investigations and monitoring during the COVID-19 pandemic The experience laid bare the disparities public health...