The number of anti-vaccine bills filed in Texas has risen, yet many Texans support vaccine policy. Fellow Kirstin R.W. Matthews and nonresident scholar Rekha Lakshmanan examine the stakes of legislative engagement in public health initiatives and provide a call to action for Texans to embrace public health as an act of freedom.
Vaccination policies are a cornerstone of public health, but anti-vaccine activists have been adamantly pushing for legislation that would weaken and dismantle the public health infrastructure, the authors write. In this issue brief, they examine vaccine policy challenges leading up to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the future of vaccine legislation in Texas and the United States.
The authors identify key themes that emerged from anti-vaccine testimonies during the 2021 Texas legislative session and consider the implications of these discussions as the next legislative session draws near.
"This is a moment to prioritise health over short-term political calculations," write fellow Peter Hotez, Rekha Lakshmanan and nine other experts in a Lancet commentary. Click here for their call for action against anti-vaccine rhetoric and COVID-19 misinformation, and five short-term recommendations.
Rekha Lakshmanan, Peter J. HotezSeptember 17, 2021
The first step to reducing methane, Agerton and Gilbert argue, is to directly measure it. Their new Forbes post explains why inventory-based incentives that merely estimate emissions must give way to direct methane monitoring.
Methane emissions are both "extraordinarily bad" and "easy to fix," so why not address them now? A federal tax of $1,500 per metric ton emitted could curb and counter the impact of U.S. methane emissions, argues this commentary piece.
This brief explores how a quirk in the measurement of women’s labor force participation and the demographic peculiarities of the Persian Gulf have resulted in the significant undercounting of female citizen labor in the Gulf Cooperation Council. I