Publications from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine provide objective and straightforward advice to decision makers and the public. This site includes Health and Medicine Division (HMD) publications released after 1998. A complete list of HMD’s publications from its establishment in 1970 to the present is available as a PDF.

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  Hearing Health Care for Adults: Priorities for Improving Access ... Released: June 02, 2016

  The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine convened an expert committee to study the accessibility and affordability of hearing health care for adults in the United States. Using a set of guiding principles to help shape its work, the committee recommends key institutional, technological, and regulatory changes that would enable consumers to find and fully use the appropriate, affordable, and high-quality services, technologies, and supports they need. The resulting report, Hearing Health Care for Adults: Priorities for Improving Access and Affordability, provides those recommendations.
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  Obesity in the Early Childhood Years: State of the Science and ... Released: June 01, 2016

  To explore what is known about effective and innovative interventions to counter obesity in young children, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Roundtable on Obesity Solutions held a workshop in Washington, DC, on October 6, 2015, titled Obesity in the Early Childhood Years: Emerging Science and Implemen­tation of Promising Solutions. The workshop brought together leaders from many sectors to describe the science of early childhood obesity, from its prevalence and trends to the influence of epigenetics and sleep.  Speakers and participants also explored risk factors for children, effective cross-sector solutions, and opportunities for interventions in the many settings where children live, learn, and play. This summary describes what was discussed at the workshop.
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  Health Literacy and Palliative Care: Workshop Summary ... Released: May 20, 2016

  To explore the relationship between palliative care and health literacy, and the importance of health literate communication in providing high-quality delivery of palliative care, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Roundtable on Health Literacy convened this 1-day public workshop featuring presentations and discussions that exam­ined the effect of low health literacy on all aspects of palliative care.
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  Preventing Bullying Through Science, Policy, and Practice ... Released: May 10, 2016

  Composition of peer groups, shifting demographics, changing societal norms, and modern technology are contextual factors that must be considered to understand and effectively react to bullying in the United States. Youth are embedded in multiple contexts and each of these contexts interacts with individual characteristics of youth in ways that either exacerbate or attenuate the association between these individual characteristics and bullying perpetration or victimization. Recognizing that bullying behavior is a major public health problem that demands the concerted and coordinated time and attention of parents, educators and school administrators, health care providers, policy makers, families, and others concerned with the care of children, this report evaluates the state of the science on biological and psychosocial consequences of peer victimization and the risk and protective factors that either increase or decrease peer victimization behavior and consequences.
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  Principles and Obstacles for Sharing Data from Environmental ... Released: May 05, 2016

  On March 19, 2014, the Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences, Research, and Medicine in conjunction with the Committee on Science, Technology, and the Law, both of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, held a workshop on the topic of the sharing of data from environmental health research.
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  Applying an Implementation Science Approach to Genomic ... Released: April 28, 2016

  Recognizing the current challenges that may impede the integration of genomics into clinical practice, the Roundtable on Translating Genomic-Based Research for Health (now called the Roundtable on Genomics and Precision Health) hosted a workshop on November 19, 2015 to explore the methods and approaches of implementation science for their potential ability to improve the integration of genomics into medicine.
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  Food Literacy: How Do Communications and Marketing ... Released: April 27, 2016

  On September 3–4, 2015, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Food and Nutrition Board convened a workshop in Washington, DC, to discuss how communications and marketing impact consumer knowledge, skills, and behavior around food, nutrition, and healthy eating.
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  Advancing the Discipline of Regulatory Science for Medical ... Released: April 20, 2016

  The field of endeavors known as "regulatory science" has grown out of the need to link and integrate knowledge within and among basic science research, clinical medicine, and other specific scientific disciplines whose focus, aggregation, and ultimate implementation could inform biomedical product development and regulatory decision making. On October 20–21, 2015, the Forum on Drug Discovery, Development, and Translation held a public workshop to facilitate dialogue among stakeholders about the current state and scope of regulatory sciences, opportunities to address barriers to the discipline's success, and avenues for fostering collaboration across sectors. This report is a summary of the workshop.
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  Establishing an African Association for Health Professions ... Released: April 19, 2016

  Africa faces a severe shortage of human resources for health. Over the past 5 years, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, in partnership with the National Institutes of Health, has sought to address this problem by supporting health professional education and research in Africa through the Medical Education Partnership Initiative (MEPI) and the Nursing Education Partnership Initiative (NEPI).
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  The Promises and Perils of Digital Strategies in Achieving ... Released: April 15, 2016

  The Roundtable on the Promotion of Health Equity and the Elimination of Health Disparities held a workshop in October 2014 focusing on the use of digital health technologies to improve health outcomes for racial and ethnic minority populations, how community engagement can improve access to high-quality health information for members of these groups, and on models of successful technology-based strategies to reduce health disparities. This is a summary of the discussions from the workshop.