Sara Bleich – Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies

Sara Bleich named as senior advisor for COVID-19 in the Office of the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)

January 21, 2021

Harvard Pop Center faculty member Sara Bleich, a researcher committed to providing evidence to help shape and drive policies aimed at preventing obesity and diet-related diseases, will now serve as part of the Biden-Harris administration. Learn more…

The power of policy; what happens when sweetened beverages are taxed & school meals are legislated to be more nutritious?

July 09, 2020

A review of two implemented policies—an excise tax of 1.81 cents/ounce on sweetened beverages in Philadelphia, and the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010—shows that both policies had a positive impact on health and health behaviors. Authors of the…

Ethical considerations of food and beverage warnings; weighing the pros and cons

May 21, 2020

Harvard Bell Fellow Anna Grummon, PhD, and colleagues (including Harvard Pop Center faculty members Jason Block and Sara Bleich) evaluate the ethical strengths and weaknesses of food and beverage warnings (aimed to help prevent obesity and improve…

More federal funds are needed to help low-income children get adequate nutrition during school closures

April 28, 2020

Public health policy professor Sara Bleich makes the case in this interview for why additional federal funding for schools needs to be part of future relief legislation, as well as increased SNAP benefits.

Prevention may be worth much more than pound of cure to tackle obesity trends

January 07, 2020

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that utilized state-level data projects that by 2030 almost 50% of U.S. adults will be obese, with some states coming in higher than 50% and no state at a level below 35%. Harvard Pop Center…

Studies find evidence of systemic racial discrimination across multiple domains in the United States

November 07, 2019

Harvard Pop Center faculty member Sara Bleich and her colleagues have published two studies examining experiences of racial discrimination in the United States. One study found substantial black-white disparities in experiences of discrimination in…

Did the sweetened beverage tax actually put people out of work?

May 03, 2019

According to a new study that includes our faculty member Sara Bleich and former Harvard RWJF Health & Society Scholar Christina Roberto as authors, there was not an uptick in unemployment claims in the year following the implementation of the…

What can we do to help people from gaining too much weight?

April 11, 2019

Professor Sara Bleich, a Harvard Pop Center faculty member, sheds light on how our environment can shape our behavior (and our body), and shares her journey to becoming a public policy expert on obesity in this piece in The Harvard Gazette.

A comprehensive road map for tackling risky and costly diet-related disease in the U.S.

August 16, 2018

Sara Bleich, PhD, professor of public health policy at the Harvard Chan School, has penned an op-ed in The New England Journal of Medicine that makes a strong case for an approach that is multi-prong, spanning health systems, population, individual,…

How can we safeguard health despite deregulation of federal food policies?

May 30, 2018

Sara Bleich, PhD, has penned a discussion in Preventive Medicine that outlines some of the recent changes made to nutritional policies as a result of deregulation efforts by the current federal administration. She emphasizes the important role that state…