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Widespread destruction from the Yemeni Civil War (2014–present) triggered the world’s largest cholera outbreak. We compiled a comprehensive health dataset and created dynamic maps to demonstrate spatiotemporal changes in cholera infections and war conflicts. We aligned and merged daily, weekly, and monthly epidemiological bulletins of confirmed cholera infections and daily conflict events and fatality records to create a dataset of weekly time series for Yemen at the governorate level (subnational regions administered by governors) from 4 January 2016 through 29 December 2019. We demonstrated the use of dynamic mapping for tracing the onset and spread of infection and manmade factors that amplify the outbreak. We report curated data and visualization techniques to further uncover associations between infectious disease outbreaks and risk factors and to better coordinate humanitarian aid and relief efforts during complex emergencies.

The Seifu et al. article is a start to a timely inquiry on policymakers' perceptions of mathematical modeling and simulations aimed to guide obesity prevention programs. These computational tools have the potential to transform the fields of public health policy. Yet, to be effective, a broad Data and Information Literacy Initiative is needed to instill policymakers with the willingness to become life-long learners, to adapt and accept new technologies, attitudes, information, and creative ways of thinking.

The article in this issue by O'Donnell et al stimulated my attention to the methods beyond randomized controlled trials that can help assess public health research and rank its utility in hierarchies of evidence. The future of public health policy research will surely combine computational power and the power of human ingenuity.

Because of air quality management and control, traffic-related air pollution has declined in Quito, Ecuador. We evaluated the effect of a city-wide 5-year air pollution control program on the occurrence of acute respiratory illness (ARI). We compared two studies conducted at the same location in Quito: in 2000, 2 years before the policy to control vehicle emission was introduced, and in 2007. Each study involved ~ 730 children aged 6-12 years, observed for 15 weeks. We examined associations between carboxyhemoglobin (COHb) serum concentration-an exposure proxy for carbon monoxide (CO)-ambient CO, and ARI in both cohorts. In 2007, we found a 48% reduction in the ARI incidence (RR 0.52; 95% CI 0.45-0.62, p 0.0001), and 92% decrease in the percentage of children with COHb 2.5% as compared to the 2000 study. We found no association between COHb concentrations above the safe level of 2.5% and the ARI incidence (p = 0.736). The decline in air pollution due to vehicle emissions control was associated with a lower incidence of respiratory illness in school children.

The Flint Water Crisis-due to changes of water source and treatment procedures-has revealed many unsolved social, environmental, and public health problems for US drinking water, including opportunistic premise plumbing pathogens (OPPP). The true health impact of OPPP, especially in vulnerable populations such as the elderly, is largely unknown. We explored 108 claims in the largest US national uniformly collected data repository to determine rates and costs of OPPP-related hospitalizations. In 1991-2006, 617,291 cases of three selected OPPP infections resulted in the elderly alone of $0.6 billion USD per year of payments. Antibiotic resistance significantly increased OPPP illness costs that are likely to be underreported. More precise estimates for OPPP burdens could be obtained if better clinical, microbiological, administrative, and environmental monitoring data were cross-linked. An urgent dialog across governmental and disciplinary divides, and studies on preventing OPPP through drinking water exposure, are warranted.

By investing in healthy human life we are investing in our social capital, the primary treasure of a modern technologically advanced society. In rethinking the definition of health from a new interdisciplinary viewpoint, I argue that health can be measured by satisfaction with life fulfillment and by abilities that permit an individual to perform tasks demanded by a society. While considering health as a property of a dynamic system governed by social and environmental determinants, a balance between societal and personal responsibility for health and wellbeing has to be maintained to protect those who have limited opportunities to "use their biologically given and personally acquired potentials" or to entertain their rights of healthy living standards. Instead of separating the biologically given and personally acquired potentials, I suggest capitalizing on emerging information, technologies, and materials aiming to enhance human potentials, both physical and intellectual.

Seasonality, a systematic periodic occurrence of events over the course of a year, is a well-known phenomenon in life and health sciences. Understanding seasonal fluctuations in diseases patterns presents us with a major challenge. To develop efficient strategies for disease prevention and control, we need to grasp the main determinants of temporal variations and their interactions. This paper will introduce the notion of seasonality by outlining several of its factors, using as illustrations respiratory and enteric water- or food-borne infections.

The recent adoption of electronic technologies for use in management of personal health data have been accompanied by a commensurate level of concern about privacy. Public health authorities have been able to continue their full access to personal information, while restricting the information given to academic health researchers through the practice of aggregation. Through this band-aid strategy, there is a very real potential that critical pieces of information are missing for the purposes of research. While this might be a logical sacrifice in order to preserve individual privacy, quantitative analysis of the privacy gained through this method of aggregation shows that little, if any, benefit is achieved. If aggregation were the sole available means to reach the aims of both privacy and research, then further analysis of the practice of aggregation would be unnecessary. Yet suitable privacy protection techniques abound, enabling academic research to progress while adding true protection to individual health information.

Russia has the world's second highest incarceration rate after the USA. These two countries have less than 7% of the world population, but they harbor approximately one-third of all prisoners (i). Although the issues of morbidity and mortality in its penitentiaries are of great consequence, there is little literature on prison health in Russia. The review of mortality and morbidity in Russian penitentiaries by Bobrik et al. fills this gap and produces a surprising conclusion: prisoners in Russia (who are mostly males) have a substantially lower risk of death than free-living Russian males.

In the last two decades, emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases have amplified the use of emotionally charged terms like "outbreak," "epidemic," and "pandemic" in the life sciences literature, the news media, and clinical practice. For instance, "outbreak" sounds like a scientific term, yet has quite a variety of uses. Its precise meaning is not universally understood, except that "outbreak" always refers to something positive in number and negative in perception. The many dimensions of the health field would benefit from a concerted effort to strengthen the definitions of key terms. The development of public health policy is an art form, aimed at some desired population health outcome, requiring a strong adherence to reliable scientific data. Although many different factors affect the adoption of interventions to promote health and curb disease, the closer the formulation of public health policy to scientific findings and terms, the more likely the goal intended will be reached.