By David Fleming

One of the great public health intervention programs of modern times was conceived by two Seattle visionaries, a doctor at the University of Washington and a Seattle Fire Department chief, both of whom asked a simple question: “Could behavior change at the fire department change the mortality of the city?”

By Sue-Lynn Moses

Back in 2015, when Bloomberg Philanthropies teamed up with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to launch a $100 million Data for Health initiative, we learned something surprising: According to the World Health Organization, around two-thirds of all deaths around the world go unrecorded—that’s around 35 million people. Also, of the over 30 percent of deaths that are recorded by a death certificate, 75 percent of those fail to name a specific cause of death.

By Seth Borenstein

A conference on climate change and health is back on, but apparently minus the U.S. government.

By Diane Mapes

As with many studies, there was good news and bad news.

The good news:  Public health researchers from the University of Washington looked at cancer’s mortality rate county by county and found that overall, deaths from the disease dropped 20 percent during the last 35 years, falling from 240 deaths per 100,000 people in 1980 to 192 deaths per 100,000 people in 2014.