Mark Hayward
Population health scientist and demographer. Science thrives on honesty, honor,and commitment to others. Cat dad to two girls who are vying for the record of the longest lived cats.
- I think it’s time to re-read Orwell’s 1984. Best to be prepared for the 2nd year of the Trump regime.
- There is increasing interest in whether vaccines have broader benefits for aging and health beyond their specific disease infection. Here's a recent study linking the shingles vaccine with biological aging, pointing to systemic benefits of a vaccine. academic.oup.com/biomedgeront...
- I just wrote my first external tenure review letter for 2026. I don’t want any of my academic colleagues to assume that I will be equally available (or quick) in the months ahead. Just saying.
- As an IU alum (PhD 1980), I’m happily stunned by the Rose Bowl halftime score. I have too much respect for Bama to assume they won’t come back. But this is a once in a lifetime event. The program with almost the worst historical record up on a legendary successful program. I’ll relish this moment.
- I’m a demographer who studies US mortality. Looks like 2026 is shaping up to be a banner year, with vaccination rates crumbling and people foregoing health insurance because of rising costs. Why isn’t health an American value?
- Today was Pearl Harbor Day. Not a peep in the NYTs or Washington Post. It was a day that changed our country and the world. But now it’s invisible since history has become passe.
- I’m a Boomer who has watched the US come apart at the seams (eg, Vietnam), then lace itself together, only to come apart at the seams!(Watergate)…and it still continues. This dynamic is crazy making both domestically and internationally. But at least I have perspective LOL.
- My research team has published research showing that malnutrition and hunger in childhood are long-term risk factors for dementia decades later in life. Makes me think about the long-term health consequences of withholding SNAP benefits from families.
- I asked one set of kids who came to our door on Halloween if theyd already been at my house. They said yes they had…but their mom said it was OK to swing by a second time. Hmmm…some parents need parenting lessons.
- I never realized that Trump owned cattle ranches and soy bean farms in Argentina. Who would have guessed?
- I gave a keynote at a conference & have been relaxing at the hotel bar. I struck up a conversation with a guy next to me. He asked what I do for a living and I hesitated. I’m a biodemographer and social epidemiologist. This led to an amazing conversation about our nation’s health.
- Before he left, he confessed that he was a polio survivor. It was evident as he walked out of the bar. Yes, we had a lot in common when it came to vaccines.
- My lab group met today. Grad students and postdocs engaged in cutting edge research on health and aging topics. Every meeting it seems that they have a new article accepted or fascinating results. They’re provocative and fun! The next generation in this area of science. I love it!
- I continue to be stunned at how poor health literacy is in the US. You’d think folks would have learned something during the worst of the pandemic. It almost seems the opposite. Perhaps the COVID “worm” ate people’s brains.
- Today in my mortality grad seminar, we focused on what transpired in the US & comparisons with high income countries.The students were shocked by how devastating COVID was to US life expectancy compare to Europe. Then we discussed the Great Barringron Declaration. They were stunned.
- New evidence showing that educational attainment has a dose-response association with dementia risk throughout the entire distribution of education. 🧪 read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a...
- If you think the far rights’ proposals to raise US birth rates will work, think again. www.newsweek.com/low-birth-ra...
- I was thinking about 9/11 today as I was traipsing around airports. I was surprised by the lack of government attention and the media. 9/11 was a turning point in our history and had wide consequences, e.g., the War on Terror, the establishment of Homeland Security and wars in the Middle East. 1/2
- Finally, a UA pilot on my last flight commented about the significance of today. He lost 2 friends who were pilots of the UA flights that crashed that day. I’m really glad he said something.
- #IAPHS I’m at a population health science conference in Pittsburgh. Researchers from many disciplines have gathered to talk about ways of improving health, bringing in “cells to society” perspectives. So wonderful at a time when HHS has declared war on the health sciences. Science will triumph.
- I’m traveling for biz. Staying at the Westin in Pittsburgh. I’m in the bar and just watched the bartender help out a street person fill their thermos with ice water. I love this place even more. Kindness. It still exists.
- My head spins when I see vaccine resistance—especially for children. Children’s lives in today’s world are at serious risk because of vaccine resistance. How do I know?Because of a real life counterfactual. Yeah, science
- open.substack.com/pub/insideme... Some days I wonder whether Kennedy will start staffing CDC with witch doctors. Clearly, the germ theory of disease has been demoted within CDC.
- When the USSR was collapsing, they stopped publishing life tables because life expectancy was rapidly declining between 1974 and 1986. That’s one of the indicators the CIA used to gauge the level of internal rot in the USSR. Makes me wonder whether the US will continue publishing its life tables.
- I’d really prefer not to go to Mexico or Canada for my Covid booster. Just saying.
- Years ago UT students protested the Texas Lege allowing guns on campus. The students started a passive protest, “Cocks for Glocks.” They attached dildoes to their backpacks, bicycles, whatever. The campus was flooded with sex toys to affirm how stupid our Lege was. 1/
- It makes me wonder whether plastic sandwiches attached to DC residents’ backpacks, briefcases, cars, and bicycles might have a similar effect on the occupation of DC by the military and ICE, our own American Gestapo. Protest with a sense of humor.
- Education is now what defines social class in the United States. www.linkedin.com/posts/conrad...
- Summer in Austin is now 24 days longer than it was 30 years ago. A longer summer is the case just about everywhere in the US. Maybe that’s why the feds are closing down climate research and disappearing the data.
- Here’s an example — among so many — of how the GOP kills great institutions — but is incapable of building them. www.texastribune.org/2025/08/21/u...
