If you want to actually understand public health, at some point you have to read what the people in the field read. So I started following some of the journals and reports that researchers and policymakers actually use. I figured I’d share them, in case anyone reading this wants to do the same.

The big ones I follow are Health Affairs, which focuses on health policy, the American Journal of Public Health, which covers community health and health disparities, and the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, usually just called MMWR, which tracks disease trends and outbreaks every week. I’ve already linked MMWR reports in a few posts. They’re surprisingly readable once you get used to them.

To show what I mean, here’s an example. I read a study in Health Affairs that reviewed different ways to help low-income families afford food and eat better. It found that simply increasing food assistance benefits, without adding a bunch of restrictions, had the strongest evidence for improving food security. The diet-quality results were more mixed, which I appreciated, because it shows the researchers weren’t overselling it.

What I like about reading these directly, instead of just reading headlines about them, is that the real studies are way more careful. They point out what worked, what didn’t, and what’s still uncertain. Headlines tend to say “X cures Y,” but the actual research usually says “X helped with this part, didn’t help with that part, and we need more data.” That’s a more honest picture, and it’s taught me to be more careful with how I talk about things too.

I’m just a high school student, so I definitely don’t understand every part of these papers. But you don’t have to understand all of it to learn a lot. Reading the summaries and conclusions has probably shaped my thinking more than anything else. If you’re interested in this field, I’d really recommend picking one and just starting.