While the code of silence and cloak of secrecy around patient survival and recovery remains the norm in most of the country, there are ways you can increase the chances that you will get better care, according to Makary, a surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and a professor at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

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Waite and co-author Mary Elizabeth Hughes, of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, found that divorced or widowed people have 20 percent more chronic health conditions such as heart disease, diabetes or cancer than married people.

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Is the methodology used by Les Roberts of the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health, in Baltimore, and his colleagues, sound enough for reliable conclusions to be drawn from it?

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Testifying to Congress recently, Tara O'Toole of the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health said that anti-terrorism programmes have concentrated chiefly on the threat posed by conventional explosives or chemical weapons.

ECONOMIST: Biowarfare could be the worst terrorist threat of all

"If we do indeed have a short supply of influenza vaccines, I think it's going to have a significant impact on the public health, " says Sara Cosgrove, director of the antibiotic management program at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

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