The roots of the world’s most stubborn global health problems don’t yield to vibes-based solutions. They surrender to data, rigor, and the surprisingly radical idea of actually trying to figure out what works.  Governments and nonprofit organizations depend on the economists, activists, policymakers, and writers who are reshaping how we understand poverty, health, and progress. They’re […]

The grand challenges of global health and development, from feeding a warming world to defeating antibiotic resistance, require funding and effort and politics. But they also require breakthroughs. In the last hundred years, we’ve made incredible progress fighting malaria, invented game-changing vaccines, and developed new drugs that could change the course on heart disease. But […]

Global development is wobbling — funding slipping, crises multiplying — and the most reliable force we have isn’t a new pledge or a distant plan. It’s people on the ground.  These local organizers, nurses, food innovators, and environmental defenders are meeting growing need with competence and courage, turning urgency into practical service. They show how […]

“It is the first time since 2017 that a famine has been declared anywhere on Earth,” I read earlier this year. The famine in question was in Sudan. Soon after, I read another headline: “Famine confirmed for first time in Gaza.”  As images of emaciated children spread across social media, the question loomed over Western […]

By the time the woman arrived at the hospital, she had nearly bled to death.  She went into labor on a warm September day earlier this year, and made the trek from her rural village in the small West African country of Gambia to a nearby clinic. The baby was delivered successfully, but after the […]