global health

Americans across much of the U.S. might feel as if they are finally waking from a bad dream. COVID-19 cases are at their lowest levels since March 2020, vaccines are widely available, workplaces are reopening, social life has resumed, and domestic travel neared an all-time high over the July 4 holiday weekend. This “return to normal” is far from the case in many areas: countries from India to the United Kingdom to Argentina have experienced recent spikes in COVID-19 cases, with sometimes devastating results. First in India and then in the U.K., spikes in infection rates resulting in new lockdown restrictions were driven by the Delta variant – a mutation of the original SARS-CoV-2 virus. The...

Being in the middle of a global pandemic feels unsettling and frightening. Part of that fear is rooted in the unknown, because we still have many unanswered questions: fundamental information researchers don’t know about the coronavirus and how viruses like it will act in the future. At the moment, we’re rightly focused on urgent issues such as securing personal protective equipment and ventilators. But we need more research, because to win the battle we need to understand our enemy so that better diagnosis, treatment, and prevention will become a reality. As I wrote recently in USA Today , “Rarely in recent memory has it been this difficult to see beyond the next day. ... But that is...

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was treating patients with HIV/AIDS before the disease had a name. In the early 1980’s, a period he describes as the dark years of his professional career, half of the patients he saw would be dead within twelve months, and the medical community had no idea what was killing them. At the Washington Post Live event Transformers:Health on June 11, Dr. Fauci described the progress that has been made in HIV treatment, as well as the challenges that must still be addressed to tackle the disease in the United States and globally, in a discussion entitled “Chasing a cure: the global outlook on HIV/AIDS” ...

Dear Research Advocate: We saw the power of a robust public health force, integrated public health programs, and an innovative R&D pipeline this week as the World Health Organization declared the recent Ebola outbreak contained . Think of the lives and dollars that could be saved if global health were accorded the priority it deserves on a sustained basis, rather than gaining traction only when crises are upon us! We have updated our Top Ten Reasons to invest in global R&D. Use this terrific Kaiser Family Foundation primer on all things global health policy-related, and make the case for global health research as a strategic asset on social media or with your congressional...