Women, Poor Testing, Poor Health

Women spend 25% more time in poor health than men.

While women generally live six years longer than men, a new report from the World Economic Forum and McKinsey Health Institute finds that women will spend an average of nine years in poor health throughout their lifetimes (men average a little over seven years). What’s more, it found that “women are most likely to be affected by a sex-specific condition between the ages of 15 and 50.” Years that are vital to a woman’s potential to support herself and others.

PEPFAR: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

By the end of 2024, only 10% of the US Representatives who voted to create PEPFAR will still be in office—and none of the legislation’s original co-authors will remain.

In 2008, Tanzania President Jakaya Kikwete implored, “Let me just make an appeal: Let PEPFAR continue...Can you imagine if this program is discontinued or disrupted? There would be so many people who lose hope, and certainly there will be death. You create more orphans… for PEPFAR not to continue, it's a recipe for disaster for us.”

Migration: The US Has More Than One Border

In 2023, 85% of all land border encounters with individuals on the terrorist watchlist occurred on our northern border.

In my recent Stubborn Thing, “Migration: This Time It’s Different,” I pointed out that, for the first time ever, most of the irregular encounters (the movement of people seeking to evade legal regulations and frameworks) along our southern border involved migrants originating from beyond Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of Central America.

There’s another trend that’s fallen off policymakers’ radar: the growing numbers of irregular encounters—including with individuals on our terrorist watch list—along our northern border.

Malaria Elimination Proof of Concept?

Cabo Verde hasn’t had a case of malaria in three years. It once had the deadly disease on all ten of its islands.

However, there is renewed hope for progress in tackling one of the world’s greatest killers: malaria. Caused by more than 100 types of parasites, malaria enters the body through the bite of the female Anopheles mosquito and contaminates the bloodstream. While the US successfully eliminated the disease as a public health threat in 1951, half the world remains at risk of infection according to Malaria No More, a global organization that mobilizes political commitments and funding for malaria eradication.