“Addressing gender equity and equality is essential to every other challenge we face,” said U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in a recent speech at the Generation Equality Forum. Following the forum, countries across Francophone Africa made key commitments to end gender-based violence (GBV), including child marriage.

Vaccination hesitancy, even in the midst of a global pandemic, is a major barrier to the elimination of several highly contagious and deadly diseases. While COVID-19 vaccines are getting the most attention, they are not the only vaccines that protect against deadly contagious diseases. And as with the COVID-19 vaccines, around the world, many communities are insufficiently covered by vaccines—particularly children. This is especially true in West Africa, where—though improving—childhood immunization rates still lag behind much of the world. To explore reasons for these persistent low childhood immunization rates, Breakthrough RESEARCH, a USAID-funded project that works to expand the evidence base for social and behavior change programming, increase healthy behaviors, and enable positive social norms through improved social and behavior change programming, conducted a study to look at behavioral drivers of decision-making about vaccines in Nigeria.

Seventy-three percent of women and girls receiving aid at one food program in Uganda reported being afraid during at least one point in the distribution process, said Hope Harriet, Empowered Aid Research Manager. Harriet spoke at the launch event for Empowered Aid’s Toolkit for Planning and Monitoring Safer Aid Distributions. Empowered Aid is a participatory action research project focused on addressing sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) in humanitarian settings and aid distribution. The project is led by the Global Women’s Institute (GWI) in partnership with CARE, the Union of Relief and Development Associations, the International Rescue Committee, and World Vision.

The population of unpaid family caregivers is shifting, and the pandemic has accelerated that change. One in five carers became caregivers for the first time during the pandemic, according to the Embracing Carers Global Carer Well Being Index®. A disproportionate share of these new carers were Gen Z or millennial (less than 38 years old). And 25 percent were caring for children and a sick/aging parent or grandparent.

Whether marginalized populations, such as adolescents, LGBTQ+ people, migrant workers, and sex workers are included in health services can be a “litmus test” of our progress towards universal health coverage (UHC), said Sivananthi Thanenthiran, Executive Director of Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW). Thanenthiran spoke at a recent Wilson Center event with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO) Department of Sexual and Reproductive Health and Research about the importance of engaging stakeholders in sexual and reproductive health (SRH) to achieve UHC for all. In SRH services, the most marginalized and most vulnerable populations are often left out, she said. When engaging stakeholders, representatives from these groups must be included to ensure equity in healthcare services.

“Spoiler alert: COVID made it even worse,” said Natascha Braumann, Director of Global Government and Public Affairs for Fertility at EMD Serono, of declining fertility trends across the globe. Braumann spoke at a recent Wilson Center event highlighting pre-pandemic fertility, demographic trends, and the impact of COVID-19. The panel was co-sponsored by EMD Serono, the healthcare business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.