With a high burden of cervical cancer in Tanzania, we are advocating for the government’s parliament to prioritize cervical cancer prevention in its annual budget, said Dr. Safina Yuma, a Reproductive Cancer Coordinator at the Ministry of Health, Tanzania, at a recent event hosted by TogetHER for Health on cervical cancer leadership in recognition of cervical cancer awareness month. At least 270,000 women die globally from cervical cancer each year and in Tanzania, it is a leading cause of death, taking the lives of approximately 4,200 women annually. However, cervical cancer is 90 percent preventable with appropriate prevention strategies such as human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccinations and screenings. Expert leaders from NJIA, a leadership development program for practitioners working in cervical cancer research and prevention, discussed strategies for improving collaboration and leadership within the medical profession to reduce avoidable deaths.

“Most of the people living here are helpless,” said a woman in Jaffna, a district of northern Sri Lanka, nearly ten years after the country’s civil war ended. It was 2017, and I was conducting research with women in two villages in Jaffna. This woman’s sentiment reflected the challenges many in her community are still facing, including the ability to access health services. Through this research, my colleagues and I found that women’s access to healthcare was influenced by both their gender—particularly gender norms and gender roles—and household income. Better understanding of how gender and gender dynamics impact healthcare access will be essential to improving their lives. 

Since its onset, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on maternal mortality has been a question of great concern. And yet, few empirical attempts have been made to capture the potentially profound impact of the pandemic on maternal deaths, particularly in resource-limited settings.

Criss-crossing the expansive nation from the icy northeast to the dry deserts of the far west and into the mountain jungles of the south, China is constructing the world’s largest ultra-high voltage power grid, connecting distant coal, wind, solar, and hydro to energy-hungry east coast cities. Beijing recently ordered vast numbers of batteries to be connected to the grid—batteries that can store excess wind, solar, and other renewable power, and then dispatch it as needed. This “New Energy Cloud” provides the flexibility in the power grid that is required for finally dethroning old king coal. However, zapping coal power long distances doesn’t exactly solve the climate problem. 

Gender issues, climate change, and security problems are interconnected in complex and powerful ways. Unfortunately, some of these connections have not received enough attention from scholars, policy analysts, and policymakers. This has serious, real-world implications for the promotion of gender equality, the mitigation of climate change, and the advancement of peace and security—three priorities that everyone should care about.  

Human rights have been central to the family planning movement for well over half a century, although family planning programs have not always lived up to the human rights commitments that governments publicly subscribe to. The right of couples to control their fertility was first codified in the 1968 Tehran Declaration, which noted that:

“Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children.”

U.S. efforts to reclaim its climate change leadership, as demonstrated at COP26 in Glasgow, will be undermined if the country does not also step up and accelerate action on reducing plastic waste. Plastic is packing a serious carbon punch along its entire supply chain, from oil extraction and manufacturing to disposal. According to Beyond Plastic’s new report, The New Coal: Plastics and Climate Change, the U.S. plastic industry’s contribution to climate change will exceed that of coal by the year 2030.

“Regardless of income level, regardless of education level, Black women, Native women, women who live in rural areas are more likely to die or be left scared or scarred from an experience that should be safe and should be a joyful one; and we know a primary reason why this is true – systemic inequities,” said Vice President Kamala Harris during her opening remarks at the first-ever White House Maternal Health Call to Action Summit on December 7, 2021. Members of Congress and maternal health advocates gathered to discuss the importance of addressing racial disparities and systemic challenges in maternal health through national policy.