North & Central America

This archive covers progress stories from North and Central America, spanning the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and the nations of Central America. Readers will find reporting on health, environment, community resilience, and policy advances across the region.

X-ray image of the intestine, for article on dostarlimab bowel cancer trial

New bowel cancer drug is found to be 100% effective

By / / Good News For Humankind

Immunotherapy just delivered something almost unheard of in cancer research: every single one of 42 patients in a rectal cancer trial showed no detectable tumour after treatment with the drug dostarlimab. Even more encouraging, the first 24 patients have now been tracked for an average of 26 months, and their cancers haven’t come back. For people with this specific subtype, it could mean skipping the chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery that often leave lasting damage. Larger studies are now underway to confirm the findings, but the signal is remarkable. It’s a glimpse of where cancer care may be heading worldwide — treatments that work with the body’s own immune system, and let patients keep their lives intact.

Claudia Sheinbaum, for article on Mexico's first female president

Mexico elects Claudia Sheinbaum as first female president

By / / Good News For Humankind

Mexico’s first female president won her 2024 election by roughly 30 percentage points — not a squeaker, but a landslide. Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist with a doctorate in energy engineering, takes office two centuries into the Mexican Republic’s history, in a country where women couldn’t even vote in national elections until 1953. One 87-year-old voter told Reuters she was simply grateful to be alive to see it. Sheinbaum has pledged to keep popular anti-poverty programs going and to address violence by investing in young people’s futures. In a world hungry for leaders who understand both science and social justice, her rise feels like a quiet shift in what’s possible — for Mexico, and far beyond it.

Karla Sofia Gascon, for article on Cannes Film Festival history

Karla Sofía Gascón becomes the first trans woman to win award for Best Actress at Cannes

By / / Good News For Humankind

Karla Sofía Gascón became the first openly transgender woman to win Best Actress at Cannes, sharing the 2024 honor with her three Emilia Pérez co-stars in a collective award chosen by Greta Gerwig’s jury. Gascón plays a Mexican drug lord who transitions in Jacques Audiard’s genre-bending musical, which also took home the festival’s Jury Prize. In her speech, she dedicated the win to “all trans people who suffer so much and must keep faith that changing is possible.” When a far-right politician responded with a transphobic post, six French LGBTQ+ groups filed a joint legal complaint — civil society closing ranks around her. Moments like this shift what young trans artists and audiences believe is possible.

A neuron or nerve cell is an electrically excitable cell, for article on ALS synapse-regenerating pill

Breakthrough synapse-regenerating ALS pill moves to phase 2 human trials

By / / Good News For Humankind

A once-daily ALS pill designed to rebuild neural connections — not just slow their loss — has cleared FDA approval to begin Phase 2 trials, with patients across the U.S. starting doses in April 2024. SPG302 works on synapses, the tiny junctions where neurons talk to each other, which start vanishing before motor neurons themselves die. Every ALS drug currently on the market aims to slow decline; this one is being tested for whether it can actually help recover lost function. For the roughly 30,000 Americans living with ALS, that’s a genuinely different question to be asking. If it works, it could reshape how researchers approach neurodegenerative disease far beyond ALS.

Good news for public health, for article on CAB-LA HIV prevention, for article on lenacapavir HIV prevention, for article on HIV infections in young men

HIV transmissions in the U.S. dropped 12% between 2018 and 2002

By / / Good News For Humankind

HIV infections among young men in the U.S. dropped 30% between 2018 and 2022, the steepest decline of any age group in the latest CDC surveillance data. Researchers credit expanded testing, faster connection to treatment, and the growing reach of PrEP — a daily pill that cuts transmission risk by up to 99% when taken consistently. The South, long carrying the heaviest HIV burden in the country, saw the largest regional drop, and Black men experienced an 18% decline. Gaps remain, especially for transgender women and Latino gay men, but the news from this generation is genuinely hopeful: when prevention tools reach people early, they work. It’s a glimpse of what ending the epidemic could actually look like.

Packages of diapers, for article on Medicaid diaper coverage

Tennessee to become the first U.S. state to provide some children’s diapers

By / / Good News For Humankind

Free diapers through Medicaid are coming to Tennessee this August, with families receiving 100 a month for every child under two. It’s the first program of its kind in the country, and advocates expect it to deliver close to 100 million diapers a year to families who need them. The need is real: the National Diaper Bank Network found that 92% of Tennessee families receiving diaper assistance are working parents who still can’t afford enough. Local diaper banks helped lay the groundwork, and they’ll keep serving families the program doesn’t reach. Tennessee’s approach offers a tested path other states can follow, turning a quiet daily struggle into something a community can actually solve together.

Molly Cook, for article on LGBTQ+ Texas Senate

Molly Cook just became the first out LGBTQ+ person elected to the Texas Senate

By / / Good News For Humankind

Molly Cook just became the first openly LGBTQ+ person ever elected to the Texas Senate, winning her Houston-area special election with 57% of the vote. An emergency room nurse and sixth-generation Texan, she built her campaign around a simple idea: the laws passed in Austin show up in her ER, whether it’s a miscarriage complication under the state’s abortion ban or a neighbor freezing after the power grid fails. Her win places an out senator in a chamber that has produced some of the country’s harshest anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. Representation in rooms like this one doesn’t change everything overnight, but it changes who has to be seen, and that’s how long-standing ceilings start to crack.

Salmon in stream, for article on U.S. overfishing list

The number of fish on U.S. overfishing list reaches an all-time low

By / / Good News For Humankind

Overfishing in U.S. waters just hit a hopeful milestone: 94% of tracked fish stocks are no longer being overfished, the best result since federal record-keeping began. Atlantic mackerel populations off the Gulf of Maine and Cape Hatteras have recovered enough to come off the overfishing list, alongside Gulf of Mexico cubera snapper and a Washington coast coho salmon stock that holds deep meaning for Pacific Northwest tribal nations. What’s most encouraging isn’t any single year’s numbers but the steady downward trend across multiple years, suggesting real structural progress. With roughly 3.3 billion people worldwide relying on seafood as a primary protein source, getting fisheries right is one of the most consequential food-system stories on the planet — and the U.S. is showing it can be done.

Person touching pregnant belly with hands forming a heart, for article on LGBTQ+ fertility coverage

Aetna agrees to provide equal fertility coverage for LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. in landmark settlement

By / / Good News For Humankind

LGBTQ+ couples who were charged a “queer tax” of up to $100,000 for fertility treatment just won a major shift at Aetna, including a $2 million fund to reimburse families who paid out of pocket. The settlement ends a policy that required same-sex couples to fund a year of treatments themselves before coverage kicked in, while heterosexual couples qualified after a simple conversation. It started with Emma Goidel and Ilana Caplan, who drained their savings through multiple rounds of IUI and IVF before suing under the Affordable Care Act’s ban on sex discrimination in health care. Their win creates a template other insurers can follow, and a legal path other families can walk, toward fertility care that treats every family as worth building.

Technicians carrying photovoltaic solar module while installing solar panel system on roof of house, for article on Solar for All grants

U.S. President Joe Biden announces $7 billion in federal solar power grants

By / / Good News For Humankind

Solar for All, a new $7 billion federal program, is set to bring rooftop and community solar to more than 900,000 lower- and middle-income households across the United States. Sixty grants will flow to state projects, tribal nations, and multi-state efforts, with participating families expected to save a combined $350 million each year on their energy bills. Alongside the funding, nearly 2,000 American Climate Corps positions will train local workers — in partnership with building trades unions — to install and maintain these systems. For communities long left out of the clean energy boom, it’s a real shift: the people who’ve shouldered the heaviest costs of fossil fuels are finally being placed at the front of the transition.