From disease eradication efforts to advances in vaccination and maternal health, this archive tracks real progress in public health. Stories here focus on what’s working — policies, interventions, and research that are improving and extending lives around the world.
The age-adjusted prevalence of dementia declined from 12.2 percent of people over age 65 in 2000 to 8.5 percent of people over age 65 in 2016—a nearly one-third drop from the 2000 level, according to a new RAND Corporation study.
Maternal vaccination reduced rates of severe medically attended lower respiratory tract illness due to RSV by 81.8% across the first three months of life.
Across all the models tested, the scientists report a 100% response rate. They deployed the treatment against pancreatic cancer specifically, but believe the results bode well for its wider application.
Psilocybin therapy is making history: Compass Pathways will launch the world’s first Phase 3 trial for treatment-resistant depression by the end of 2022, enrolling nearly 1,000 participants across two pivotal studies. This is the threshold every promising drug must cross to become an approved medicine, and no psychedelic compound has crossed it before. For the roughly 100 million people worldwide whose depression doesn’t respond to standard treatments, the stakes are real — current options are few, often invasive, and inconsistently helpful. A single guided dose, if the evidence holds, could reshape what care looks like. Beyond depression, this moment signals that a long-stigmatized class of medicines is finally being tested with the rigor patients deserve.
The money will be used to help implement the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s strategy through 2026 and will be focused particularly on Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Zimbabwe just became the first country in Africa to approve cabotegravir, a long-acting HIV prevention injection given once every two months — joining only Australia and the United States. For young women and girls especially, that change is huge: a single shot replaces the daily pill regimen that stigma, privacy concerns, and patchy healthcare often make hard to sustain. It builds on a remarkable turnaround, with AIDS-related deaths in Zimbabwe falling from roughly 130,000 in 2002 to about 20,000 in 2021. As advocate Nyasha Sithole put it, ending the epidemic requires a real “basket of tools.” Zimbabwe’s quick action sends a powerful signal that African regulators don’t have to wait in line for life-saving HIV breakthroughs.
The treatment from UC Davis Health involves administering a stem cell patch to the fetus’ spine while still developing in the womb, and early results are promising one year on.
The Alzheimer’s Association called the robust study from American biotech company Biogen “the most encouraging results in clinical trials treating the underlying causes of Alzheimer’s to date.”
The coal-fired Loy Yang A power station near Melbourne – responsible for more than three percent of the country’s emissions – will shut down in 2035, a decade earlier than planned.
A French research company interviewed more than 4,000 adults across France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. More than 50% reported having reduced their meat consumption in the last five years largely for environmental, animal welfare, and personal health reasons.
