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.
Starbucks says it will pay travel expenses for U.S. employees to access abortion or gender-confirmation procedures if those services aren’t available within 100 miles of a worker’s home.
The Liberal government has announced more than $3.5 million in funding for two initiatives it says will improve access to abortion services and reproductive health information in Canada.
Clerkenwell Health’s opening marks a turning point for psychedelic medicine, moving it from university labs into dedicated commercial infrastructure built to carry promising compounds through late-stage clinical trials. The clinic’s first focus is patients facing terminal diagnoses — a population where conventional treatments often fall short, and where earlier psilocybin studies showed lasting reductions in anxiety and depression after just one or two sessions. By serving multiple drug developers at once, the facility could meaningfully accelerate how quickly different psychedelic compounds reach the people who need them. It’s a signal that this field is ready to scale.
SIDS has resisted explanation for generations, but researchers have now found the first biological signal present at birth that distinguishes vulnerable infants from others. Australian scientists discovered that babies who died of SIDS had measurably lower levels of an enzyme called butyrylcholinesterase — which helps regulate the brain’s arousal response — in routine newborn blood samples. That same heel-prick screening already happens in hospitals worldwide, meaning a future test could fit into existing programs with little disruption. This finding gives researchers a concrete target for the first time, and brings the dream of preventing these devastating losses meaningfully closer.
Advanced practice registered nurses, nurse-midwives, and physician assistants will now be permitted to conduct medication and aspiration abortions in Connecticut.
The landmark findings from a massive study of more than 12,000 cancer patients offer researchers a trove of new resources to guide future studies on tailored cancer treatments.
A COVID-19 breath test just cleared a major hurdle: the FDA has authorized the first device that can detect the virus from a single exhale, returning results in about three minutes. Made by InspectIR, the device picks up a signature pattern of five compounds the body releases during infection, and in a study of nearly 2,500 people it correctly flagged 91 percent of positive cases. No swabs, no lab. Beyond this moment, the authorization is a real proof of concept for breath-based diagnostics — a field researchers have long hoped could one day help detect cancers, kidney disease, and other conditions, especially in communities where traditional testing is hardest to reach.
A new Yale study shows that one in three patients with a severe skin disease were able to regrow hair after being treated with a common arthritis drug.
The new study led by researchers from Imperial College London found that people also reported a reduction in their depression symptoms alongside these brain changes.
Locked-in syndrome is a rare condition that makes it impossible for the patient to move or speak, but are still conscious and can see, hear, and smell.
