Colombia Is Hit Hard by Zika, but Not by Microcephaly

In Uruguay, illegality and stigma surrounding abortions resulted in problems with maternal mortality rates. Utilizing a unique solution, a medical protocol was created to provide initial information and followup care to women seeking abortions.

A collaboration between architectural designers and medical providers created a cholera treatment clinic in Port-au-Prince where the design of the building itself supports treatment. The building is well ventilated and filled with natural light, provides an open space for providers to see many patients and be able to respond in case of crisis, and has the ability to collect and treat water.

The poliovirus has plagued Nigeria for years, but the country is approaching near-eradication thanks to community public health workers' efforts to increase education, immunization and reporting. Throughout the country workers known as Disease Surveillance and Notification Officers are trained to recognize the symptoms of polio so the cases can be reported and addressed immediately. Coupled with the efforts of community informants, this approach has already resulted in parts of Nigeria becoming polio-free.

The United States and Italy have been playing catch up in the mitigation of the coronavirus pandemic and were resistant to implementing social distancing, while other countries took more aggressive approaches. Now both countries are looking to China and South Korea to learn how sweeping actions and industrialized scaling of measures such as fever clinics, temperature check points, portable CAT scanning, and social isolation, have helped to contain the pandemic.

Amid the pandemic, medical researchers and an abortion-rights advocacy group in the U.S. are working to make the abortion pill available via mail. Although there is ambiguity surrounding the rules and regulations of how the pill must be distributed to patients, some doctors have helped efforts by agreeing to register with F.D.A.-approved manufacturers and a handful of states are allowing the pill to be mailed after an in-person ultrasound has been conducted.

The HIV/AIDS clinical trial network’s 30 sites have spent years building trust among historical marginalized communities so that more clinical trial participants come from communities of color. Educational outreach, awareness-raising efforts, and one-on-one conversations are among the strategies used to make the scientific process more transparent. The engagement model is upfront about abuses from the past and uses straightforward explanations with no medical jargon. Infectious disease experts are using the trust-building model to increase the racial diversity of participants in COVID-19 vaccine trials.

Better Reproductive Health, Better Communities Project is a partnership between nonprofits and medical providers working to increase awareness about unintended pregnancies and unsafe abortions, while also ensuring women have better access to high-quality post-abortion care. The project has focused on providing family planning and emergency contraception to women in low-income urban areas. Volunteer peer educators and social media has helped reach over 4,000 women, spreading information about sexual and reproductive health services and connecting women to quality abortion care.

Mayday Health is a health-education nonprofit that helps patients in states that have banned abortion figure out how to get abortions anyway. For people living in states where abortion is banned, Mayday provides step-by-step instructions for how to obtain abortion pills, as well as medical information about the safety and reliability of medication abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy.

Ahead of a vote on a ballot measure that would have ensured that no right to abortion could ever be added to Kentucky's constitution, pro-choice activists connected with voters via protests and door-knocking campaigns. Their efforts focused on registering new voters and exploring the nuances of reproductive health care, and the amendment was successfully defeated by a margin of nearly 5 percentage points.

Teams of Community Direct Distributors (CDD) are leading drug distribution campaigns to prevent and eliminate neglected tropical diseases in hard-to-reach, rural areas. These CDDs are members of the community they serve and are trained to educate the locals on disease prevention and administer the drugs themselves. With the CDDs’ help, several states have already eliminated some diseases and greatly reduced the spread of others.