The freezer is filled with blue-lidded tubes of cows' blood, ready to be defrosted and used to feed the colony of mosquitoes. Nombuso Princess Bhembe tends the mosquitoes at Eswatini's national insectary, part of the southern African country's push to eliminate malaria.
Most people leave doctor visits with prescriptions, but still feel unsure—instructions make sense, but no one asks about their life. In contrast, when a provider knows your name, remembers your story, and explains care in a way that fits you, the experience feels different—and that difference matters.
The global prevalence of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) has surged to 1.3 billion people, marking a 143% increase over the past three decades. By 2050, projections indicate that this number could rise to 1.8 billion, primarily due to rising obesity and blood sugar levels.
According to a growing body of research, the circumference of your neck could be an indicator of a higher likelihood of serious metabolic diseases, including heart disease, diabetes, and sleep disorders. Another troubling fact is that even if your body mass index (BMI) index is healthy, just how large your neck is could still be a determining factor in your predisposition to developing these conditions.
I am open-minded; I believe in integrative practices, and I agree that the medical establishment can be arrogant and unduly influenced by the pharmaceutical industry, which now funds so much of medical research. But I fully understand Scherer's frustration with his interminable discussions with Kennedy about scientific articles.
In his first email to CDC staff, he wrote that the federal government's "decisions, communications, and processes" broke the public's trust during the pandemic, and that "acknowledging this reality is a necessary step toward renewal." In practice, the CDC has been undergoing a kind of forced renewal for months.
Has your resilience ever been fractured? Do you yearn to express solidarity in a pragmatic way? Have you signed an MOU? (Or even heard of an MOU?) These sentences contain some of the buzzwords likely to be relevant in the world of global health and development in 2026 according to our informal survey of 20 experts who work in the field.
In many ways, public health can't afford to ignore gamification. Addiction is already gamified-and it's winning. As one example, "smart" vapes now feature screens, rewards, animations, and puff tracking. These high-tech devices have become top-selling products, with 32% of youth and 33% of young adults reporting using vapes with screens, games, or Bluetooth connectivity in the past month. These products are applying the same engagement strategies used in consumer tech to drive repeat use and ultimately sustain addictive behavior.
The issue is particularly critical right now for people who have insurance plans through the Affordable Care Act marketplace. Prices for those plans have skyrocketed this year after Congress failed to extend critical tax credits. Without those credits, monthly premiums for ACA plans have, on average, more than doubled. Early data on ACA enrollments for 2026 not only suggests that fewer people are signing up for the plans, but also that those who are enrolling are often choosing bronze plans, which are high-deductible plans.
Everything is changing, and in the face of that, America is failing. Over 90,000 souls have paid for our failing. Millions more are living in terror for their livelihoods and their families. But Covid-19 isn't a technology problem, or a science question, or a supply chain issue, or even a question of doctoring. This challenge is public health, and that is something we've been failing at for a damn long time.
Many other higher-income countries are grappling with rising obesity and diabetes, but the U.S. stands out for how consistently those risks translate into worse cardiovascular outcomes, and how wide the gaps are by income, race, ethnicity, and geography.
