News

Today, Americans are more likely to be heavy drinkers and binge drinkers than in recent years due in large part to rising rates of drinking among women, according to a new analysis of county-level drinking patterns in the United States.

Coverage for a number of child health interventions increased across districts in Zambia, a success story that corresponds with the country’s improving rates of childhood survival. Yet results were less promising for more routine services that require multiple contacts with the health system, particularly those pertaining to maternal health.

Several nationally representative datasets detailing facility-level information ranging from stock-outs of essential medicines to patient volumes are now publicly available – a multicountry resource viewed as critical to assessing health facility performance, costs of producing health services, and how patients interact with their health systems.

Life expectancy improved for both men and women in the United States, at an average of 3.5 years gained since 1990. But at the same time a number of diseases, including chronic kidney disease and Alzheimer's disease, claimed more lives in the United States in 2013 than in 1990.

Dr. Rodrigo Guerrero, a Harvard-trained epidemiologist and mayor of Cali, Colombia, is the first winner of the Roux Prize, a new US$100,000 award for turning evidence into health impact and the largest prize of its kind.

New HIV infections dropped by almost one-third from the epidemic peak; TB deaths declined by 3.7% between 2000 and 2013; child deaths from malaria in sub-Saharan Africa have dropped 31.5% in the past decade. Despite major progress, the quality of programs to treat HIV varies widely.

Today, 2.1 billion people – nearly 30% of the world’s population – are either obese or overweight, according to a new, first-of-its kind analysis of trend data from 188 countries. The rise in global obesity rates over the last three decades has been substantial and widespread, presenting a major public health epidemic in both the developed and the developing world.

Since the start of an international effort to address maternal and child mortality, millions of lives have been saved globally, a new study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington shows.

Safer and cleaner road transport is critical for achieving health and development goals around the world, according to a new report that—for the first time—assesses the global health loss from the combined impact of road injuries and pollution that can be attributed to motorized transport.

Risk factors including smoking, poor diet, and lack of physical activity are taking their toll, according to a new study by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, working with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

Countries in the Arab world – from Saudi Arabia to Mauritania to Yemen – have made some significant health gains over the past two decades, including increases in life expectancy and swift reductions in child mortality. These are some of the findings published January 20 in “The State of Health in the Arab World, 1990–2010: An Analysis of the Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors.”