Katherine Leach-Kemon

China’s emphasis on providing primary health care to even the most remote areas has paid off. Yet, despite impressive health progress, massive disparities persist within China.

If you asked the average global health professional to name the countries where alcohol caused the most health problems, what would they say?

There’s plenty of moral and rhetorical support for fighting diseases of poverty, but if you look at global health spending trends lately the story is one of stagnation, or even decline.

A lot of progress has been made against measles, but many around the world remain unlucky when it comes to this deadly and disabling disease. And bad luck, when it comes to infectious disease, travels.

The benefits of breastfeeding to the health and development of newborn children are well-documented, with ‘exclusive’ breastfeeding in the first six months of life shown to enhance children’s immunity to infectious disease

Many governments are trying to make it harder for the tobacco industry to do business in their countries.

Before the civil war started the spring of 2011, Syria was among the most impressive health success stories in the Arab world. Out of all the countries in this region, Syria ranked third for gains in female life expectancy and fourth for gains in male life expectancy between 1990 and 2010.

The health systems in these poor countries are overwhelmed by this outbreak and the progress that’s been made in fighting these diseases, or in improving services like maternal and child care, is under threat. High-quality, timely data are urgently needed to understand how the Ebola epidemic is affecting other health issues in these three nations.

The War on Drugs has failed, a blue-ribbon panel of experts has concluded, and has actually made things worse.

As global leaders repeatedly fail to reach agreements on setting emissions targets to slow the rate of global warming, local communities are taking action to protect themselves from a leading driver of climate change: the burning of fossil fuels.

In the countries most affected by the outbreak, family members of victims have become outcasts out of fear that they will transmit the virus. Panic about the virus is spreading globally.

But when it comes to the health situation in Israel and Palestine, the lopsided death tolls during periods of conflict are only the tip of the iceberg.

Studies have shown that, done right, public discussion of celebrity suicides can help educate people and prevent those at risk from taking their own lives. What will be surprising to many is that, worldwide, more years of life are lost as a result of suicide than

Eastern and Southern sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 55% of total deaths from HIV/AIDS in 2013. In most countries in these regions, deaths from the disease are dropping. Such progress, however, must be considered along with countries where death rates have stagnated or even increased.

Despite this progress, major challenges remain: there were an estimated 11.9 million cases of tuberculosis (TB) worldwide in 2013, including those individuals with HIV (11.2 million excluding those with HIV); more effective vaccines against the disease are badly needed; and multidrug resistant TB is a growing threat.

Death rates for people with HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria all have decreased globally since the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) were established in 2000, according to a report published Monday as part of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD).

Child mortality is widely recognized as an indicator of a community’s overall health, with reductions in child deaths often cited as evidence of the impact of a particular intervention.

While soccer fans globally have been following the excitement of the World Cup matches in Brazil, riots in the country have thrust its poverty and inequality into the international spotlight. While Brazil has made progress in reducing poverty and improving health, much work remains to improve well-being in the country.

While mass shootings attract a great deal of attention from the media here in America, is the problem overblown? The evidence suggests it is not. Gun violence is a leading cause of death among young men in the U.S.

It turns out that sexual violence is mostly perpetrated by people known to the victim – not strangers.

The global health community cannot afford to ignore the problem of obesity and overweight. Globally, it killed 3.4 million people in 2010 alone. According to new findings published as part of the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013, more and more people in developing countries are joining the ranks of the world’s obese, especially women.

In order to solve a health problem, it may sound a bit obvious to say you first need to know what it is. A diagnosis. What may not be so obvious is that one of the biggest, and perhaps less appreciated challenges, in global health today is the lack of complete, accurate and comparable health data.

In sub-Saharan Africa, the burden of schistosomiasis – a disease caused by water-borne parasitic worms – disproportionately affects females. What’s more, it may explain why women uniquely account for a greater percentage of people living with HIV/AIDS in Africa.

It’s well known that malaria is a major killer of children in sub-Saharan Africa, but it also causes substantial suffering, especially among children and the elderly.

Visualizing the different ways that alcohol impacts people’s health across regions also highlights how data can help policymakers choose approaches for combatting harmful alcohol use that make the most sense for their region. These approaches range from enforcement of drunk driving laws to alcohol taxes and programs to screen and treat alcoholics and discourage binge drinking.

These analyses indicate that if donors invest more global health dollars in Western and Central Africa as they have elsewhere on the continent, it may translate to accelerated health progress in these regions.

It may be hard to believe, but traffic accidents and vehicle emissions kill more people worldwide than AIDS.

The significant progress made against child mortality around the world over the last two decades is frequently cited as one of the biggest success stories of international development. Much more remains to be done, but it’s worth looking at what we know – and don’t know – about this propitious decline in child deaths.

Mental health problems have a profound impact on men and women worldwide, but the toll of these diseases weighs most heavily on women. Worldwide, depression is responsible for more healthy years lost than HIV/AIDS or malaria in women of all ages.

With the welcome decline in extreme poverty worldwide, many nations that once had to worry most about hunger now are struggling to combat the harm of over-eating, eating the wrong things and lack of physical activity.