The U.S. Supreme Court recently headed into summer recess, leaving in its wake a spate of new rulings with reverberations for public health in the United States and abroad. From gun control and abortion to climate change and vaccine mandates, David P. Fidler gives a rundown on the major decisions that will affect U.S. public health in the days ahead.
Our second set of authors calls out the World Bank's new pandemic preparedness fund, arguing it's built to fail and has "an absence of real strategy for ensuring equity, access, and impact." Sickle cell disease is the most common inherited disorder in the world, yet its effects are widely unknown to the broader public. This week, researchers report on those most affected by this debilitating condition and why the world desperately needs new policies to increase access to treatment, especially in Africa. In another data-driven piece, researchers look at the increasing link between young men, drinking, and years lost to death and disability. They say that globally, about 38 percent of men between the ages of fifteen and forty-nine are consuming harmful amounts of alcohol.
Authors from Georgetown University's O'Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law have published a report this week offering guidance on the content and form of a new international pandemic agreement. In a recap of that report, the authors underscore that a new instrument will need to both effect international compliance and respect national sovereignty.
We cap off the week with a slideshow of some of the world's "blue zones"—cities in Greece, Italy, and Japan, among others, where people live well into their nineties—and what it is about those locations that nurtures longevity.
As always, thank you for reading, and be well. —Thomas J. Bollyky and Mary Brophy Marcus, Editors
