Making Sense of Mindfulness
The claims for mindfulness are extravagant, with its advocates asserting that it can improve a number of conditions – including anxiety, depression, stress, and even drug addiction – while boosting...
View ArticleThe G20 and the Inequality Crisis
In 2009, the G20's emergence as the world’s leading forum for addressing global economic challenges helped pull the world back from the brink of depression. Today, the G20 must play a similar role in...
View ArticleAsia’s Future Farms
Asia is already the world’s largest food market, and its population is expected to increase to five billion by 2050. To ensure adequate food supplies, the region's governments will have to promote a...
View ArticleTrump’s Unethical Aid Cuts
When US President Donald Trump justifies cutting foreign aid on the grounds that other countries are not paying their fair share, many people believe him. In reality, it is the US that is not paying...
View ArticleSex Talk in Ghana
Education about sexuality and reproductive health is a political issue in many Western countries. But in Ghana and other other developing countries, access to family planning information is a matter of...
View ArticleA Volvo Moment for Antimicrobial Resistance
Volvo's announcement that it will make only hybrid and electric cars after 2019 demonstrates that people and organizations are still capable of taking big, bold steps to solve major challenges. Among...
View ArticleThe Health Costs of Environmental Change
In recent years, the world has become increasingly preoccupied with the catastrophic potential of global warming and other human-induced environmental changes, and rightly so. But one of the most...
View ArticleHow Parasites Pull the Strings
Science fiction has long explored the terrifying possibility that we are devoid of free will, and that some unpleasant creature could control our minds. But mind control is not just a literary trope;...
View ArticleLearning from Malaria
It is one of the best untold stories in the annals of development: a disease that was once endemic worldwide, is being beaten back in its remaining redoubts. And it is a story that holds important...
View ArticleHow to Fight Antimicrobial Resistance
Drug-resistant microbes kill 700,000 people every year – more than three times the annual death toll from armed conflicts. A global challenge of this scale demands public-private collaboration, in...
View ArticleWhen Populism Can Kill
By validating unfounded fears about vaccines, Italy's opposition Five Star Movement and Greece's Syriza-led government risk exposing children and other vulnerable members of society to preventable...
View ArticleHelping the Heroines of Polio Eradication
With just 37 reported cases last year, the world is on the verge of wiping out polio for good, just the second disease, after smallpox, to be fully eradicated by vaccines. But getting to zero will...
View ArticleSocial Impact Investment Just Paid Off
Big ideas are few and far between, and social progress usually occurs incrementally, bit by bit. But sometimes a big idea – even one that starts modestly – can thoroughly transform our view of what is...
View ArticleEmpowering Africa’s Humanitarians
To break Africa’s cycle of hunger, caused by conflict, disease, and drought, the international community must overhaul how it delivers aid to the continent’s most vulnerable people. This requires...
View ArticleAfrica’s Defining Challenge
By 2055, Africa’s youth population is expected to be more than double the 2015 total of 226 million. The success of African governments’ efforts to change a largely inhospitable environment for young...
View ArticleEmpowering the Other Half of Africa’s Economy
By 2040, Africa is expected to have the world’s largest labor force, with some 1.1 billion people of working age. But unless and until the continent’s women gain the same access to opportunities at...
View ArticleA Development Investment for the Ages
Malnutrition receives less attention than most of the world’s other major challenges, yet it is one area where a relatively small investment can make the biggest difference. As both a cause and an...
View ArticleEngineering Better Refugee Health Care
Although governments and humanitarian-aid groups have made efforts to provide basic health care to refugees, they have struggled to ensure that such care is delivered reliably. Biomedical engineers...
View ArticleHow to Achieve the SDGs
In September 2015, the leaders of 193 countries agreed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals – the most ambitious plan ever to promote human development – by 2030. Nearly two years into the...
View ArticleHow African Scholarship Can Reduce African Unemployment
With millions of young people unemployed, Africa is failing to take advantage of its most abundant resource. To solve the youth employment challenge, policymakers should engage the continent’s youngest...
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