The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has recently released new guidelines regarding COVID-19 vaccination, including recommendations for updated Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Novavax booster vaccines for children as young as six months old. Arriving in waves that lasted months at a time, COVID-19 has become part of the set of pathogens endemic in our communities, joining the ranks of the common cold and the flu. This doesn’t mean that COVID-19 is any less dangerous. Misconceptions that COVID-19 is equally as dangerous as the cold have long been disproven. COVID-19 remains more contagious and prone to severe symptoms than the flu, and post-COVID health complications are not uncommon. However, a significant portion of the population continues to doubt whether to get vaccinated. The rollout of COVID-19 vaccines over the past three years has revealed the extent of distrust towards vaccines, medical institutions, and the federal government that has significantly hampered the US response to COVID-19. The government must do more to fix existing structural weaknesses in public health institutions and policies to better prepare for future disease outbreaks.

International medical tourism is defined as patients traveling to another country in hopes of attaining health care. Experts predict that the industry will grow from generating $102.6 billion USD globally, in 2019, to approximately $272.7 billion, by 2027. Currently, there is a trend among countries to attract medical tourists in hopes of profiting and stimulating their economies to develop their healthcare systems. However, local healthcare systems suffer in the deregulated markets associated with said medical tourism because it warps available resources at the expense of local populations. In reality, the developments of low-income countries chasing the economic benefits of medical tourism only cater to the elite. The introduction of safeguards such as taxes on medical tourism that reintroduce some of this profit into the local healthcare systems could be a solution. Local healthcare development should be prioritized over the fractional benefit that medical tourism offers, despite its promises to be more influential.

Neonatal encephalopathy (NE) is one of the leading causes of newborn death and disability in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). Although NE accounts for 23% of global neonatal mortality, its burden is not equally distributed, with 99% of these deaths occur in low-resource settings. In accordance with Target 3.2 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals—a collection of objectives to reach global peace and prosperity—battling NE is an utmost priority for nations around the world. As a condition that undeniably preys along socioeconomic and geographic lines, it is critical to understand the relationship between LMICs and NE fatality in order to effectively address the crisis.

In the interconnectivity of today’s world, we benefit from the free exchange of goods, technology, and ideas across borders, yet are more so than ever before left at risk of increasingly widespread, diverse, and global disease. COVID-19 might be the most glaring example, but when we consider the context in which this pandemic occurred, there have long been signs about the proliferating dangers of diseases, whether it be from the Ebola outbreaks, the emergence of Zika, or other respiratory virus epidemics. Pathogens too are benefitting from the heightened era of connectivity that marks society today, and we consequently need to shift our paradigm of infectious disease containment and control to a more sustainable, global perspective. Ultimately, the future of global health requires both the maintenance and improvement of an international alarm network for novel and highly infectious pathogens through a more equitable revision of the International Health Regulations and a focus on establishing robust surveillance networks for countries in order to mitigate long durations of propagated disease spread, as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Policies should be implemented to educate the US healthcare system, specifically physicians and policymakers, to neither misprescribe nor overprescribe the usage of antibiotics.

As private health insurers become increasingly prominent players in US healthcare, the shift in power degrades physician-patient relationships.

The conversation surrounding prescription weight-loss medications, or “anti-obesity” drugs, has skyrocketed amidst new developments. Wegovy and Ozempic, two weight-loss drugs that recently entered the market, have given patients in the United States the tools to control their weight—perhaps without necessarily changing other aspects of life usually recommended by physicians, including diet and exercise.

November 17, 2019. The first SARS-CoV-2 case was confirmed in a 55-year-old man in Hubei province, China. As more and more cases are confirmed, public health experts start advising people to wear masks and social distance. Eventually in March 2020, COVID was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization. Schools started transitioning online and the first severe 21st-century pandemic ensued. In times of a dire public health crisis, the heavy burden of national and global health often falls onto governments, public cooperation, and pharmaceutical companies. These stakeholders often come to odds over how to address intellectual property (IP) rights now, especially in the context of COVID vaccines.

Despite being one of the most developed nations in the world, the United States continues to suffer from disparities in healthcare. An important but overlooked reason stems from racially motivated ideologies within the medical field that correspond to higher rates of complications and deaths for groups of people.

A pressing issue facing our community today is the lack of free menstrual products in public buildings and spaces. Every day, menstruators are left without a feeling of security, worrying about if they have access to the supplies they need while being on their period. Just like toilet paper is free in all public restrooms, menstrual products, such as pads and tampons, should be available for free in public restrooms. There are many people who are not able to afford period products and live in what we call “period poverty.”

While it is expected that an uncommon disease does not receive as much research and funding as more common afflictions such as lung cancer, sickle cell disease is underfunded as compared to other orphan diseases such as cystic fibrosis (CF) and hemophilia. Both CF and hemophilia have smaller patient populations than SCD, but the diseases receive more funding for research and treatment centers. A 2020 study found that federal funding was greater per person with CF than with sickle cell, corresponding to more research articles and FDA drug approvals. Hemophilia receives more funding than SCD despite also having a lower rate of incidence (2.3 cases per 10,000 male births versus 4.9 cases per 10,0000 births).

During the war, the Assad regime became notorious for besieging civilians, using chemical weapons, and deliberately targeting hospitals and healthcare workers, the focus of this paper. Between 2011 and 2020, there were 595 attacks on healthcare infrastructure, 536 of which were conducted by the Syrian government and the Russian Air Force, leading to the deaths of 923 medical personnel. By 2021, half of all health facilities in the nation were destroyed, and 70% of surviving healthcare workers have fled the country.