Universal health coverage, a sustainable development goal championed by Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), won a key vote of confidence during this year’s United Nations General Assembly in New York City. The member states endorsed primary health care as a means to reach more than 4 billion people who lack essential care—a critical gap to the achievement of universal health coverage by 2030.

Houston after another major flood a few weeks ago; the Bahamas after Dorian; Paradise, California, after the Camp Fire; Haiti after a major 2010 earthquake; Puerto Rico after Maria; New Jersey and New York after Sandy; New Orleans after Katrina; Thailand and Indonesia after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004… The list goes on. As we head into another hurricane season, we should once again examine what we’ve learned and prepare to reduce the impact of disasters on communities worldwide.

The Arctic is changing, and it’s changing fast, even faster than models had predicted. The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report found with strong confidence that the Arctic is warming two to three times faster than the global average.

Water is so scarce these days in Murrurundi, a drought-tested town in the northern reaches of New South Wales, that it arrives by truck.

Murrurundi Dam, an off-channel reservoir that draws from the Pages River, is functionally dry. An emergency well provides a little local water, but half of the small community’s supply is now trucked in.

“I’ve never seen the Pages River this low,” Daele Healy, who has lived in town for 15 years, told Circle of Blue. “There’s just no water visible at all. Not even little ponds.”

Considering how vulnerable Pacific Island countries (PIC) are to the conflict-prone effects of climate change, it is surprising that so little attention has been focused on the region. To address the conflict potential of the effects of climate change, as well as of adaptation and mitigation policies and technologies, policymakers must draw upon research related to the climate change-conflict nexus that thus far have been widely ignored or underestimated. These include cultural and spiritual aspects, indigenous knowledge, and indigenous ways of adapting to climate change. To fill gaps in knowledge, more granular ethnographic research should explore the complexity of local contexts in Oceania. Non-Western, non-anthropocentric concepts warrant particular attention. 

Rising concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are reshaping the world from the top down, according to a special report on the world’s oceans and frozen regions from the United Nations climate panel.

The maternal and child health crisis in Washington, D.C. is “a public health crisis that has been hiding in plain sight for 30 years”, said D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser at the second annual Maternal and Infant Health Summit on September 10 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. Panelists at this year’s summit discussed issues such as racial disparities in healthcare, proper nutrition and breastfeeding for new and expectant mothers, and support for midwives and doulas in D.C. “The health of a nation is dependent on the health of its women,” said actress and activist, Alyssa Milano.

“We don’t have a world water crisis, we have a world water management crisis,” said Brigadier General Gerald Galloway (U.S. Army Ret.) at the 2nd National Drought Forum, hosted by the National Integrated Drought Information System and the National Drought Resilience Partnership at the United States Institute of Peace. The Forum brought together subject matter experts with federal and state leaders to discuss how to strengthen the state-federal relationship to improve U.S. drought readiness and resilience.