“The longstanding underrepresentation or exclusion of women in clinical trials and the continued need to understand sex as a biological variable have resulted in still knowing too little about how to effectively prevent, diagnose, and treat a range of health conditions in women,” said Dr. Carolyn M. Mazure, former Chair of the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research in her keynote address at a recent Wilson Center event: Bridging the Gap in Women’s Health Research. The event was held in partnership with EMD Serono, the healthcare business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, as the first-ever Women’s Health Research Summit at the Wilson Center.

Over the last four decades, contracting HIV has been transformed from a fatal diagnosis to a manageable chronic illness. Political will and financial commitments have reduced new HIV infections worldwide by 39 percent since 2010. However, much work still is needed to meet global targets of preventing new cases of HIV and reducing AIDS-related deaths. Marginalized communities, including women and girls, face countless barriers which hinder progress towards comprehensive HIV prevention across the planet.

Two years ago, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a public health emergency after a multi-country outbreak of mpox (formerly known as monkeypox). Now, in the summer of 2024, mpox is on the rise again. On August 14, The WHO declared a new public health emergency due to a recent outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and other African countries.

Last month, the biopharmaceutical company Gilead shared groundbreaking results from a recent clinical trial (PURPOSE1) for long-acting injectable HIV prevention. The twice-yearly injectable drug, lenacapavir, provided total protection from HIV for a test group of 2,134 women in Uganda and South Africa. While lenacapavir has been used to treat multi-drug resistant HIV since 2022, this trial marks the first usage as pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). PrEP is one tool to prevent the virus, and refers to anti-retroviral medication taken by people who do not have HIV to reduce the risk of contracting it through sexual transmission or injection drug use. These new findings offer immense promise for the future of PrEP as a global tactic to protect young women from contracting HIV. 

April 11 is the International Day for Maternal Health and Rights. Globally, 800 women die each day from preventable causes due to pregnancy and childbirth. Improving maternal health outcomes and preventing maternal deaths requires a human rights-based approach that protects a person’s right to survive childbirth, to access high-quality health care, to government accountability, to equity and non-discrimination when accessing care, and to family planning and contraception. Enshrining these rights for all pregnant people is key to meaningful progress towards the prevention of maternal deaths globally.

Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day (IWD). It is an annual occasion to celebrate the incredible achievements of women and girls globally, while acknowledging the work still needed to push forward to make the critical human rights issue of gender equality a reality.

The last two decades saw significant gains in reducing the incidence of malaria, but can we be doing even more to eradicate this disease? In early January 2024, a New York Times op-ed argued that millions were dying needlessly as tools to defeat malaria were within reach.

“The [COVID-19] pandemic, as all of you know, severely disrupted essential health services in countries around the world, and it left many health systems reeling from the drain on resources,” said Nidhi Bouri, Assistant Administrator for Global Health at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) at a recent Wilson Center event to assess lessons learned in coping with the stressors created by the global health crisis.