We’ve got a crisis impacting our mothers and a crisis impacting our babies, said Dr. Lisa Waddell, Senior Vice President of Maternal Child Health and NICU Innovation and Impact Deputy Medical Director at the March of Dimes, at a recent Wilson Center event launching the Maternal Health Initiative’s CODE BLUE series, developed in partnership with EMD Serono, a business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. She was referring to non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which impact maternal health in the United States and globally. NCDs kill 18 million women of reproductive age each year, accounting for two in every three deaths among women.

“Non-communicable diseases have been the leading cause of death for women for at least the past 30 years but are often underreported and undertreated,” said Priya Kanayson, Policy and Advocacy Manager at NCD Alliance at a recent Wilson Center event on the impact of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) on maternal health. The event marked the official launch of the Maternal Health Initiative’s CODE BLUE series, developed in partnership with EMD Serono, a business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. Globally, in 2018, 73 percent of deaths among women were due to NCDs, amounting to 18 million women of reproductive age dying per year due to NCDs. The compounding effects of NCDs complicate women’s experiences in many unseen ways, and the rise and gravity of NCDs pose a growing and often overlooked challenge to maternal health worldwide.

The world’s ocean and cryosphere have been absorbing the heat from climate change for decades, said Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Vice Chair Ko Barrett at a recent Wilson Center event on the IPCC’s Special Report on Oceans and Cryosphere. “The consequences for nature and humanity are sweeping and severe,” she said.

A country can achieve sustainable peace and security only if women are included, said Monde Muyangwa, Director of the Wilson Center’s Africa Program at a recent Wilson Center event on the role of women in promoting peace and security in Africa. “And I would argue that part of the challenges that we face on the African continent, the insecurity that we face in parts of the African continent,” she said, “is precisely because not all segments of society are included.”

 “Family planning saves lives, even in times of crisis,” said Gwen K. Young, Managing Director at the Global Emergency Response Coalition at a Wilson Center event on October 8 on the importance of providing family planning and reproductive health services in humanitarian settings. Speakers from Save the Children, CARE, the International Rescue Committee, and FP2020 spoke to programmatic successes, innovative solutions, and local partnerships in fragile settings. Young highlighted that 1 in 70 people worldwide need humanitarian assistance and a quarter of these are women and girls of reproductive age. All told, more than 30 million women and girls in 42 countries.

“If you woke up one morning and found the taps in your house were dry, the first thing many of us here would do is pick up our phone and call the utility,” said Gordon Mumbo, Team Leader for Sustainable Water for the Mara River Basin, Winrock International. But for people living in the Mara River Basin, if their taps run dry, there is no utility to call, said Mumbo. Their only choice is to grab the water container and head down to the river where water quality may be poor. Mumbo spoke at the September 30^th event, “Hidden Forces: The Role of Water in Economic Prosperity,” part of the “Water Security for a More Resilient World” series co-hosted by the Wilson Center, Winrock International, and the Sustainable Water Partnership.

“Today we face two existential threats: nuclear annihilation and catastrophic climate change,” writes Daniel Poneman, former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Energy, in his book, Double Jeopardy: Combating Nuclear Terror and Climate Change. “Both stem from human origins. We need to fight both threats aggressively.” At a recent event hosted by the Wilson Center, Poneman discussed his book. While the dangers of nuclear energy are clear from incidents like Fukushima and Chernobyl, Poneman proposes policies that aim to encourage a safe, non-carbon baseload power that responds to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2018 report and keeps our global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, per the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement.

“We’re attempting to do something that’s never been done before in world history,” said Senator Angus King (I-ME). “The peaceful development of a major new physical asset.” He spoke of the Arctic Ocean at the 8^th Symposium on the Impacts of an Ice-Diminishing Arctic on Naval and Maritime Operations. The symposium was hosted by the Wilson Center’s Polar Institute, in partnership with the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, U.S. National Ice Center, Arctic Domain Awareness Center, Patuxent Partnership, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.