We need to ensure that diversity is shaping and influencing global health decision-making and this is what we mean when we call for gender transformative leaders, said Dr. Roopa Dhatt, Executive Director of Women in Global Health, at an International Women’s Day event hosted by Women in Global Health to launch the first-ever book on women’s leadership in global health. “We’re calling for diverse leadership with intersectionality looking at transforming power and really making sure we’re going to the root drivers of inequities and driving systems change,” said Dr. Dhatt. Some 28 authors and 11 interviewees from 17 countries across 6 regions came together to write this rallying call to redress gender inequity in health leadership. Women and Global Health Leadership: Power and Transformation explores barriers and facilitators to women’s global health leadership; showcases the personal, professional, and political journeys of women leaders across global health sectors including government, academia, and civil society; and offers pragmatic solutions to increasing women’s representation at all levels of leadership, said Dr. Rosemary Morgan, Associate Scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“There is a growing recognition that climate change is going to affect security and it’s increasingly shaping peoples’ decisions about where to move, where to live, and how to plan their futures, but how migration, climate, and insecurity connect and drive risks is not always as clear cut as the headlines would have us believe,” said Cynthia Brady, Global Fellow and Senior Advisor with the Wilson Center’s Environmental Change and Security Program, at last month’s International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding. The roundtable discussion, “Environmental Change, Migration, and Peace in Central America’s Northern Triangle” drew on the Wilson Center’s framework to improve predictive capabilities for security risks posed by a changing climate, developed in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Applying the framework to the Northern Triangle—Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador—panelists discussed complex challenges and proactive approaches for building climate resilience and adaptive capacity. 

“Environmental peacemaking is inherently an optimistic kind of thing,” said Larry Swatuk, Professor at the University of Waterloo’s School of Environment, Enterprise and Development, during a breakout session of the 2nd International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding. Yet “alternative dispute resolution, making nice, building trust—I just see those spaces closing off,” said Swatuk. “Where resources are concerned and sovereignty is an issue there is a lot of hardball going on that we ignore at our peril. I think we need to reconfigure the peacemaking approach in light of the unwillingness of states to depart from classic statecraft.” 

“In the movement toward complex solutions, at the heart of it all we’re talking about individuals with their own complex issues as they are moving through different scenarios,” said Shanna McClain, Disasters Program Manager with the National Atmospheric and Space Administration, at last month’s International Conference on Environmental Peacebuilding. The panel discussion, “Resource Implications of Human Mobility and Migration,” focused on what data shows—and doesn’t show—are the complex linkages between climate, conflict, and mobility. Panelists discussed how more integrated programming and policy actions are needed to make migration safe, orderly, and voluntary, and how to keep human rights at the center of the complex processes. 

With a high burden of cervical cancer in Tanzania, we are advocating for the government’s parliament to prioritize cervical cancer prevention in its annual budget, said Dr. Safina Yuma, a Reproductive Cancer Coordinator at the Ministry of Health, Tanzania, at a recent event hosted by TogetHER for Health on cervical cancer leadership in recognition of cervical cancer awareness month. At least 270,000 women die globally from cervical cancer each year and in Tanzania, it is a leading cause of death, taking the lives of approximately 4,200 women annually. However, cervical cancer is 90 percent preventable with appropriate prevention strategies such as human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccinations and screenings. Expert leaders from NJIA, a leadership development program for practitioners working in cervical cancer research and prevention, discussed strategies for improving collaboration and leadership within the medical profession to reduce avoidable deaths.

“Regardless of income level, regardless of education level, Black women, Native women, women who live in rural areas are more likely to die or be left scared or scarred from an experience that should be safe and should be a joyful one; and we know a primary reason why this is true – systemic inequities,” said Vice President Kamala Harris during her opening remarks at the first-ever White House Maternal Health Call to Action Summit on December 7, 2021. Members of Congress and maternal health advocates gathered to discuss the importance of addressing racial disparities and systemic challenges in maternal health through national policy.

“We’re always coping with a change,” said Denise Brown, Founder of the Caregiving Years Training Academy and a caregiver for her elderly parents. “And the change is often outside of our control.” She spoke at a recent event focused on the caregiving crisis, hosted by EMD Serono, the healthcare business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany in the United States and Canada. When the doors to daycares, elder day residences, and adult care facilities closed at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, many Americans had to step into caregiving roles. “We’re doing our best to manage the change and keep going,” said Brown. “Because so many people rely on us and depend on us, we have to keep going.”

​“In a changing world with galloping, growing needs, we can’t keep making the same efforts, issuing the same pleas, and just write bigger and bigger checks and expect different results,” said Samantha Power, Administrator of the United Agency for International Development (USAID), at the launch of the Global Humanitarian Overview, co-hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, USAID, and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). “We must change the ways we deliver humanitarian assistance to include full participation, design, and leadership from local populations and organizations, from women and marginalized peoples who can help develop truly sustainable solutions to the risks they face in their own communities,” said Power.