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. 

Mildred is a fish trader in Kenya. I met her a few years ago, when I was conducting research. (“Mildred” is not her real name; I promised all my participants anonymity as I worked.) She mentors, trains, and educates young women on how to dry, gut, fry fish, and run successful fish businesses.  

LGBTIQ+ organizations and activists increasingly speak of “queering” systems such as global climate action, global refugee systems, or humanitarian response. Sometimes, this is a rhetorical reboot of existing strategies for increasing inclusion, with ‘queer’ used as a reclaimed shorthand for LGBTIQ+ people. The process of tweaking existing social and economic systems to address climate change and security threats should also certainly ensure the inclusion of LGBTQI+ people.

“There is a really important need in talking about knowledge equity around what is actually happening with the climate crisis, and what happens to maternal [and] neo-natal health as a result of it,” said Neha Mankani, Midwifery Association Capacity Assessment Strengthening Lead at the International Confederation of Midwives, at a recent Wilson Center event titled “Midwives Are Key to Climate Resilience.”

“The success or failure of any adaptation strategy or action highly depends on the understanding of the capacities of a community or an individual to adapt to climate-associated risks,” write the authors of a recent systematic review of literature, Gender and Adaptive Capacity in Climate Change Scholarship of Developing Countries.

In 2024, the world marks the thirtieth anniversary of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo. At this pivotal meeting, 179 countries produced a watershed Program of Action (PoA) that put people at the center of development to better realize health, rights and choices for all. This PoA prioritized human rights, the empowerment of women and girls, and addressed existing inequalities. It also put forth a new strategy that emphasized vital linkages between population and development that moved away from a focus on demographic targets, like fertility rates, and shifted the focus to the needs of individual women and men.

International organizations and media stories have showcased how civilian women and children have been the primary victims of the Israeli campaign to eliminate Hamas in Gaza in the last seven months. Yet, the focus has been on exactly that—women and children as victims of violence. Little thought has been given to what happens to Palestinian women and children in Gaza once the guns are silenced and it comes time not only to reckon with the unimaginable violence and hardship endured during the war but to rebuild their lives and communities.