USAID’s primary health care (PHC) partnership—which was announced in late 2022—brings new momentum to a long-neglected reality: Robust PHC is necessary for robust global health security (GHS).  But it has taken some time to fully recognize this fact.

It has been two decades since President George W. Bush launched the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief – or PEPFAR, and a recent Wilson Center event to celebrate the anniversary demonstrated that its impact as one of the most successful global public health programs is indisputable. Since its inception, PEPFAR has invested more than $100 billion in the global fight against HIV and AIDS, resulting in more than 25 million lives saved and millions of new infections prevented.

The impacts of a changing climate touch every region of the globe, but they are acutely felt by people in Uganda, where floods, droughts, and shifting rainfall patterns disrupt agricultural productivity, livelihoods, and the health and well-being of millions of people. According to the ND-GAIN index, Uganda is the 13^th most vulnerable nation in the world, and action there is urgently needed to better prepare for and adapt to climate change’s impacts.

“Women’s economic participation promotes economic growth and security. It’s good for the women involved. It’s good for the girls who dream of following in their footsteps,” said Ambassador Mark Green, President and CEO of the Wilson Center at a recent Women’s History Month private event in Washington, DC hosted by the Wilson Center and EMD Serono, the healthcare business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.

“Too many children are dying in the first month of life,” said Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet at a recent launch event for the 2023 Lancet Series on Breastfeeding, hosted by The Royal Society of Medicine, London. Indeed, the global numbers are staggering. Horton observed that 2.3 million children died in the first month of life in 2021—that’s more than 6,000 newborns dying every single day.

Under the narrow shade of our umbrellas, a community health worker from a local NGO and I walked along a dirt path to the edge of some paddy fields in a village in Tamil Nadu, South India in the summer of 2015. There we met a group of Dalit (oppressed-caste) women who were squeezed together under a clump of trees on a small strip of raised land between two fields.

The summer of 2015 was one of the hottest on record in South India at that time, with temperatures consistently above 40ºC (104ºF) every day. Rains which should have begun to arrive had not come by mid-July. These women were hoping to be called for daily agricultural wage labor in the fields, and they had taken refuge under the shade while they waited. They had been waiting all morning with no work available; it had been the same for several days because there was a drought and the crops were failing.

In 2022, the Dot-Mom column published several pieces from expert guest authors from the greater maternal and reproductive health community. In our top read guest contributor piece of the year, Susie Jolly examined the role of colonialism in sexuality education globally. Jolly highlighted examples where sexual health knowledge is built on unethical medical research carried out on racialized people, such as the study of untreated syphilis among Black men in the United States. Sexuality educators, especially those placed in the Global North, have a responsibility to work to decolonize their work. Jolly suggests supporting resources led by marginalized people, critically examining colonialism’s influence in the understanding of sexuality, and shifting the dynamics of who decides on content to lend more weight to non-Western expertise and young people learning from their own experiences.