In early 2020, as a novel coronavirus swept the globe, a little-known word entered dinner table conversation. COVID-19 ­­­was “zoonotic”: a disease that originated in animals, then evolved, breached the Darwinian divide, and jumped to humans. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a global pandemic.

Now, with another wave surging worldwide — and more than 600,000 new cases being diagnosed daily — a new fear-evoking word has entered the lexicon: “variant.”

“Addressing gender equity and equality is essential to every other challenge we face,” said U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in a recent speech at the Generation Equality Forum. Following the forum, countries across Francophone Africa made key commitments to end gender-based violence (GBV), including child marriage.

Vaccination hesitancy, even in the midst of a global pandemic, is a major barrier to the elimination of several highly contagious and deadly diseases. While COVID-19 vaccines are getting the most attention, they are not the only vaccines that protect against deadly contagious diseases. And as with the COVID-19 vaccines, around the world, many communities are insufficiently covered by vaccines—particularly children. This is especially true in West Africa, where—though improving—childhood immunization rates still lag behind much of the world. To explore reasons for these persistent low childhood immunization rates, Breakthrough RESEARCH, a USAID-funded project that works to expand the evidence base for social and behavior change programming, increase healthy behaviors, and enable positive social norms through improved social and behavior change programming, conducted a study to look at behavioral drivers of decision-making about vaccines in Nigeria.

Seventy-three percent of women and girls receiving aid at one food program in Uganda reported being afraid during at least one point in the distribution process, said Hope Harriet, Empowered Aid Research Manager. Harriet spoke at the launch event for Empowered Aid’s Toolkit for Planning and Monitoring Safer Aid Distributions. Empowered Aid is a participatory action research project focused on addressing sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) in humanitarian settings and aid distribution. The project is led by the Global Women’s Institute (GWI) in partnership with CARE, the Union of Relief and Development Associations, the International Rescue Committee, and World Vision.

In China’s campaign to get its population of 1.4 billion vaccinated against COVID-19, the magic number is 77.6 percent. Government agencies all over the country, from Inner Mongolia to Jiangsu, uniformly pledge to get this exact percentage of their populations vaccinated. A rural township in Harbin boasts that it’s fully vaccinated 11,025 of its population of 14,198, 0.05 percentage point above the sacred target of 77.6 percent. So, just what is the significance of 77.6?

“This COVID-19 pandemic has reminded us, albeit in a devastating way, of the interconnected nature of things, most particularly between economies, the environment, human and wildlife health and welfare,” said John Scanlon AO, the former Secretary-General of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) and Chair of the Global Initiative to End Wildlife Crime, at a recent Wilson Center event on wildlife crime’s connection to human health and security. Despite its serious implications for a broad swath of issue areas, wildlife crime and trafficking remain under-studied and under-regulated. At the event, experts from diverse fields in defense, global health, and conservation highlighted the need for international cooperation to mitigate wildlife crime’s impact on environmental degradation, the spread of zoonotic disease, and transnational security threats. 

Globally, the demographic transition from high to low fertility and mortality has improved quality of life for billions of people over the past several decades. The average number of children born per woman worldwide decreased from nearly 5 in 1950 to 2.47 by 2020. Improvements in infant and child mortality boosted life expectancy at birth from a global average of 47 years in 1950 to over 72 years today. These gains in fertility and mortality were a result of rising incomes and significant investments and improvements in public health, education, and family planning access—18 months into a global pandemic, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that COVID-19 has disrupted these gains, slowing progress along the demographic transition for those countries in the earliest stages. This World Population Day is therefore an important opportunity to recommit to investments in health and education and resume our progress in improving lives for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable.