March 8 marked International Women’s Day, which celebrates the economic, political, and social achievements of women in the past and present, while simultaneously calling for greater equality in the future. While many of the day’s discussions focused on economic and social issues, the right to reproductive health is also a crucial element in realizing full equality.

There is widespread agreement, and untold publications, that argue urbanization is the defining issue of our time. There are more cities, both large and small, and more people living in those cities than anytime in human history.

In an effort to revamp the time-intensive process of conducting household surveys to collect health data in developing countries, a new project is using mobile phones and rapid processing techniques to generate regular updates for a tranche of indicators previously only adjusted every three to five years.

Imagine you are a physician working in a rural health center in a developing country. You’re helping a woman deliver her baby, and it’s just arrived but is not breathing. Meanwhile, the mother has started to hemorrhage. You’re the only one working in the clinic that day, and many life-saving treatments need to start within one minute. You have 60 seconds to make decisions that could cost the lives of two people. [Video Below]

When Dr. Ranu Dhillon stumbled upon baby Reena during a routine visit to a clinic in India, she was almost comatose and unable to get the care she needed. Dhillon traveled with Reena and her mother from hospital to hospital, but left again and again without finding treatment. [Video Below] 

In a world faced with rising temperatures, increasingly severe droughts and floods, and a rapidly growing population, how can people adapt to this new way of life – and even thrive? Leading experts discussed this question in-depth during an Aspen Institute Global Health and Development Program event titled, “Building Resiliency: The Importance of Food Security and Population.” The panel took place as part of the Civil Society Policy Forum at the 2014 IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington, DC.

USAID funding is “far outstripped” by private investment and business relationships in “nearly every country” in which it works – and that’s a good thing, according to USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah. [Video Below]