In the decades since the success of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, that small island has gained a global reputation for its pioneering health system. Although Cuba’s GDP is only a fraction of that of the U.S., the island has a lower infant mortality rate and has among the highest life expectancies and doctor-patient ratios in the world. What factors account for the success of medicine and public health in Cuba?

Students of the University of Washington Department of Global Health's PhD in Metrics and Implementation Science are the first class of global health practitioners to combine the study of effective programming with the science of proper implementation.

By Annie Haakenstad and Joseph Dieleman 

After more than a decade of immense growth, development assistance for health has flat lined. Development assistance for health (DAH) fueled a scale up of antiretrovirals, insecticide-treated bed nets, vaccinations and a host of important global health interventions. Over the same period, the spread of a number of infectious diseases was reversed, reducing premature death and disability across the developing world. The plateau in international funding may threaten to slow progress or even roll back these gains.

By Kieran Guilbert

When Kayode Ojo first fell sick with malaria as a young boy in Nigeria, his grandfather shunned modern medicine, venturing into the bush to search for herbs and plants to treat the disease.

Having succumbed to malaria a further 50 or more times in his life, the United States-based scientist, now in his forties, is determined that his research - to develop a drug to stop transmission from humans back to mosquitoes - will help to eradicate the deadly disease.