Andrew Trister, Deputy Director of Digital Health and Innovation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Reflects on a Meandering Path to the Field

Jennifer Velloza spent a year crisscrossing the grass-covered plains and sloping hills of rural Swaziland, dividing her time among ten medical clinics in this small southern African country. Here, nearly one in four people have HIV — and that rate is even higher among women.

As a study manager for Doctors Without Borders, Velloza saw many pregnant and postpartum women struggle to get the HIV testing and treatment they needed, because they were also suffering from sexual trauma, depression or anxiety.

United States action on global pandemics could save lives, address significant foreign policy interests and boost economic prosperity, according to a new analysis from leading researchers, including Kristie Ebi, an expert on global change and health at the University of Washington School of Public Health.

Better vaccines, nutrition and disease control have cut the global death rate for children in half over the past 20 years. But even within countries that have made major progress, children can face greatly different fates.

"Where you're born substantially impacts your probability of surviving to 5," says Simon Hay, an epidemiologist at the University of Washington who is the lead author of a new study on childhood mortality in Nature.