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1 month ago | 
vox.com | Jess Craig
In about three short months, the Trump administration took a wrecking ball to foreign aid, threatening millions of lives and livelihoods around the world. After initially pausing all US foreign aid spending for 90 days, President Donald Trump handed over the reins to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The damage as DOGE went about clear-cutting the US Agency for International Development (USAID) was swift and extensive. Health clinics from Afghanistan to Burundi shuttered.
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1 month ago | 
vox.com | Jess Craig
After decades of lobbying, the US government has finally started taking action to warn consumers about the hazards of ultra-processed foods: your potato chips, granola bars, cereal, frozen pizza, even many types of store-bought bread. As I reported last year, there is mounting scientific evidence linking such ultra-processed foods, or UPFs, to disorders that range from obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure to depression, anxiety, and autoimmune disorders.
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1 month ago | 
vox.com | Jess Craig
Vox reader Ben Kutcher asks: What happens to the money when I round up at the register? Are these real charities? Who gets credit for the donation? Is there some taxable benefit to companies that offer this? Do they have to provide transparency reports? If you’ve ever been at a grocery store checkout counter and the cashier asked you to round up your purchase for charity, you’ve probably asked yourself the same questions.
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2 months ago | 
vox.com | Jess Craig
Shortly after his inauguration, President Donald Trump took a set of thick, black permanent markers and signed a sweeping set of executive orders that took aim at everything from immigration and gender to TikTok and climate change. One of his first moves was to withdraw the US from the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations’ global health agency responsible for safeguarding and promoting health around the world since 1948.
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2 months ago | 
vox.com | Jess Craig
The US saw its first H5N1 death earlier this month. Now eggs are expensive again. An epidemiologist explains what’s going on — and how you can protect yourself.
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Jan 22, 2025 | 
vox.com | Jess Craig
Vox reader Burak Ova asks: What is HIV and what is AIDS? How is it transmitted? What are the prevention methods? Is there a cure? Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) killed of people every year in the early 2000s during the height of the AIDS pandemic. Now, some two decades later, scientific advancements and public health interventions have transformed one of the deadliest diseases into something manageable, where a regular dose of medication nearly prevents its spread altogether.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
vox.com | Jess Craig
The sharp decline in child mortality rates is one of the great global success stories of the past several decades. In 1990, nearly 13 million children died before their fifth birthday, primarily from infectious diseases or complications during birth. By 2022, that number had fallen by more than 50 percent, meaning that today, about 8 million fewer children are dying than were some 35 years ago.
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Dec 3, 2024 | 
vox.com | Dylan Matthews |Jess Craig
If you want to help human beings alive right now, there are few better places to give than global health. Diseases that have been largely eradicated in the US still claim hundreds of thousands of lives abroad. In 2018, the most recent year for which there’s data, seven Americans died of malaria; all acquired it abroad. But the World Health Organization estimates that worldwide, 405,000 people died of it that year, most of them children in Africa.
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Nov 17, 2024 | 
vox.com | Jess Craig
The storm damage in western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene swept through on September 27 was immense. More than 1,000 bridges, some 5,000 miles of state-owned roads, 160 water and sewage systems, and an estimated 126,000 homes were damaged or destroyed. At least 100 people were killed, and about 20 more were still missing as of mid-October. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper estimated it would cost a record-breaking $53 billion to repair damage and cover all recovery needs.
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Oct 25, 2024 | 
vox.com | Jess Craig
When it comes to infectious diseases, the mosquitos are winning. In the last year, health officials reported a spike in dengue and have recorded infections even in nontropical areas, where the disease typically did not spread. Malaria is resurging in parts of North and South America, Africa, and Asia. Even Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, contracted a nasty case of West Nile from a mosquito in his backyard in DC.
