Research Library

Non-medical drivers of health, also known as social determinants of health, have a significant impact on health outcomes. As fellow Sandra McKay and her co-authors explain, adequate funding to identify and address non-medical drivers — housing and food insecurity, transport issues, and financial strain — can improve patients’ health and health care delivery systems, while also reducing costs.

Qualities like amazing tensile strength and electrical conductivity offer a huge range of uses for carbon nanotubes. In a new policy brief, fellow Rachel A. Meidl and her co-authors Dana Goerzen and Daniel A. Heller explain that to ensure carbon nanotubes’ role in a circular, sustainable economy, a coordinated system for classifying, testing, and identifying CNTs and a life cycle approach to risk assessments are needed to better understand impacts to facilitate consistent communication among researchers, industries, and policymakers.

Parental stress, which is heightened during natural disasters, can produce negative physiological responses in the developing brains of their infants and young children. This irreversibly alters the child’s brain structure, impacting their long-term prospects for good health and academic and economic success. Now is the time to institute policies and practices that mitigate the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the next generation, write the authors,

This issue brief argues that continued investments in global health and the study of emerging pathogens could yield better tools to fight infectious diseases like the Zika virus long before they become a problem in the developed world.

This policy brief urges collaboration between the United States and Mexico to address widespread epidemics of mosquito-transmitted diseases like West Nile, dengue and chikungunya in both countries. Such policy development should focus on vector control programs, public awareness and the development of vaccines to curb the spread of these diseases.

Officials in the U.S. and Mexico should coordinate a response to the spread of Chagas disease in their countries. Chagas is the third most common parasitic infection in the world.