In a Wharton School paper, Grace Wong finds a negative and significant correlation between income and SARS incidence rates, while no similar relationship is found using education levels.

This Brookings Institution report looks at Cambodia's health sector: Starting in 1999, the government outsourced management of government health services to NGOs in five districts that had been ramdomly made eligible for contracting. The evidence suggests that health improved in the outsourced districts.

A report from Oxfam arguing that hunger in Africa is not inevitable. The report says that the world’s emergency response requires an overhaul so that it delivers prompt, equitable, and effective assistance to people suffering from lack of food. Oxfam also argues that governments need to tackle the root causes of hunger, which include poverty, agricultural mismanagement, conflict, unfair trade rules, and the unprecedented problems of HIV/AIDS and climate change.

An editorial in the British Medical Journal celebrates the fact that 2006 will be the first year in human history when women can expect to enjoy a longer life expectancy than men across the world.

The Global Business Goalition on HIV/AIDS reports on how the business community can fight AIDS worldwide.

For the past three years, the Global Health program at the Council on Foreign Relations has been tracking news reports to produce an interactive map plotting global outbreaks of diseases that are easily prevented by inexpensive and effective vaccines.

Peter Orszag argues that giving health-care providers a fixed payment for each Medicare beneficiary could provide a path forward between competing views of health care reform offered by Republicans and Democrats.

Laurie Garrett offers a detailed account of how the H7N9 virus emerged and describes the two possible paths it may now follow, by pulling from her own experiences in the SARS epidemic ten years ago and reflecting on parallels between the two.

Peter Orszag writes that the link between life expectancy and college completion is not well understood, but they appear to be related to growing income inequality.

Peter Orszag writes that, although health care costs have been rising more slowly, recent data suggest Medicare spending growth may have sped up slightly in the past few months.

Peter Orszag argues that reforming medical malpractice law to include "safe harbors" that protect doctors who follow evidence-based medical guidelines could bring down health-care costs without reducing the quality of care.

Peter Orszag argues that aggressive action to continue recent slowing in health-care cost growth can help to stabilize the U.S. fiscal trajectory and increase take-home pay.

Peter Orszag explains why and how the federal government should encourage more clinical data registries, which can cut health care costs and improve patient outcomes.

Peter Orszag explains why recent slowdowns in health-care costs will likely persist once the economy recovers and how those savings will help Americans offset falling take-home pay.

Peter Orszag argues that Representative Paul Ryan's budget plan would risk stranding elderly patients who wish to remain enrolled in Medicare.

Peter Orszag describes recent research that bolsters the case for shifting away from a fee-for-service health-care system.