“The Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative, backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, launched the ‘Next Generation of Condom’ challenge this month,” NBC News Los Angeles reports (Ebright, 3/23). “The contest is part of the foundation’s Round 11 Grand Challenges Explorations initiative and will offer financial support above…

“With 16 million girls under 18 giving birth and 3.2 million of these teens experiencing unsafe abortions each year, the U.N. has focused the theme of 2013’s World Population Day on teenage pregnancy, highlighting the important role that teen girls play in positively impacting future generations and underscoring the importance…

The following is a summary of opinion pieces and blog posts published in recognition of World Population Day, observed annually on July 11. According to the Huffington Post, “the U.N. has focused the theme of 2013’s World Population Day on teenage pregnancy, highlighting the important role that teen girls play…

“As CEO of WomanCare Global, a non-profit supply chain for reproductive care products, I’ve talked to thousands of women from almost every continent,” Saundra Pelletier writes in the Huffington Post’s “Global Motherhood” blog. “What women, and specifically mothers, want is astonishingly simple: to provide a better life for their children,”…

“[T]here’s a truth that needs to be spoken as discussions over the next generation of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) — the so-called post-2015 framework — have gotten underway this week,” Tewodros Melesse, director general of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, writes in a CNN opinion piece. “Sexual and reproductive health…

Noting the House Appropriations Committee last month voted to cut spending for international family planning programs under the FY 2014 State and Foreign Operations Appropriations budget, compared with last year’s amount, John Seager, president of Population Connection, writes in a GlobalPost opinion piece, “A lack of access to birth control…

The Atlantic speaks with Anurag Mairal, director of technology solutions at PATH Health Technologies, about PATH’s “wor[k] with the commercial sector to scale, distribute, and market its innovations.” Mairal’s “approach includes disruptive innovation (disrupt the global health system by changing the cost equation, moving away from a grants-based approach to…

“One of the things I’ve learned working in global health and development for the past 25 years is that innovation comes in many forms,” Christopher Elias, president of global development at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, writes in the foundation’s “Impatient Optimists” blog as part of its “Reinvent A…

The theme of International Youth Day, recognized on August 12, was “Youth Migration: Moving Development Forward.” The following blog posts discuss youth and sustainable development issues. Cate Lane, USAID’s IMPACTblog: “Migration displaces and separates youth from their homes and the protective structure and guidance of families and communities,” Lane, youth…

“At a recent meeting in Botswana, a high-level group of education and sexual reproductive health experts from Eastern and Southern Africa highlighted the need for good quality, gender-sensitive sexuality education that prepares adolescents for puberty and relationships and prevents unintended pregnancy and HIV,” according to a UNAIDS update. “The participants also called…