Recognizing the increased demand for public health law skills within the public health workforce, ChangeLab Solutions, in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, conducted a pilot program to increase knowledge of law among public health students. In partnership with a team of curriculum consultants, ChangeLab Solutions developed and piloted a curriculum across eight public health programs that consisted of six modules which focused on defining public health law and explaining its role in shaping health outcomes and inequities. Faculty members that piloted the modules found students had an increased knowledge of public health law concepts after completing the modules. Faculty members also experienced several barriers that might hinder effective delivery of the curriculum. Integration of public health law concepts into public health coursework within SPPH is one method of increasing students’ preparedness and capacity to use legal tools in addressing health outcomes and inequities.

Colonization and ongoing colonial policies and practices are contributing to increased dementia rates in Indigenous populations. This health inequity could be addressed by implementing culturally safe dementia interventions specifically designed for Indigenous people. We conducted a scoping review of culturally safe dementia care interventions for Indigenous populations. Databases searched included OVID (Medline, PsycINFO, Embase, Healthstar), Informit Indigenous Collection, JBI EBP, Scopus/Elsevier and PubMed. Eligibility criteria included studies in English, interventions designed specifically for Indigenous persons living with dementia and evaluative outcomes of the intervention. In total, 2,259 articles were identified. After removing duplicates, 1,394 titles and abstracts were screened and 54 studies were screened for eligibility. Of these, no studies were eligible for inclusion. This empty review reveals a massive and inexcusable gap in knowledge around developing, implementing and evaluating culturally safe Indigenous-specific dementia care interventions. Future directions for research include working with Indigenous peoples to determine what culturally safe interventions for dementia look like, implementing high-quality studies with evidence-based measures and outcomes, and improving efforts to get this important work published to inform future studies.

Clinical trials have provided evidence for determining treatment effectiveness. However, clinical trial participants have been underrepresented by diverse and special population groups (e.g., younger and older adults, different races/ethnicities), contributing to disparities in our understanding of diseases and treatments in all those affected. Addressing these disparities in clinical trial participation would be critical to achieving health equity in the USA and beyond. To assess enrollment inclusivity in clinical research at a large academic medical center in the southeast, we used administrative information to develop a snapshot of clinical research participation by age, sex, race, ethnicity, and rurality that was accessible to the public. We compared research enrollment statistics with relevant geographic benchmarks (county, state, and national) from the 2020 US Census. Comparisons revealed 1) over-participation by females relative to county, state, and national benchmarks; 2) under-representation of Black/African Americans relative to county, but higher relative to state and national, levels; and 3) underrepresentation of Hispanic/Latino and Asian groups. The ISP Snapshot has promoted accountability and transparency in this institution’s efforts toward health equity. The process has highlighted the need to update and standardize use of outdated categories (e.g., binary gender, rural status) that limit accurate reporting.

On June 1, 2024, the World Health Assembly reached consensus on a package of amendments to the 2005 International Health Regulations (IHR). These amendments follow nearly two decades of implementation and an intensive multilateral process prompted by the global struggle against COVID-19. This article critically examines whether the amended IHR reflect lessons learned from the pandemic, potentially ushering in a new era for global health law in pandemic preparedness and response, or if they deflect attention from the need for deeper structural reforms. While the IHR remain the only near-universal legal framework for preventing and addressing the international spread of disease, these amendments emphasize equity and solidarity, and potentially shift the IHR from a technical instrument to one focusing on inherently political issues. This analysis examines key IHR amendments and their implications for the future of global health law, particularly in the context of equity, financing, and implementation.

This article describes lessons learned from the incorporation of language justice as an antiracism praxis for an academic Center addressing cardiometabolic inequities. Drawing from a thematic analysis of notes and discussions from the Center’s community engagement core, we present lessons learned from three examples of language justice: inclusion of bilingual team members, community mini-grants, and centering community in community-academic meetings. Facilitating strategies included preparing and reviewing materials in advance for interpretation/translation, live simultaneous interpretation for bilingual spaces, and in-language documents. Barriers included: time commitment and expenses, slow organizational shifts to collectively practice language justice, and institutional-level administrative hurdles beyond the community engagement core’s influence. Strengthening language justice means integrating language justice institutionally and into all research processes; dedicating time and processes to learn about and practice language justice; equitably funding language justice within research budgets; equitably engaging bilingual, bicultural staff and language justice practitioners; and creating processes for language justice in written and oral research and collaborative activities. Language justice is not optional and necessitates buy-in, leadership, and support of community engagement cores, Center leadership, university administrators, and funders. We discuss implications for systems and policy change to advance language justice in research to promote health equity.

The Physician-Scientist Trainee Diversity Summit, hosted by the American Physician Scientists Association and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, was conceived in 2019 with the mission of developing strategic plans to diversify the physician-scientist community using human-centered design thinking. In June 2024, the second iteration of this conference was held in Raleigh, North Carolina, and brought together a network of scientific and medical organizations to discuss issues of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion facing physician-scientist trainees. This article summarizes the progress made from the first meeting, the proceedings of the 2024 Summit, and a thematic analysis of the recent meeting, offering tangible solutions to the physician-scientist community for supporting diversity and accessibility.

The COVID-19 pandemic laid bare the inequities in U.S. healthcare in ways that captured public attention and reinforced the need to view all of healthcare through an equity lens. It also exposed global inequities in access to healthcare technologies. At Rockefeller University, we participate in the entire spectrum of translational research, but our focus is in the areas of basic research and new methods to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease, extending to proof of concept preclinical and Phase 1 studies. Since we believe that all phases of translational research should have an equity lens, we have instituted an initiative to encourage thought and planning about global equitable access to discoveries made by our trainee Clinical Scholars and faculty, even at the earliest phases of basic research. Assuring global equitable access to new technologies requires addressing at least 3 different aspects of new technology: 1. Patenting and licensing, 2. Manufacturing, and 3. Dissemination and implementation in low- and middle-income countries. In this review, I focus on patenting and licensing and offer ten questions for inventors to consider in discussing licensing their technologies with technology transfer officers to maximize equitable global access to the technologies they create.

The Students Participating as Ambassadors for Research in Kentucky (SPARK) program provides novel health equity research training and targeted mentorship for undergraduates, particularly those from groups underrepresented in the biomedical and behavioral research and workforce. SPARK aims to address inadequate diversity in the medical and scientific research fields by providing comprehensive research mentorship and skill-building. Unlike most existing research training programs that are brief, focus on laboratory research, or are limited to graduate students and junior faculty, SPARK delivers a 16-month intensive behavioral and population health science training, equipping students with needed tools to conceptualize, plan, execute, and analyze their own health equity research study. Trainees complete didactic coursework on health equity, study design and proposal development, data analysis, and ethics. Students receive a stipend and research expenses, and multiple mentors guide them in creating original research projects for which they serve as Principal Investigator. Students disseminate their findings annually at an academic research conference as a capstone. Evaluation data from the first three cohorts suggest SPARK has been pivotal in preparing students for graduate studies and research careers in health equity and behavioral and population health sciences, providing strong support for further investments in similar undergraduate research training models.

The perspective article explores systemic issues in psychiatric care, particularly the barriers to timely treatment and the ethical dilemmas involved in involuntary interventions. It further examines the impact of anosognosia—lack of disease insight—on treatment, noting the difficulties in managing care for those unaware of their illness, and scrutinizes training materials from international organizations that might mislabel necessary psychiatric practices as human rights violations, thereby complicating the care landscape. The discussion extends to the legal and societal implications of psychiatric interventions, using Massachusetts’ Rogers Guardianship as a case study to highlight the consequences of legalistic approaches to mental health treatment.

The article calls for destigmatizing psychiatric treatment and integrating robust, evidence-based practices to improve patient outcomes and healthcare equity. The global mental health policy landscape is urged to recognize the critical role of psychiatric care in restoring health and dignity to individuals with serious mental illnesses, advocating for a more nuanced understanding and application of human rights in mental health.

Mental health is deteriorating quickly and significantly globally post-COVID. Though there were already over 1 billion people living with mental disorders pre-pandemic, in the first year of COVID-19 alone, the prevalence of anxiety and depression soared by 25% worldwide. In light of the chronic shortages of mental health provider and resources, along with disruptions of available health services caused by the pandemic and COVID-related restrictions, technology is widely believed to hold the key to addressing rising mental health crises. However, hurdles such as fragmented and often suboptimal patient protection measures substantially undermine technology’s potential to address the global mental health crises effectively, reliably, and at scale. To shed light on these issues, this paper aims to discuss the post-pandemic challenges and opportunities the global community could leverage to improve society’s mental health en masse.