3D printing offers new hope for war-wounded

One scientist, dared to take a risk, and go where no one else had: mass-spectrometry imaging of microbes and chemicals. These images tell scientists how microbes communicate with each other, the environment, and humans. The benefits of this new technology could have far reaching benefits.

A weatherproof tent for homeless families performed well in a pilot, winning design awards and public praise, even before becoming commercially available. The tent requires no tools to set up and can fit two adults and three children. For one family, it was their first home together after six years of living separately in single-gender shelters.

Two federally-funded Seattle tech training programs tasked with increasing diversity in the industry returned dramatically different results over the course of one year. Experts credit Apprenti's employer-driven nature, use of an online screening tool, and close ties with the local tech community with its relative success in placing 220 people in apprenticeships in its first 18 months. 94 percent of applicants to Aprenti's program were women, veterans, or persons of color, with only 55 percent holding a post-secondary degree.

Project Baby Bear is a grant-funded pilot program that uses genome sequencing to to diagnose sick infants. The doctors hope to save lives and save the system money on unnecessary treatments. Since very few sick infants show symptoms that correlate to their genetic diagnosis, these tests are instrumental in positive health outcomes.

Some medical schools are now incorporating interviews with healthy seniors into their curriculum. These interactions help young medical students combat ageist stereotypes they may unconsciously develop through treating unhealthy older people. It also builds empathy and a sense of what good geriatric health looks like.

The poliovirus has plagued Nigeria for years, but the country is approaching near-eradication thanks to community public health workers' efforts to increase education, immunization and reporting. Throughout the country workers known as Disease Surveillance and Notification Officers are trained to recognize the symptoms of polio so the cases can be reported and addressed immediately. Coupled with the efforts of community informants, this approach has already resulted in parts of Nigeria becoming polio-free.

Australia has found a promising model to make high-priced medicine cheaper for patients, including expensive treatments for Hepatitis C, which the country is now on track to eradicating by 2026. The strategy works similar to the business strategy of subscription streaming services- by paying a lump sum to drug producers, Australia gets an unlimited amount of the drug for 5 years, allowing all patients to get help while ensuring stable profits for drug companies.

The United Kingdom's health-care system – which has been lauded as one of the most equitable models for care – is built around a government agency that decides "which treatments are worth covering, and for whom." Although the measures used to determine these recommendations are controversial and the agency doesn't always sustain public trust in their decisions, the overall outcome has increased both social solidarity and life expectancy.

The Ajo Center for Sustainable Agriculture has helped the town of Ajo in Arizona distribute affordable and nutrient-dense food to the community after the coronavirus pandemic created a significant financial strain on many families. Additional support has come from the town's participation in the Environmental Protection Agency's program Local Food, Local Places which "provides technical support and expertise to help towns leverage food systems to boost economic development."

Mayday Health is a health-education nonprofit that helps patients in states that have banned abortion figure out how to get abortions anyway. For people living in states where abortion is banned, Mayday provides step-by-step instructions for how to obtain abortion pills, as well as medical information about the safety and reliability of medication abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy.