Healthcare

As countries across the world struggle to contain and mitigate the spread of COVID-19, Iran’s battle with the virus has been compounded by the lack of access to adequate medical supplies imposed by the U.S. government’s crippling sanctions on the country. Iran is amongst the countries most impacted by the outbreak of COVID-19. As of […]

Every year, we throw away about one-third of the world’s food. This is the equivalent of USD 936 billion, more than the Netherlands’ entire GDP.1 Most of this food is dumped in landfills where it decomposes and produces greenhouse gases (GHG). In 2010, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated that about 3 percent […]

The pandemic is revealing the severe inequities caused by our nation’s digital divide. It is crucial that we invest now to address them. Long before COVID-19 shut down physical campuses and banned in-person gatherings, my life as a graduate student relied heavily on the internet. Due to swift action taken by my school’s leadership, faculty […]

Al Lim looks at how COVID-19 exacerbates existing vulnerabilities that small business owners already struggle with and considers how government support mechanisms can – and should – be deployed to help them cope with both the ongoing effects and aftermath of the pandemic.

The conversation about coronavirus covers the impact on the economy and healthcare system. What is absent from this conversation is the impact on those most burdened by COVID-19’s global disruption – women.  Coronavirus coverage is starting to feel like a wall of noise – a hum of threat, change, and fear that is hard to […]

During his recent visit at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Dr. John Nkengasong answered APJ’s questions regarding the coronavirus crisis pandemic. Interview with Dr. John Nkengasong (Director, Africa CDC) on COVID19 – March 2020 from Harvard African Studies on Vimeo.

I am worried about Africa’s preparedness for the COVID-19 outbreak, and so should everybody else. As at the beginning of March, there were only four cases in Africa spread across Egypt, Algeria and Nigeria. Since then, at least 46 out of 54 countries in Africa have reported cases of COVID-19. On March 28 2020, roughly four […]

What happens to citizenship when crisis disrupts the state’s ability to fulfil its obligations to its citizens, or when citizens find themselves unable to depend on their states for a meaningful guarantee of protection in times of need? Using the emergent COVID-19 pandemic as a lens, Theophilus Kwek considers how states, including Singapore, can do better in caring equally for their citizens – and how citizens can also support each other.

In Singapore, foreign domestic workers (FDWs) on Work Permits are subject to various bio-political restrictions: namely, restrictions that govern who they can marry and whether they can be pregnant.

What explains these restrictions, and why is the state so invested in policing the private intimacies of foreign domestic workers? Poh Yong Han traces through parliamentary debates and newspaper articles to show how these restrictions are informed by a neoliberal philosophy that informs how we view citizenship, and unpacks its consequences.

  Ellie,[1] a young trans woman from Central America, sits across a small table from me in blue men’s scrubs, hair cut short and eyes downcast. It’s taken hours to shuffle her from the solitary confinement unit to this cold, windowless room, where I am to help her prepare her pro se asylum case. She’s […]

Listen Here! We know about the dangers of the Dark Web, but what about the Thin Web? First Year Kennedy School Students Lucy O’Keeffe and Nagela Nukuna sit down with Andrea Alvarez Marin to discuss vulnerable corners of the internet where eating disorders such as Anorexia (“Ana”) and Bulimia (“Mia”) proliferate. Some of these “pro-Ana” […]

Marginalized patient populations in the United States use emergency rooms at disproportionately higher rates than the average patient population. This high rate of utilization is due largely to a lack of accessible alternative options rather than an actual increased need of critical care. In other words, patients who are young, people of color, and have […]