The Global Pulse

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I am a high school student looking to change the future of medicine.
    • The Cyclospora Outbreak Shows a Bigger Health Problem

      The Cyclospora Outbreak Shows a Bigger Health Problem

      One of the craziest public health stories this summer has been this huge Cyclospora outbreak everyone is talking about. Cyclospora is a parasite that can cause an intestinal disease called cyclosporiasis, and symptoms include diarrhea, stomach cramps and nausea. The illness can last a long time if it isn’t treated.

      Michigan had reported almost 15,000 cases by early September. Federal investigators have also linked a large part of the outbreak to iceberg lettuce from Taylor Farms de Mexico. The lettuce was sold at different locations, and Taco Bell being one of them. The FDA has reported more than 11,000 illnesses connected to that outbreak.

      But what makes this story interesting to me isn’t just the contaminated lettuce. It is what happened behind the scenes.

      According to Reuters, some local health departments became extremely busy trying to investigate the cases. Workers had to be moved away from other responsibilities, like vaccinations and restaurant inspections to help respond to the outbreak. Experts were concerned that years of staffing shortages and low funding have caused issues with responding fast to something this big.

      When we hear about a food outbreak, we usually focus on what food caused it and whether we should stop eating it. But somebody out there has to interview thousands of sick people, identify patterns, test samples and trace contaminated food up the chain.

      If health departments don’t have enough people to do those jobs, finding the source can take much longer. This outbreak shows why public health matters even when a pandemic isn’t happening. We usually don’t notice these systems until something goes really wrong, but by then we really need them to work.

    • COVID Is Having Another Late Summer Surge

      COVID Is Having Another Late Summer Surge

      COVID has developed a pattern that is different from other diseases, like the flu for example. Instead of cases only increasing during the winter, COVID can also increase during the summer. Researchers at the CDC have found that COVID activity has peaked during both late summer and winter a couple of times already.

      That makes the current increase in COVID activity we are seeing less shocking. Late summer is also a time when a lot of people are traveling, spending time with other people and then returning to schools and colleges. All of those situations give these viruses many opportunities to spread.

      The good news is that COVID today is very different from COVID back in 2020, when the pandemic began. The population now has immunity from vaccines and previous infections, and there are treatments available for people who are at higher risk, like the elderly. The CDC continues to track COVID, including hospital surveillance, laboratory testing and wastewater monitoring.

      I think one interesting lesson from all of this is that COVID probably is never going to just disappear. Public health agencies have to figure out how to monitor it and respond when cases go up.

      Wastewater surveillance is really interesting to me. A lot of people don’t take COVID tests anymore or even know they have COVID, so counting positive tests wouldn’t give us a very accurate picture of how much virus is actually out there. Wastewater can give health officials another way of seeing whether or not COVID is increasing in the community.

      After everything that happened during the pandemic, hearing about another “COVID surge” can sound scary. But an increase in infections does not mean we are going back to 2020. The challenge now is learning how to live with a virus that continues to change and comes back in waves while still protecting people who are most likely to get really sick.

    • Health Misinformation Online Is a Kind of Disease

      Health Misinformation Online Is a Kind of Disease

      People my age get a huge amount of our information from our phones, including health advice. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, group chats. And a lot of what’s floating out there is wrong, which is a bigger deal than people realize.

      The World Health Organization actually has a word for this: an “infodemic.” That’s when false or misleading info spreads so fast online that it starts messing with people’s decisions. The WHO Director-General once said we weren’t just fighting an epidemic, we were fighting an infodemic. WHO also found that in some studies, misinformation made up as much as half of vaccine-related posts and even more of pandemic ones.

      When people believe bad health info, they make bad decisions, like skipping vaccines or trying things that don’t work, and they stop trusting the experts who actually know what they’re talking about.

      Health literacy is so important. Basically, learning how to check where information actually comes from. Is it a doctor, a health agency, a real study? Or is it a random account from a stranger?

      This is something I try to practice. I stick to sources like the CDC and WHO when I write these posts, because if I’m going to talk about health, I want to make sure I am getting it right.

    • Screens Are Changing Our Eyes

      Screens Are Changing Our Eyes

      I game with my friends, I’m on my phone, and I make beats staring at a screen. Basically, my eyes spend a lot of time locked on stuff a couple feet from my face. Turns out that’s part of a global trend that’s shaping our vision.

      According to the National Eye Institute, myopia (nearsightedness, where far-away things look blurry) is getting bigger, especially in kids. Back in 2000, about 23% of the world was myopic. By 2050, it’s supposed to hit about 50%. That’s roughly 5 billion people needing glasses or contacts to see right. In some parts of East Asia, 80% to 90% of teens and young adults are already nearsighted.

      So what’s causing it? Researchers point to 2 big things: a ton of “near work” like screens and reading up close, and not enough time outside. Your eye is still developing when you’re young, and constant close-up focusing combined with little outdoor light seems to push it to grow in a way that is not healthy for your eyes.

      Here’s the plot twist I actually liked. Time outdoors actually helps you. Kids who spend more time outside in natural light have a lower risk of becoming nearsighted. Which means all my track practice and time on the field wasn’t just good for my body, it actually helped my eyes too.

      I’m not telling anyone to ditch their phone or quit gaming, because I’m not doing that either. But the fix is pretty simple: take breaks, look at stuff far away, and get outside.

    • Is the Next Pandemic Coming?

      Is the Next Pandemic Coming?

      Kids my age have a weird relationship with pandemics, since we actually went through one in school. We remember the lockdowns, the masks, the online classes, all of it. So when scientists say “the next one is coming,” we’re not thinking about it. We’ve seen the movie.

      Experts are very clear that there will be a next one, and WHO even has a name for the unknown future germ that could cause it: “Disease X.” Nobody knows yet if it’ll be a new flu, a new coronavirus, or something we’ve never seen before. What they do know is that the conditions that let these things go from animals to humans aren’t going away.

      The encouraging news is that the world isn’t just sitting around and waiting for it to happen. In May 2025, countries adopted something called the WHO Pandemic Agreement, which is basically a plan to prevent and prepare for the next outbreak together instead of every country trying to figure out on their own. A lot of the work is stuff like disease surveillance, watching for spillover from animals, and making sure vaccines and treatments can be made fast and shared with everyone.

      The whole point of preparing is to do it before it becomes an emergency. It’s like a fire drill. You don’t figure out where the exits are while the building is on fire. One health official said pandemics are national security threats. They’re pretty serious.

      As someone who wants to be a doctor, this is exactly the kind of problem I want to help with. Thinking about these things early on helps a lot.

    • Moms and Babies: The Global Health Gap Nobody Talks About

      Moms and Babies: The Global Health Gap Nobody Talks About

      Women are still dying from giving birth. Not from rare complications, but from preventable things we’ve known how to handle for a pretty long time.

      According to the World Health Organization, every day in 2023 more than 700 women died from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth. That’s about one woman every two minutes. Around 260,000 mothers in a single year. And it’s not spread evenly at all. More than 90% of those deaths happen in low- and lower-income countries. On the kid side, nearly 4.9 million children die before their fifth birthday every year, again mostly from preventable causes.

      Here’s what makes it hit harder for me. Most of these deaths could be prevented with basic things like professional help during delivery and prenatal care. The problem here is access to the right care. It really comes down to where you were born.

      My family connects me to this in a small way. My grandmother immigrated from Brazil, and a big part of why I think about this stuff a lot is knowing how different life can be depending on which country you are born in. The idea that a healthy mom and a healthy baby could be related to where they live on a map is hard to accept.

      There’s real progress though. The world’s maternal death rate has dropped about 40% since 2000. That proves it’s fixable. We just have to keep closing the gap, because where you’re born shouldn’t decide whether mom and her baby survive.

    • Giving Blood Is the Easiest Way to Literally Save a Life

      Giving Blood Is the Easiest Way to Literally Save a Life

      According to the American Red Cross, someone in the US needs blood every 2 seconds. A single donation can save up to 3 lives because they split it into different parts for different patients. The only source is people who are willing to donate.

      That’s why shortages are a problem though. About 62% of people are actually eligible to donate, but only around 3% do. So a very small percentage of the population is keeping the whole supply going. And the need is constant: about 16 million blood components get transfused every year, and a single car crash victim can need as many as 100 units.

      Volunteering at Orlando Health made this hit different for me. You see real patients and realize the blood they need came from a stranger who decided to show up. That stranger never met them and saved them anyway. That’s very impressive when you think about it.

      Depending on the state and your age, you can start donating at 16 or 17 with a parent’s permission, which means this is one of the first real, grown-up ways a teenager can help. It’s free to give and hard to think of an easier way to matter.

    • CPR and AEDs: The 10 Minutes That Can Save a Life

      CPR and AEDs: The 10 Minutes That Can Save a Life

      You’ve probably seen it happen at some point, maybe on TV: an athlete suddenly collapses on the field, and everyone freezes. That’s sudden cardiac arrest, and it’s the leading medical cause of death in young athletes.

      In the US, somewhere around 350,000 to 420,000 people have a cardiac arrest outside a hospital every year, and about 90% of them don’t make it. The heart just stops, and within minutes the brain starts running out of oxygen. But getting CPR going and using an AED (those portable defibrillators on the wall in a lot of schools and gyms) can triple someone’s chance of survival.

      A study led by UW Medicine looked at 132 young athletes, average age 16, who went into cardiac arrest. Overall, 48% survived, which is already way better than the general rate. But when an AED was on-site and used, 89% survived. The catch is that people only start CPR about 40% of the time, usually because they are scared they’ll mess it up.

      Here’s the thing though: CPR is a skill you can actually learn. Lots of schools offer training, and hands-only CPR is basically push hard and fast in the center of the chest until help arrives.

      I think every person should know where the nearest AED is and how to do CPR. It’s one of the few times where a teenager can make a difference between someone living and dying.

    • Your Gut Might Be Running the Show

      Your Gut Might Be Running the Show

      Because I’m trying to gain weight the right way, I think about food a lot. And I recently learned about something that changed how I see eating: the gut microbiome.

      According to the Cleveland Clinic, there are trillions of microbes living inside your gut, more than a thousand different types of bacteria. They help you digest food and train your immune system, and they produce special substances called short-chain fatty acids that protect your gut lining and calm down inflammation. There’s even this thing where these microbes help make some of the chemicals that affect people’s mood.

      So you’re basically carrying around a whole ecosystem inside your gut, and what you eat decides which players get fed. Fiber, the stuff in fruits, vegetables, beans, and whole grains, is food for the good bacteria. A diet that’s all processed junk feeds the bad bacteria, and when that balance gets thrown off it’s been linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes, gut diseases, and even mood issues.

      Every meal, I’m either feeding the good bacteria or the bad ones. Bulking taught me that the source of my calories matters and the microbiome is a huge reason why. Real food with fiber and the same calories from junk food do completely different things once they’re inside your body.

      It kind of blew my mind that “trust your gut” might be more literal than people think. Take care of those trillions of tiny teammates and they take care of you.

    • Loneliness Is Actually a Health Risk

      Loneliness Is Actually a Health Risk

      Loneliness is officially a public health issue, and not a small one. A real, measurable health risk.

      In a 2023 advisory, the Surgeon General said being socially disconnected raises your risk of early death by an amount similar to smoking up to 15 cigarettes a day. Loneliness can actually be about as dangerous as a bad smoking habit. It’s linked to higher rates of heart disease, stroke, depression, and other problems. And about half of US adults reported feeling lonely even before the pandemic made it worse.

      The advisory also found that young people ages 15 to 24 had a 70% drop in time spent hanging out with friends in person over the past couple of decades. In person friend time fell from around 60 minutes a day to about 20. We’re more connected than ever online through videogames and social media and somehow spending way less actual time together in person.

      In person connection is like a daily vitamin. If you don’t take it, your body and mind actually start to suffer.

      I have my family, my friends, my music club, my teammates. Those are my communities, real people I see in person. After learning this, I don’t take that for granted. Texting is fine, but spending time with these people in person matter way more.

      Read more: Our Epidemic of Loneliness — U.S. Surgeon General (via NPR)