What’s New in Public Health?

proved transportation safety. Measures such as universal childhood immunization, access to contraception, and health promotion to slow the pandemic of chronic disease are also public health accomplishments. Improved medical care for the sick, while increasingly effective, contributed only 5 years of life expectancy gains overall, and half the 7.5 years gained since 1950 [4, 5] . At a United Nations Summit in 2000, member nations pronounced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to be achieved by 2015. Considering underlying social dynamics and conditions, they constructed 8 globally important goals. Three focus explicitly on health: maternal health, child health, and selected diseases of global importance (HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis) [6] . Others address conditions for health, such as gender equity, nutrition, water and sanitation. This declaration has been matched by an unprecedented global investment of many tens of billions of dollars annually. Each year, the United Nations issues a report on progress, produced by a monitoring and evaluation team at the World Bank. The latest report was released on July 2, 2012 [7] . Several MDG targets have been met ahead of the 2015 target, and there is progress on others. Here are some highlights. • Extreme poverty is falling in every region and the poverty reduction target has been met: the global poverty rate at USD 1.25 a day fell to less than half the 1990 rate by 2012. • The target of halving the proportion of people without access to improved water sources has been met: the Background