World Health OrganizationHealth in 2015: From MDGs, Millennium Development Goals, to SDGs, Sustainable Development GoalsGeneva: WHO Press, 2016. 212 p. $60.00 (pbk.).

This comprehensive report describes global health in 2015, looks back at trends during the MDG era, and assesses the main challenges for implementing the SDGs. Progress on the three health-related MDGs has been substantial. Globally, the HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria epidemics were “turned around,” and child and maternal mortality decreased by 53 percent and 44 percent, respectively, since 1990, despite falling short of their MDG targets. The success of the past 15 years is attributable to a range of activities, including invigorated country actions, global partnerships, funding increases, and scale-up of new interventions. The report's core chapters cover the priorities of the SDG health goal: universal health care; reproductive, maternal, newborn, child, and adolescent health; infectious diseases; non-communicable diseases; mental health and substance abuse; and injuries and violence. Each chapter summarizes past achievements and progress and identifies major priorities for the next 15 years. A key challenge ahead is that the SDGs are substantially more ambitious than the MDGs. Although there is only one health SDG, it is comprehensive—“Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all ages”—and it has 13 targets. The three health MDGs (reducing child mortality; improving maternal health; and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases) have now become three targets under the new health SDG. The remaining ten new health targets focus on non-communicable diseases and the achievement of universal health coverage. Monitoring progress on each of these targets will require regular high-quality data on causes of death and a number of other indicators. This will be difficult to achieve, especially in developing countries with weak health data systems. The report is comprehensive, highly informative, clearly structured, and concisely written; it will be a valuable resource to a wide audience. The massive amount of available health-related information is made accessible by including many figures, tables, and boxes to summarize key data. Each chapter has extensive references and notes. In 2016, WHO will publish the first in a series of annual reports on the SDGs to set the baseline and measure progress over the next 15 years. The full report is available online: http://www.who.int/gho/publications/mdgs-sdgs/en/ —J.B.