Health and Education in the Modern World

Our challenge is to ensure for people everywhere, of all ages, healthy lives and a quality education that promotes lifelong learning.

Global Health

By Margaret A. Caudill-Slosberg, MD, PhD, MPH

The World Health Organization defines health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. As such, global health is influenced by many factors and has taken on an increased sense of urgency in the face of our shrinking planet and the impacts of global warming.

Income and Health | Defense Against Infectious Disease | Maternal and Child Health | Current and Future Challenges


The Pursuit of Health

The Pursuit of Health

By David Sobel, MD, MPH

Throughout human history, improved health and life expectancy have resulted more from safer environments (sanitation and clean water), better nutrition, and our inherent healing capacities than to advances in medical care when we get sick. How can we tap into this understanding to ensure a better future for us all?

What Causes Health | Who Provides Care | Mind and Health

Featured Book

Healthy Pleasures

By Robert Ornstein and David Sobel

Imagine a treatment that lowers your blood pressure, decreases your risk for heart disease and cancer, boosts your immune function and blocks pain. It’s safe, inexpensive, and readily available. The main side effects include feeling good, an increased sense of well-being, and greater self-confidence. Would you take it?

Education for a Changing World

Education’s primary goal is to prepare young people for success in adult life. Our mid-21st century world has seen changes that no one would have envisaged even twenty years ago and education must respond to provide what students need.

Education for Our Times | Early Childhood Education | Adolescence: Second Growth Spurt | Education in the Developing World

The Hole in the Wall

Discover the Power of Self-Organized Learning

By Sugata Mitra

Sugata Mitra’s now famous experiments have shone light on the immense capacities that children have for learning in self-composed and self-regulated groups.

Improbable Scholars

The Rebirth of a Great American
School System and a Strategy for America’s Schools

By David L. Kirp

How do we determine if our schools are preparing students for a meaningful future in our society and improve schools that are not living up to those standards? David Kirp explores the current crisis in American education and four districts that have made positive changes.

One World Schoolhouse

Education Reimagined

By Salman Kahn

There may be a young girl in an African village with the potential to find a cancer cure. A fisherman’s son in New Guinea might have incredible insight into the health of the oceans. By combining the enlightened use of technology with the best teaching practices, we can foster students who are capable of self-directed learning, deep understanding of fundamentals, and creative approaches to real-world problems.

Travel the Journey

Andreas Bohnenstengel, Wikimedia Commons

Download Our Free Discussion Guide:
Creating the World We Want


woman hanging laundry to dry

Time to Care

Oxfam Report to the 2020 World Economic Forum

The heavy and unequal responsibility of care work perpetuates gender and economic inequalities. This has to change.


Public Good or Private Wealth

Oxfam Report to the 2019 World Economic Forum

Providing free universal health care and education is the only way we can reduce the gap between rich and poor, and women and men. Fairer taxation for the wealthiest can make it possible.


Lost Mothers: Maternal Mortality in the U.S.

NPR and Propublica Special Series

The U.S. has the highest rate of maternal mortality in the industrialized world, with the rate of life-threatening complications for new mothers more than doubled in two decades What is behind this alarming trend?


Geoffrey Canada TED Video

Watch: Why Bill and Melinda Gates put 20,000 Students Through College

Scott Pelley, CBS 60 Minutes

The surest way to narrow the wealth gap is to earn a college degree. Now major universities like Princeton are working to lower the price of admission through a new kind of affirmative action, not based on race, but on low-income status.


Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)

The OCED is a major source in our Human Journey assessment of key challenges we face on the road to the future. Founded in 1961 and headquartered in Paris, France, the OCED provides a forum for 35 member countries to share experiences, seek solutions to common problems, and promote policies to improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.

OECD Watch “aims to ensure that business activity contributes to sustainable development and poverty eradication and that corporations are held accountable for their impacts around the globe.”


Further Reading