Perspectives

The authors present a 5-year action plan that prioritizes high-impact, practical interventions in brain health across six key areas—to safeguard the continent’s health and economic stability alongside projected demographic shifts.

Insights into TB heterogeneity are informing strategies for patient stratification and treatment shortening; this Perspective discusses the formidable challenge of treating this complex disease with strategies that can be implemented across global settings, for effective disease control.

The Response Assessment in Neuro-Oncology (RANO) group defines a standardized framework for amino acid PET imaging of brain metastases for use in clinical trials and eventually in clinical practice to facilitate development of novel therapies and improve patient care.

This Perspective explains how past migrations and environmental exposures have influenced genomic diversity, and how understanding and contextualizing this diversity is crucial to advancing precision medicine and equitable healthcare.

Parkinson’s diseases and other synucleinopathies are on the verge of a major paradigm shift toward being defined and staged by their biology, rather than symptoms; this Perspective offers context on progress, needs and opportunities toward this goal.

Citizen-science approaches can help challenge taboos around intimate health topics, amplify underrepresented voices and prioritize women’s involvement in health research; this Perspective considers the key challenges and ingredients for success.

Digitally enabled and decentralized clinical trials could enable large-scale recruitment of diverse participants—but careful consideration of the barriers faced by underserved groups will be crucial to their success.

Cardiology trials continue to under-represent certain population groups relative to disease distribution; this Perspective outlines strategies to foster representativeness and create a research enterprise that meets the needs of people living with cardiovascular disease.

This Perspective calls for inclusion of patients with MASLD and measurement of liver outcomes in cardio–kidney–metabolic trials, when data suggest mechanistically plausible benefits and clinical safety—and outlines considerations for trial design and regulatory approval.

To correct the market failure around pediatric cell and gene therapies, the authors propose a new model to lead late-stage development and commercialize these therapies outside traditional routes.

AI-enabled wellness apps exist in a regulatory gray area and may pose risks if used to manage mental health issues; this Perspective outlines the possible risks to users and the implications for app developers and regulators.

Causal machine learning methods could be used to predict treatment outcomes for subgroups and even individual patients; this Perspective outlines the potential benefits and limitations of the approach, offering practical guidance for appropriate clinical use.

Self-care interventions have the potential to improve health coverage for women while offering greater agency and autonomy, but only if certain barriers—such as stigma and cost—can be overcome.

The unique risks and needs of women in relation to noncommunicable diseases offer myriad opportunities to intervene and prevent disease, but several key barriers to implementation must be addressed.

The current definition of myocardial infarction is applied inconsistently, with implications for patients and research; here, the authors propose a new definition and call for further research and consensus.

As the proportion of older adults increases globally, digital health innovations, particularly wearables, could transform the future of healthy aging.

The recently completed NCI-MATCH is one of the largest precision oncology trials undertaken to date; this Perspective discusses key aspects of its design and conduct, and lessons for future precision oncology studies.

The health sector must play its part in decarbonization efforts; this Perspective outlines the principles of fair pathways to net-zero healthcare that are attentive to health and socioeconomic inequalities.

This Perspective outlines practical considerations for designing and testing visual displays to communicate health information, using illustrative case examples.

The authors describe a localized toxicity syndrome that is associated with immunotherapy treatment for CNS tumors and propose a new grading scale—with the goal of promoting research and standardizing both reporting and management.