Moonshots After Biden and Secret Shoppers in Health Care

Editors' Note

As the U.S. presidential election nears, Americans are taking a closer look at former President Donald Trump's and Vice President Kamala Harris's policy records to understand each candidate's priorities.

This week, CFR Senior Fellow David P. Fidler contributes to that analysis by examining the Joe Biden administration's recently launched Quad Cancer Moonshot Initiative and Partnership for a Lead-Free Future. Although the projects serve as a "reminder that global health involves many problems beyond pandemics that require diplomatic action and financial resources to address," their lifetimes could be cut short by a second Trump term, Fidler warns.

Also weighing in on politics, journalist Vida Foubister discusses how overdose prevention centers—essential to providing safe spaces for people to use drugs—have become a political scapegoat for critics in the United States and Canada who wrongly believe the centers contribute to public drug use and homelessness.

Switching to a doubleheader on India, physician Parth Sharma and founder of Canseva Foundation Vid Karmarkar shed light on how the high cost of cancer care is trapping patients and their families in cycles of poverty.

Next, journalist Ron Shinkman examines how a RAND study in India used a "secret shopper" approach that employed actors to pose as parents of sick children, and how that strategy could be transferred to other forms of research.

Wrapping up the issue, CFR's Mariel Ferragamo offers strategies to increase the visibility of para-athletes and ways for broadcasters to bridge the gap in viewership between the Olympics and Paralympics in advance of the Los Angeles games.

Until next week!—Nsikan Akpan, Managing Editor, and Caroline Kantis, Associate Editor