For children to reach their full potential, it is essential to make sure their home environment fosters their development. This home environment has been made even more important by the situation of many care centers during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, our knowledge about how to implement family programs at scale is limited. Although efficacy trials of home visiting programs have demonstrated their potential to prompt changes in parenting practices within the home and promote child development, these programs are costly and challenging for local systems to implement at large scale.

12% of the world’s smokers live in Latin America and the Caribbean. Every year, tobacco use contributes to the growth of non-communicable diseases and causes one million deaths in the region. So if tobacco is the most preventable cause of death, how can countries get their populations to stop smoking?    

Faced with the most serious health crisis that the region has experienced in years, it is natural that we all have good reasons for wanting to be vaccinated and protected against COVID-19. Latin America and the Caribbean, a region that was reeling from social protests before the advent of COVID-19, has seen disparities aggravated by the pandemic, with the adverse effects of COVID-19 concentrated among the most marginalized.

Every 3 seconds, someone in the world develops dementia. Most of these individuals reside in low- and middle-income countries. Latin America is likely to be significantly impacted by the global increase in the number of people affected by dementia.

Jessica Leight is a research fellow in the Poverty, Health and Nutrition Division at International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). Her research agenda focuses on human capital accumulation for women and girls as well as agricultural institutions and structural transformation. She is a special guest in our blog series about the development of #skills21 in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused more job and income loss across the globe than any of us have seen in our lifetime. Data collected by the IDB’s COVID-19 Labor Observatory indicate that more than 30 million jobs have been lost in Latin America and the Caribbean.