In this special edition of the This Week in Global Development podcast, produced in partnership with the Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation, Devex co-founder and Executive Vice President Alan Robbins sits down with three architects of Kentucky’s transformation in fighting high lung cancer rates: Dr. Jamie Studts, Dr. Jennifer Redmond Knight, and Dr. Timothy Mullett — the team behind the Kentucky LEADS Collaborative and the QUILS™ system.

After a decade of data, the results are clear: earlier diagnoses are being seen in Kentucky, and current efforts are seeking a similar impact in Mississippi and Nevada. But the real story is how these results were achieved. Rather than imposing top-down protocols, QUILS™ works by equipping local community programs with data-informed tools, continuous feedback, and practice support — helping local clinics serve as trusted access points for lung cancer screening in their communities.

The conversation tackles the hardest part of scaling any screening program: human behavior. Lung cancer carries a unique stigma rooted in decades of anti-smoking messaging, and that stigma remains a powerful barrier, discouraging eligible patients from coming forward. The QUILS™ response is to replace shame and fear with empathy and hope, building person-centered care directly into clinical workflows so the burden does not fall on patients alone.

For global health leaders, the implications are clear: The barriers Kentucky faced — rural isolation, underresourced systems, cultural mistrust — are not unique to one region. They exist everywhere. And the infrastructure built to overcome them may be exactly what the world needs.

Visit Strengthening Care Systems — a series raising awareness of the scale of the global lung cancer burden and the systems-level changes required to address it: https://pages.devex.com/strengtheningcaresystems.html

Filmed live from Geneva, Switzerland, on the sidelines of the World Health Assembly, this episode of This Week in Global Development delves into the critical debates unfolding on the ground in Geneva. That includes the tense atmosphere following the World Health Organization’s rare decision to proclaim a global health emergency over the latest Ebola outbreak, mounting fears regarding the virus tracking into dense urban centers, and how containment efforts are hindered by strict funding restrictions that leave the vast majority of voluntary budgets tied up.

The discussion also looks at the highly anticipated — yet heavily criticized — joint strategy to reform global health infrastructure, capturing the frustration of analysts who feel the plan avoids essential conversations about institutional mergers. The behind-the-scenes maneuvering for the next WHO director-general selection enters the conversation as well, along with the complex legislative hurdles facing the African Medicines Agency as it strives to secure pharmaceutical independence across the continent.

During the sponsored segment of the podcast, brought to you by PATH, Devex Executive Vice President and co-founder Alan Robbins sits down with Dr. Melanie Saville, PATH’s Chief Scientific Officer, to discuss why diagnostics must move from being viewed as a recurring cost to being funded as essential global health infrastructure.