Drought is intensifying across the Americas, but its effect on pregnancy has rarely been studied at scale. In this episode of In Conversation With, Taissa Vila speaks with Drs Aline Rocha, Andrea Ferreira and Otavio Ranzani about their nationwide cohort study of 29.8 million live births in Brazil. They discuss how drought is linked to preterm birth and small-for-gestational-age births, why the effects differ across Brazil's biomes and levels of human development, and what the findings mean for prenatal care and climate adaptation across the Americas.

Click here to read the full article:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(26)00200-0/fulltext

In this special anniversary episode of *In Conversation With…*, our editorial team reflects on what it means to be an Editor at *The Lancet Regional Health – Americas*, the progress the journal has made over the past five years, and what we hope to see next for health research across the region.

Read the Editorial in The Lancet Regional Health – Americas here:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(26)00269-3/fulltext

Partisan differences and childhood vaccination. In this episode, authors Claire Morton and Derek Ouyang discuss their new study in The Lancet Regional Health – Americas, providing nationwide, individual-level evidence linking parents' political affiliation to childhood vaccine refusal and MMR coverage in the US. They explore how these patterns have evolved over time and what they mean for childhood vaccination going forward.

Click here to read the full article:

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lana.2026.101495