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

One in ten cardiac surgery patients develops persistent opioid use after their operation. Drs Ahmad Alli and David Mazer of St. Michael's Hospital join Taissa Vila to discuss EPOCH CardioLink-10 — their randomised trial testing whether a single targeted nerve block can change that and what a positive result means for clinical practice and public health.

Click here to read the full article:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(26)00138-9/fulltext

Dr. Romina Tejada (Montreal) and Dr. Juliana Rodriguez (Bogotá) join senior editor Maria Augusta Dario to discuss their new modeling study on switching from the quadrivalent to the nonavalent HPV vaccine in Colombia, and what it means for cervical cancer elimination.

Click here to read the full article:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(26)00113-4/fulltext

In this episode, our editor Taissa Vila speaks with Dr Luisa Brant and Dr Mariana Felisbino-Mendes about their capstone Global Burden of Disease analysis for Brazil, tracing major health trends from 1990 to 2023. Together, they unpack Brazil’s gains in life expectancy, the years of progress reversed by COVID-19, and the stark inequalities exposed across Brazilian states. The conversation also examines the impact of pandemic management, emerging post-pandemic challenges such as non-communicable diseases, and what Brazil’s experience can teach other middle-income countries about health system resilience.

Click here to read the full article:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(26)00071-2/fulltext

Dr. L’espérance, an early-career scientist at Stanford University, USA, will talk about the latest estimates on the incidence and mortality rates of renal cell carcinoma in California, USA, data published in the April 2026 issue of The Lancet Regional Health – Americas.

Click here to read the full article: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanam/article/PIIS2667-193X(26)00060-8/fulltext

In this episode, our editor Taissa Vila talks to Dr. Richard Nahin (NIH) and Dr. Anna Zajacova (University of Western Ontario) about their pioneering report on the incidence of chronic diseases and conditions in US adults. The conversation highlights the value of focusing on new cases of noncommunicable diseases rather than just mortality, discusses the role of social and behavioral interventions, examines the impact of ageing on chronic conditions, and considers key questions for future research in public health and epidemiology.