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Research shows that without access to basic reproductive health care, women can’t thrive economically. Expanding contraceptive use improves women’s agency, education and labor force participation. Yet across Africa, there is an unmet need for family planning, and low contraceptive use keeps women from achieving their desired family size, limiting women’s economic advancement. (Jonathan Cohen and Kavita N. Ramdas, 4/7)

When the U.N.’s 2019 World Happiness Report came out last month, Finland ranked on top for the second year in a row. Small Finland — about 75% the size of California with just 5.5 million people — consistently trounces the United States and other developed nations on ratings of life satisfaction, health, safety, governance, community and social progress.As a result, Finland now has a cottage industry in sending its experts across the Atlantic to have their brains picked for quick fixes to America’s problems. But those fixes never really take root because the underlying reason Finns are faring so well is because we have a different mindset about success — one that’s based on equity and community. (Jorma Ollila, 4/7)

Project Restoration didn’t just save Charlie’s life. It also transformed Clearlake. In less than a year, its approach yielded a 44% reduction in hospital utilization, an 82% reduction in use of the community response system, and a 45% reduction in hospital costs among the high-use population. The project is freeing up resources, sharing data across agencies, and creating cross-sector teams to address access to affordable housing, transportation, and behavioral health. Project Restoration leveraged its success to secure a $1.6 million grant to develop a center for integrated support services. In partnership with the Camden Coalition’s National Center for Complex Health and Social Needs, the project is extending the concept to more hospitals and stakeholders. (Lauran Hardin and Shelly Trumbo, 4/8)

Throughout my time as a cook, an entrepreneur and a nonprofit founder, I have been reminded time and again, from the District to Puerto Rico, of the incredible power of food to bring people together. Twenty-five years ago, I first walked through the doors of D.C. Central Kitchen. I was a young immigrant cook searching for my place in a new city and in the world. I was expecting to find a run-of-the-mill soup kitchen. What I found instead was an engine of change that challenged conventions I didn’t realize needed breaking. Instead of simply preparing meals, this fearless nonprofit was helping unemployed Washingtonians trade homelessness, incarceration and addiction for real careers in the culinary industry that I loved. I was proud to work shoulder to shoulder with them; it taught me the true value of food as an agent of change and made me the proud Washingtonian I am today. (Jose Andres, 4/5)

The favorite new “reasonable” plan is “Medicare for America,” a bill from Reps. Jan Schakowsky and Rosa DeLauro that has won the support of big names like Texas presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke and the Center for American Progress, the left-of-center think tank where the plan originated as “Medicare Extra for All.” It has been extolled in opinion pieces for some of America’s largest newspapers as a “realistic” plan to fix what’s broken in our health care system. (Gerald Friedman, 4/8)

I’ve been disabled since I was 24 and have experienced recurring bouts of major depression for most of my life. And like a crow with a carcass, one tends to feed off the other. Because of my impaired mobility — most days I’m confined to bed for 22 hours — it’s often impossible to exercise enough so that my brain releases sufficient endorphins, one of the hormones key to experiencing joy. (Litsa Bremousis, 4/7)

On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee will hold its second hearing in a series on drug pricing. Led by chairman Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and ranking member Ron Wyden (D-Oregon), this hearing is a follow-up of the widely publicized grilling in February of CEOs and senior executives of seven major pharmaceutical companies. This time around, five executives from major pharmacy benefit mangers (PBMs) will be in the hot seat. (Steve Brozak, 4/8)

I’m a pediatrician, and when I see adolescents in my clinic, I ask them if they are drinking alcohol (among other risky activities). Then I counsel them if they answer in the affirmative. I want young people to be safe. But doctors lack the evidence base — we don’t have enough studies — to know how much of a difference this makes. Here’s why we may want an answer. Excessive drinking is responsible for 88,000 deaths per year in the United States, about one in 10 deaths among working-age adults. The cost in 2010 was almost $250 billion. (Aaron E. Carroll, 4/8)

This week, the Senate failed to pass a disaster funding bill that would have restored adequate food assistance for more than 1 million Puerto Ricans. Why? While Senate Republicans did include the food assistance funding, they blocked other badly needed money for the island’s continuing recovery in the wake of two 2017 hurricanes. Nor did the Senate’s bill include funds that the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam and American Samoa need to avert cuts to their Medicaid programs in coming months. (Javier Balmaceda, 4/5)

On Wednesday, the Justice Department put Alabama on notice over the state’s “flagrant disregard” for the constitutional rights of inmates in its prisons. The department said that conditions in the state’s prisons are among the nation’s very worst. “After carefully reviewing the evidence,” department officials wrote in a letter addressed to Gov. Kay Ivey, “we conclude that there is reasonable cause to believe that conditions at Alabama’s prisons violate the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution,” which protects against cruel and unusual forms of punishment. (4/6)

Missouri Farm Bureau members were likely startled by the recent “Commentary” in their email queues. The farm bureau’s Eric Bohl reported on his visit to a St. Louis-area Burger King, where the fast-food giant is testing a version of the Whopper made entirely from plants. “If I didn’t know what I was eating, I would have no idea it was not beef,” Bohl wrote. (David Von Drehle, 4/5)