Features

Vital Strategies’ You Have the Power to Save Lives campaign is helping reduce overdose deaths in Black communities by raising awareness and expanding access to naloxone in cities across the U.S. With new partners in Charlotte and Las Vegas, the campaign has already reached hundreds of thousands of people and is inspiring communities nationwide to join the life-saving effort.

Vital Strategies has released the “Health Taxes Action Guide: A Road Map for Policymakers”—a comprehensive toolkit to help governments implement effective health taxes on harmful products such as tobacco, alcohol and sugar-sweetened beverages. Designed for health policymakers, the guide details a step-by-step approach to draft, pass and defend health taxes to confront rising rates of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) worldwide.

Health taxes, in particular, hold the promise to rapidly improve health, reduce long-term health care burdens, and generate revenue that governments can use to fund other health services—which is especially important in a time of collapsing development assistance.

In 2024, the U.S. notably saw an almost 27% reduction in overdose deaths. However, rates of fatal overdose remain high among Indigenous populations, in Wisconsin and in the US overall, and resources are difficult to access in rural areas of the state.