This chapter emphasizes the significance of cultural competency and its relevance to health care through an Islamic lens. While Islamic texts do not directly address cultural competence, they highlight principles aligning with its values and highlight the importance of understanding and respecting various cultures. Addressing the health care needs of Muslim patients necessitates a thorough integration of cultural, religious, and spiritual considerations, recognizing the substantial influence of religion and spirituality on health care decisions. This chapter discusses the importance for public health care practitioners to be equipped with the requisite skills and knowledge to cater to the specific needs of Muslim patients and communities and the adherence to religious beliefs and practices. The foundational principles of cultural competencies, deeply rooted in Islamic values, can be universally applied in health care settings, ensuring health care providers are culturally competent and capable of offering culturally congruent care within an Islamic context.

Religious beliefs and practices play a critical role in how public health and health care outcomes are realized. While there is little research on non-Muslim experiences with public health initiatives and health outcomes in Muslim Majority Countries (MMCs), there is a body of literature that identifies multiple social determinants of health that lead to poorer indicators of health and health outcomes in these countries. In addition, in societies where there are large immigrant Muslim populations, perceptions of the quality of care, participation in public health initiatives, and access to health care that is culturally relevant and aligned with belief systems has been found to impact health outcomes. Barriers and facilitators to accessing and receiving care in both MMCs and communities serving Muslim populations have been identified. Social determinants of health such as economic status, access to and quality of education and health care, social and built environment, foodways, and collaborative community action to advance cultural competence of providers and other public health stakeholders can all improve health indicators and health outcomes of MMCs and communities with Muslim populations.

Adolescents’ ability to access health care depends on sharing accurate information about concerns, needs, and conditions. Parents and other adults serve as both resources and gatekeepers in adolescents’ ability to access and manage care. Understanding information sharing between adolescents and parents, adolescents and providers, and parents and providers is thus critical. This chapter distinguishes between adolescents’ routine and self-disclosure of information. The former refers to sharing information required for the partner to perform their role. The latter refers to voluntarily sharing more information than required. Because the roles of parent and provider are distinct relative to the adolescent, disclosure decisions can conflict. These differences are discussed in the context of communication privacy management theory and the literature on legitimacy of authority. A framework for understanding information sharing processes is developed that considers stage of care, type of care, stigma/privacy associated with the condition, and the age of the adolescent.

This chapter provides additional justifications for the human right to free internet access. It shows that today internet access is practically indispensable for having adequate opportunities for the exercise and enjoyment of socio-economic and cultural human rights. Examples from around the globe provide evidence for the internet’s practical systemic indispensability for human rights to, for example, education, health care, housing (adequate standard of living), finding work, and participation in cultural life. Specific attention is paid to the differing ways in which internet access matters in developed countries (where internet access is already widespread and public services generally available) versus developing societies (in which internet access is often lacking and universal public service provision is precarious. In developed countries, internet access greatly increases opportunities to use socio-economic human rights, thereby putting those who involuntarily remain offline at risk of social, economic, or cultural exclusion. By contrast, in developing countries internet access is sometimes the only way for at least some realisation of people’s socio-economic human rights.

City institutions engage with language provisions in order to ensure equal access to services. Global provisions are intertwined with local knowledge resources introduced by individual agents. As UK austerity measures post-2012 led to a reduction of resources and specialised provisions, institutions began to rely more and more on the deployment of local individualised knowledge in response to communication challenges. Multilingual spaces became in some areas improvised and driven by the agency of both institutional agents and clients. The city’s day-to-day operations can be seen as a space of resistance to monolingual ideologies, born out of the necessity to provide front-line services to all and tightly embedded into the shared experience of a multilingual reality. But city-based institutions have limited powers to legislate or to fund operations.

Joe Biden’s first two years became a turning point. The country had reached a point where it was obvious that the mix of government and markets had titled too much in the direction of markets. Besides the COVID pandemic, Biden confronted growing inflation, an economic recession, and Trump’s refusal to do anything to address climate change, together with a deeply divided partisan Congress. Biden galvanized the Democrats to unite around significant and bold responses and even obtained bipartisan support for some of his legislative agenda. He passed legislation to address COVID and increase government investment in infrastructure and technological developments. Regarding these successes and the inability to do more, Biden focused on how the balance between government and markets depends on the role of government right-sizing that balance by trying to restore confidence in American government and American democracy.

China’s age of abundance has led to the creation of wealth and a surplus. Using a lifecycle approach this chapter examines the sources of this surplus creation, and estimates the impact of population aging and welfare expansion on future lifecycle surplus. It also estimates future fiscal pressure on the state with the changes in lifecycle surplus.

Home to 60 per cent of the world’s population, Asia is the locus for significant global challenges such as the future of work, gender inequality, inequitable access to health care, and climate change. For these entrenched socio-economic challenges, the time is ripe for philanthropist and philanthropic capital to taking a leading role in addressing and resolving these issues. Connecting like-minded individuals and building bridges to collaboration is one of the core functions of ecosystem builders like the Asian Venture Philanthropy Network (AVPN). Since its founding in 2011, AVPN has grown into Asia’s largest social investment network, with over 600 members active across 33 markets. It has incubated several successful partnerships, but the journey has not always been smooth sailing. As the network has grown and evolved, so has its value proposition and role in the community. This chapter shares some of the lessons AVPN has learned in its journey to become an inclusive, responsive, and resilient ecosystem builder for philanthropy in Asia. It calls on philanthropists to build more intentional partnerships with ecosystem builders to facilitate more long-term, sustained change on the ground. The chapter points out that sector intermediaries should seek out opportunities to support philanthropists in building the community – the best way to resolve systemic development issues – rather than work alone.