This March, join the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology (Alliance) and the Alliance Foundation Trials (AFT) in spotlighting colorectal cancer, the second leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States, behind only lung cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute. Last year, an estimated 155,000 Americans received a diagnosis of colon or rectal cancer, and about 53,000 died from the disease. Alliance has 10 active trials focused on improving treatments for colorectal cancers as well as others aimed at ways to prevent the disease or catch it very early when symptoms are most easily and effectively treated.

Birth order, a non-genetic factor, may influence early neurodevelopment. A nationwide Japanese birth cohort study based on sibling pairs suggests that differences in neurodevelopment emerge during the first year of life. Second-born infants scored slightly lower than firstborns across several domains and had lower levels of parental engagement. The study suggests that differences in caregiver-reported parental engagement may partly account for these small but consistent early developmental gaps, though their long-term clinical significance remains unclear.

A newly released compendium, Feminism and COVID-19: How Women Fare in the Face of a Global Crisis, is revealing how women across the world were simultaneously critical for the success of the global COVID-19 response, and disproportionately impacted by the pandemic’s secondary effects, such as lost income, and increased unpaid care work and violence.

Book co-editors, Dr. Julia Smith of Simon Fraser University and Dr. Clare Wenham from the London School of Economics, gathered together a unique multidisciplinary and transnational team of authors and experts who examined nine case studies of the COVID-19 response and its global and local impacts on women from Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Hong Kong, Kenya, Nigeria and the United Kingdom.