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This is a special edition of The Reader, a weekly round-up of stories you need to know from Fortune editor-in-chief Clifton Leaf.

This week, we published our sixth annual Change the World package, which highlights companies that are doing well by doing good.

On this year’s roster are companies that are tackling the biggest health crisis humanity has faced in memory. Alibaba (No. 2) and Henry Schein (No. 19) are making sure frontline medical workers are protected. Chipmaker Nvidia (No. 4) is building sophisticated GPUs that are helping drug developers pinpoint molecules that might make promising medicines. Cemex (No. 39) is creating prefab hospitals that can be assembled in just 15 days. And Ushio (No. 40) is designing a new type of ultraviolet lamp that can kill dangerous microbes without harming human skin or eyes.

For me, this list every year offers a jolt of confidence in humanity—a renewed sense that many of society’s most unyielding problems can bend when enough creativity, leverage, and pressure are applied.

Read on for more stories from the issue. Have a safe and healthy weekend.

Clifton Leaf

Editor-in-chief, Fortune

P.S. Support independent, authoritative journalism and become a Premium member of Fortune.

SPECIAL REPORT

The forces COVID can't stop

Our 2020 Change the World list stresses a crucial corollary: No business succeeds alone. Collaboration among companies, even among rivals, is a common thread, from the effort to make “green” steel, to the campaign to close America’s racial wealth gap, and, above all, in the race for a COVID-19 vaccine.

MUST READ

‘The whole world is coming together’: How the race for a COVID vaccine is revolutionizing Big Pharma

Drugmakers are teaming up like never before to fight the coronavirus. The benefits could last well beyond the pandemic.

BY CLIFTON LEAF

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Making Black banks matter

Black-owned financial institutions are amplifying the call for racial justice by drawing more private capital into their communities. Could they help close America’s wealth gap?

BY JEN WIECZNER