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The sudden and severe foreign aid cuts imposed this year by U.S. President Donald Trump, along with funding reductions from other countries, shuttered thousands of the camps’ schools and youth training centers and crippled child protection programs. Beyond unwanted marriages, scores of children as young as 10 were forced into backbreaking manual labor, and girls as young as 12 forced into prostitution. With no safe space to play or learn, children were left to wander the labyrinthine camps, making them increasingly easy targets for kidnappers. (Gelineau, 12/17)

A former leading scientist at the National Institutes of Health sued the Trump administration Tuesday, saying she was illegally fired for warning that abrupt research cuts were endangering patients and public health. The NIH has cut billions of dollars in research projects since President Donald Trump took office in January, bypassing the usual scientific funding process. The cuts included clinical trials testing treatments for cancer, brain diseases and other health problems that a recent report said impacted over 74,000 people enrolled in the experiments. (Neergaard, 12/16)

When Pleuni Pennings and her family came to this university town in the south of France at the beginning of the year, the plan was to stay a few months for a sabbatical of sorts before returning home to the U.S. She and her husband thought about moving to Europe one day, and were scouting Montpellier as a possible future home. (Joseph, 12/17)

One was administering grants to tribes for environmental protection strategies. Another was negotiating cleanup for some of the worst contaminated sites in the country, while a third investigated the impact of air pollution on pregnant women and their babies. All three belong to a group of Environmental Protection Agency employees who were placed on extended paid administrative leave this year as part of the Trump administration’s effort to shrink the agency — and were later fired. (Ajasa, 12/17)

Abby McIlraith returned to work at the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Hyattsville, Maryland, office on the first day of December for the first time in more than three months. Her suspension for signing a public letter criticizing agency leadership was over, and she was looking forward to finally putting it behind her. (Banks, 12/16)

Â鶹ŮÓÅ Health News: Oregon Hospital Races To Build A Tsunami Shelter As FEMA Fights To Cut Its Funding

Residents of this small coastal city in the Pacific Northwest know what to do when there’s a tsunami warning: Flee to higher ground. For those in or near Columbia Memorial, the city’s only hospital, there will soon be a different plan: Shelter in place. The hospital is building a new facility next door with an on-site tsunami shelter — an elevated refuge atop columns deeply anchored in the ground, where nearly 2,000 people can safely wait out a flood. (Norman and Chang, 12/17)

Two healthcare organizations, Lyra Health and Texas Health Action, have maintained DEI practices in their organizations. While company leaders see more apprehension and scrutiny about the direction of DEI strategies, even internally, they have continued prioritizing diverse perspectives in hiring, distributing DEI-related content and supporting employees with DEI programs. They believe doing so not only improves the culture of their organizations, but it also helps build trust with patients and improve patient outcomes, executives told Senior Writer Anastassia Gliadkovskaya during a panel at the Fierce Health Payer Summit earlier this month. (Beavins, 12/16)