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Public health officials around the country are long familiar with the boom-and-bust cycles that have marked public health funding in the United States. When you have an emergency that needs an immediate response, like a pandemic, the money flows. When the crisis is over, the money tends to dry up, making it hard for state and local health departments to prepare for the next emergency. ... But what's transpired under the second Trump administration has been even worse than what many officials were prepared for. (Dall, 7/16)

When HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dismissed all 17 members of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) last month, he backed up his claims about financial conflicts among panelists by citing a 25-year-old U.S. House of Representatives committee report. What's in that report, and is it really as damning as Kennedy suggests? (Nielsen, 7/16)

Hims started by offering generic Viagra and Rogaine, two of the most popular drugs in recent history. In pursuit of millennial guys too chagrined to seek in-person counsel from a physician about their hairline or bedroom performance, Hims bedecked New York subway cars and the walls above urinals in San Francisco with intentionally cringey, tough-to-turn-away-from ads, such as those featuring a cactus rising from its planter. (Muller and Leonard, 7/15)

With eight kids and another one on the way, Megan Alger can seem more like the CEO of a small company than a typical American mom. In their family's suburban home in Augusta, Ga., kids are taught to be self-sufficient from a young age. Megan regularly deputizes her older children to care for the younger ones. ... As Roman Catholics, Megan and her husband, Stephen Alger, believe strongly in the family unit. Megan doesn't engage in paid work in order to homeschool the younger kids and run the household. She has delivered most of her babies at home. That's the plan with this next one too. (Riddle, 7/15)

Ten years ago, U.K. policymakers gave the green light to a pioneering reproductive technology meant to spare children from being born with types of rare but sometimes fatal diseases caused by genetic mutations in the powerplants of cells. The method involved combining not just the genes of a mother and father to produce an embryo, but a bit of DNA from a third person as well. (Joseph and Molteni, 7/16)

One day last summer, Alison slipped off her jewelry, stepped into a hospital gown and lay down inside a full-body MRI scanner. As the machine issued calming instructions — breathe in, hold, breathe out — it captured thousands of images, from her head to her toes. A tech worker and mother of two in her 50s, Alison (whose full name can’t be shared under participant privacy rules) had joined a nationwide health study after spotting a flyer in her local library. Her mother died young of cancer, and women like her — of Caribbean background — were underrepresented in research and often overlooked. (Gale and Furlong, 7/18)

It had been a while since Zackie Achmat confronted his government about matters of life and death. Twenty-five years ago, Mr. Achmat co-founded what became the most powerful social movement in post-apartheid South Africa. He led a showdown against the government that won lifesaving medical treatment for millions of people with H.I.V. — and nearly killed him. Until just a few months ago, Mr. Achmat, 63, thought those days were well behind him. (Nolen, 7/14)