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The Trump administration’s slash-and-burn attacks on federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health’s staffing and the overhead costs it covers for grantees, pose a grave threat to scientific progress, according to a chorus of disapproval from academic researchers. (Benjamin Ryan, 3/6)

Soon after his inauguration as 47th president of the United States on Jan. 20, Donald Trump signed an executive order that withdrew the U.S. from membership in the World Health Organization. Trump’s withdrawal drew immediate and widespread condemnation from political, diplomatic, medical, public health, and philanthropic leaders around the world. However outrageous and dangerous Trump’s actions may have been, it is by no means the first time that the United States has used its political muscle and the power of the purse to threaten and coerce the WHO. (Theodore M. Brown, 3/7)

The World Health Organization’s largest laboratory network tests 500,000 patient samples a year to track measles, rubella and a host of other infectious diseases, doing essential work on a global scale. Unfortunately, the entirety of the program’s budget comes from the US government — which has just ordered a freeze on all such funding and proposed leaving the WHO altogether. (3/5)

Walgreens was scheduled in two years to celebrate its 100th year as a publicly traded company. Now the storied pharmacist and retailer won’t honor that milestone, because it no longer will be publicly owned. Months after reports that the long-trusted, Deerfield-based retail giant was considering selling to a private equity firm, the $10 billion deal with New York-based Sycamore Partners was unveiled late Thursday. (3/7)

A new study published last month by the American Medical Association showed that the stress of an eviction scars the youngest members of a family and is directly linked to higher levels of depression in children. In Maryland, where nearly 7 in 10 renting households face eviction every year and over 200,000 kids live in families facing housing loss, this is more than cause for alarm; it’s a public health crisis. (Emily A. Benfer and Rishi Manchanda, 3/6)

Reducing funding for the National Institutes of Health hurts us all: physicians, scientists and patients. Many of my colleagues at Children’s Mercy and other Missouri and Kansas hospitals are worried about these potential cuts. (Shetal Shah, 3/7)