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The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told physician groups, public health professionals and infectious disease experts that they will no longer be invited to help review vaccine data and develop recommendations, according to an email viewed by Bloomberg. The move marks an escalation in Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s efforts to assert control over the CDC’s vaccine advisory process. (Cohrs Zhang and Nix, 8/1)

All 17 experts who were ousted from a government panel on vaccine recommendations last month are speaking out against what the panel has become under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s leadership. In a commentary published in the New England Journal of Medicine Wednesday, titled "The Path Forward for Vaccine Policy in the United States," the former members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices described a "seismic disruption" to the vaccine recommendation process in the U.S. (Moniuszko, 7/31)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: �鶹Ů�� Health News’ ‘What The Health?’: Next On Kennedy’s List? Preventive Care And Vaccine Harm

In his ongoing effort to reshape health policy, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reportedly plans to overhaul two more government entities: the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force and the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Ousting the existing members of the task force would give Kennedy a measure of control in determining the kinds of preventive care that are covered at no cost to patients in the United States. (Rovner, 7/31)

U.S. kindergarten vaccination rates inched down again last year and the share of children with exemptions rose to an all-time high, according to federal data posted Thursday. The fraction of kids exempted from vaccine requirements rose to 4.1%, up from 3.7% the year before. It’s the third record-breaking year in a row for the exemption rate, and the vast majority are parents withholding shots for nonmedical reasons. Meanwhile, 92.5% of 2024-25 kindergartners got their required measles-mumps-rubella shots, down slightly from the previous year. (Stobbe, 7/31)

State Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Mike Stuart was before a different committee Thursday as he prepares for a confirmation as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ top attorney. Ranking Democratic member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked Stuart about the rescinding of guidance by the Trump administration to hospitals under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA) that previously required hospitals to provide emergency abortion and other reproductive health care. (Adams, 8/1)

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary again promoted a conspiracy theory about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, accusing the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Wednesday of funding the lab that created the virus. Makary, when asked by NewsNation’s Connell McShane about the longevity of the Trump administration’s changes to federal health agencies such as the FDA, blasted the previous NIH leadership while floating the theory. (O’Connell-Domenech, 7/31)

Disorders of gut-brain interaction -- such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) -- rose significantly in both the U.S. and the U.K. following the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a population-based survey study. Surveys revealed that the proportion of adults meeting criteria for at least one such disorder increased from 38.3% in 2017 to 42.6% in 2023 (OR 1.20, 95% CI 1.09-1.31), Imran Aziz, MD, of the University of Sheffield in England, and colleagues reported in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology. (McCreary, 7/31)

Moderna Inc. is cutting about 10% of its workforce, part of an effort by the struggling biotech company to reduce spending as sales of its Covid vaccine decline. In a note to employees, Chief Executive Officer Stéphane Bancel said the company was “aligning our cost structure to the realities of our business.” (Smith, 7/31)

President Trump sent letters Thursday to 17 of the world’s largest drug companies, telling them to take more steps to slash the prices of prescription drugs to match the lowest price in certain foreign countries. The letters represent an escalation of the administration’s push for lower drug prices by launching a “most favored nation” model, which ties the prices of prescription medicines in the U.S. to the lowest found among comparably wealthy nations. (Weixel, 7/31)

The federal government has cracked open the door to what could be a transformation of the 340B Drug Pricing Program. The Health Resources and Services Administration is launching a voluntary program to test drugmakers paying rebates after purchase to safety-net providers that participate in 340B rather than discounting prices upfront, the agency announced Thursday. (Early, 7/31)

The Presidential Fitness Test is coming back. President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday afternoon reinstating the national fitness assessment implemented in public schools from 1956 until 2013. The role of administering the test will fall to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been vocal in his concern about childhood obesity and whose “Make America Healthy Again” report in February attributed the issue, in part, to sedentary lifestyles. (Bendix and Haake, 7/31)

Numerous artificial intelligence (AI)-powered systems for diagnosing and monitoring Alzheimer's disease and other dementias are now authorized by the FDA, but how these systems were developed -- and therefore how they may or may not perform in important patient subgroups -- is difficult to see from the publicly available information, researchers found. Among 24 such systems (called devices in FDA parlance) authorized since 2015, FDA summaries for 14 lacked data on the participant sets used for training, and there was no information on validation sets for 22, according to Krista Y. Chen, MPH, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, and colleagues. (Gever, 7/30)

Some obese Americans on Medicare and Medicaid could get access to expensive weight loss drugs under a five-year experiment being planned by the Trump administration. Under the proposed plan, state Medicaid programs and Medicare Part D insurance plans will be able to voluntarily choose to cover Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro and Zepbound for patients for “weight management” purposes, according to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services documents obtained by The Washington Post. (Cunningham, 8/1)

Medicare payments for inpatient hospital services will increase 2.6% in fiscal 2026 under a final rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued Wednesday. CMS offered hospitals a slightly higher boost than the 2.4% raise it proposed in April. The agency also finalized policies to streamline quality measurement and made tweaks to the Transforming Episode Accountability Model, a mandatory initiative known as TEAM that kicks off Jan. 1. (Early, 7/31)

Medicare reimbursements to skilled nursing facilities will rise 3.2% in fiscal 2026 under a final rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published Thursday. The agency proposed a 2.8% Medicare rate increase for nursing homes in April. In addition to the higher payments, the final rule includes billing code updates and modifications to quality measurement programs. (Early, 7/31)

In early June, a MAGA influencer named Chuck Callesto launched a social media assault on Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who had apparently crossed a line by proposing to reform Medicare plans run by private insurers. In a sharply worded tweet, Callesto labeled Cassidy a RINO (Republican In Name Only) and accused him of undermining President Trump, who had pledged to avoid cutting Medicare in the massive tax and spending package known as the “big beautiful bill.” (Ross and Wilkerson, 8/1)

Genesis HealthCare, one of the nation’s largest nursing home owners — and operator of 16 skilled nursing facilities in New Hampshire — has filed for bankruptcy protection. No facilities are expected to close due to the bankruptcy proceedings, a spokesperson for Genesis told VTDigger. (Burch, 7/31)

UnitedHealth Group’s credit outlook has been downgraded to “negative” from “stable” by Fitch Ratings. Fitch, one of the largest credit rating agencies, said in a Wednesday news release the downgrade is tied to UnitedHealth’s second-quarter earnings report released Tuesday and the company’s diminished outlook for operating performance in 2025. (Hudson, 7/31)

CVS Health reported earnings that beat Wall Street’s expectations and upgraded its projection for 2025, as its health-insurance business showed signs of recovery. The healthcare giant’s results underscore a split among health insurers. On one side are companies struggling this year with a surprise financial squeeze from higher-than-expected medical costs, a list that includes Centene, Molina Healthcare and the industry bellwether, UnitedHealth Group. (Wilde Mathews, 7/31)

A new medical school in St. Cloud aims to help address a severe shortage of physicians serving rural Minnesota. The University of Minnesota Medical School’s CentraCare Regional Campus is the first expansion of the U’s medical school in more than 50 years, since the Duluth campus opened in 1972. (Marohn, 7/31)

Trinity Health is looking for physician partners to boost ambulatory services, President and CEO Mike Slubowski said. Despite looming federal funding cuts, Trinity Health is making investments in surgery centers and imaging sites. The nonprofit health system is also pursuing joint venture opportunities and implementing efficiency efforts to help manage costs, Slubowski said. (Hudson, 7/31)

Let’s be honest. Hospital food? It stinks. Always has. Always will. Except maybe not anymore. Because Tampa General Hospital — the place with the helicopters, 1,000 beds on a downtown island and that blessed AquaFence to keep the hurricanes out — just partnered with an Iron Chef to fix the menu. (Mayer, 8/1)

The Trump administration has frozen hundreds of science, medical and other federal grants to UCLA worth nearly $200 million, citing the university’s alleged “discrimination” in admissions and failure to “promote a research environment free of antisemitism.” The decision to pull funding comes after Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and the Justice Department said this week that UCLA would pay a “heavy price” for acting with “deliberate indifference” to the civil rights of Jewish and Israeli students who complained of antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza and campus protests the events spurred last year. (Kaleem, 7/31)

The April announcement of National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya’s appointment and his public profile at Stanford University, where he was a professor of health policy, both state that his work has focused on vulnerable populations, and he’s published at least five papers on racial health disparities. In June, he specifically lauded sickle cell research as an NIH success, highlighting it as the kind of work “that advances the health and well-being of minority populations,” and that the NIH should continue supporting. “It absolutely must,” he told podcaster Andrew Huberman. (Oza, McFarling and Boodman, 8/1)

Senators from both parties endorsed a $400 million increase to the budget of the National Institutes of Health on Thursday, in an Appropriations Committee vote that represents a clear rebuke of President Trump’s plan to dramatically reduce the agency’s spending. (Wosen and Russo, 7/31)

It's been over a week since Congress granted the White House its wish to claw back $7.9 billion that Congress previously allocated for spending on disease and famine control, disaster relief and promoting democracy. But the details on what the package will actually cut are so unclear that many in the nonprofit aid sector are scratching their heads trying to understand what the impact will be. I (Tanis, 7/31)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Deep Staff Cuts At A Little-Known Federal Agency Pose Trouble For Droves Of Local Health Programs

A little-known federal agency that sends more than $12 billion annually to support community health centers, addiction treatment services, and workforce initiatives for America’s neediest people has been hobbled by the Trump administration’s staffing purges. The cuts are “just a little astonishing,” said Carole Johnson, who previously led the Health Resources and Services Administration. She left the agency in January with the administration change and has described the sweeping staff cuts as a “big threat” to the agency’s ability to distribute billions of dollars in grants to hospitals, clinics, nonprofits, and other organizations nationwide. (Tribble and Larweh, 8/1)

It’s been six months since a now-infamous email presented millions of federal workers with a pivotal decision: They could reply “resign” to give up their job and receive full pay and benefits through the end of September. Or they could stay in their positions and hope they didn’t get laid off in the ensuing chaotic months of the second Trump administration. Perhaps no agency was impacted more than the Department of Veterans Affairs, which runs by far the largest federal payroll outside of the military, with more than 467,000 employees providing health care and benefits to 9.1 million veterans. (Rosenbaum, 7/31)

The leading professional association for gynecologists is cutting financial ties with the federal government, citing Trump administration policies it says prevent it from providing evidence-based guidance. (Goldman, 8/1)

More than 2,300 Californians enrolled in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program will lose their health insurance next month due to a change in federal policy, state officials announced Thursday. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services recently revised its rules to exclude DACA recipients from the definition of “lawfully present” under the Affordable Care Act. As a result, they are no longer eligible for coverage through federal health insurance programs. (Vaziri, 7/31)

Sierra Freeman has a rare genetic disorder that makes her prone to aneurysms and has sent her to the hospital repeatedly. In July 2022, the Stockton resident had surgeries to repair an aortic tear and a ruptured blood vessel in her brain and spent two months at Stanford Medical Center, which hosts one of the leading programs in connective tissue disorders like the one Freeman has. Over the next 18 months, she racked up more than $4 million in medical bills, most of which was paid through her employee health insurance. (Ibarra, 7/31)

Air quality alerts cover much of Minnesota, all of Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and portions of surrounding states on Thursday as the latest round of wildfire smoke out of Canada wafts over the region. Both Minneapolis and Chicago made it into the top three large cities for worst air quality on the globe, according to IQAir. Detroit wasn’t far behind at number six. (Livingston, 7/31)

In its weekly update yesterday, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the United States has 14 more measles cases, raising the national total to 1,333 cases. The cases have been reported in 40 jurisdictions, and 87% of confirmed cases (1,156 of 1,333) are outbreak-associated. There have been 25 outbreaks (three or more related cases) this year in the United States. (Soucheray, 7/31)

As tick season continues to pick up steam across the U.S., a Maine resident has been diagnosed with a potentially serious tick-borne illness. The adult, who lives in Hancock County, was hospitalized with Powassan virus after developing "neurological symptoms," according to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Maine CDC). (Rudy, 7/31)

St. Louis residents unable to pay their water bills haven’t had to worry about their water being cut off since 2020, but the moratorium issued during the pandemic is now being lifted. (Wimbley, 7/31)

A death row prisoner in Tennessee can be executed despite having an implanted heart device that his lawyers say is likely to prolong his suffering, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a first-of-its-kind legal battle. A lower court had ruled that Byron Black could not be executed while his cardiac implantable electronic device — which acts as a pacemaker and a defibrillator — was on, because it could deliver painful shocks to his heart to try to revive him during a lethal injection. The Thursday ruling overturns that decision and allows Black’s scheduled execution Tuesday to proceed. (Bellware, 7/31)

GLP-1 weight loss medications like Ozempic and Wegovy could increase testosterone levels and help prevent erectile dysfunction in men, according to a new study. While more data is needed, researchers from St. Louis University Hospital saw significant increases in testosterone levels for men with obesity or Type 2 diabetes while taking GLP-1 medication. Men who experience obesity or have Type 2 diabetes often have lower levels of testosterone, which can impact sexual function, muscle mass and bone density. (O’Connell-Domenech, 7/31)

Flavor restriction policies at the state level were associated with reductions in e-cigarette use but "unintended increases" in cigarette use when compared with states that did not enact such policies, according to a cross-sectional study. (Firth, 7/31)

A new study has found that exposure to certain frequently used chemicals that are classified as human carcinogens may increase the risk of recurring miscarriage. The researchers found that exposure to four different types of PFAS chemicals, also known as "forever chemicals," were associated with higher risks of "unexplained recurrent spontaneous abortion"—meaning recurrent miscarriage where the cause is unknown. (Laws, 8/1)

High consumption of ultraprocessed food was associated with an increased risk of lung cancer, according to an observational study. Based on the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian (PLCO) Cancer Screening Trial, individuals in the highest quarter of self-reported, energy-adjusted ultraprocessed food consumption were 41% more likely to be diagnosed with any type of lung cancer over a decade later (adjusted HR 1.41, 95% CI 1.22 -1.60) than those in the lowest quarter, reported Yongzhong Wu, MD, PhD, of the Chongqing Cancer Hospital in China, and colleagues. (Bassett, 7/31)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: This Test Can See A Heart Attack In Your Future 

A long list of Lynda Hollander’s paternal relatives had heart disease, and several had undergone major surgeries. So when she hit her mid-50s and saw her cholesterol levels creeping up after menopause, she said, “I didn’t want to take a chance.” A cardiologist told Hollander that based on factors like age, sex, cholesterol, and blood pressure, she faced a moderate risk of a major cardiac event, like a heart attack, within the next 10 years. (Span, 8/1)

Justin Timberlake has revealed he has Lyme disease and opened up about the health challenges that have come with it. In a post on Instagram Thursday, the pop singer, who wrapped up his two-year tour yesterday, called the tick-borne illness "relentlessly debilitating." ... Early symptoms of a Lyme disease can include headache, fatigue, muscle aches, joint aches or stiffness, chills, fever and swollen lymph nodes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says early diagnosis and proper antibiotic treatment is important to prevent the illness from getting worse. (Moniuszko, 7/31)

It’s a telling sign of current beauty standards that Kim Kardashian’s shapewear and underwear brand, Skims, has started selling a piece of headgear that bears a close resemblance to a post-surgery compression garment. Skims’ Seamless Sculpt Face Wrap, which was released on Tuesday and sells for $48, is billed as something that will scoop up the cheeks, neck and chin and hold them in place. The product generated much online chatter in the hours after the company unveiled it on Instagram and is now available only on a waiting list. (Haridasani Gupta and Mzizi, 7/30)

Cécile Dionne, who with her siblings found fame as the first quintuplets known to have survived infancy and who, of the five, was the most outspoken about the suffocating effects of celebrity, died on Monday in Montreal. She was 91. She and her sisters, only one of whom survives her, weighed a combined 13½ pounds when they were born at home shortly after dawn on May 10, 1934, to a struggling and already large farm family in Corbeil, about 215 miles north of Toronto. They became the center of a custody dispute involving their parents, the doctor who helped deliver them in the Dionnes’ home, and the province of Ontario, which feared for the babies’ welfare. (Gross, 7/31)

Did the shocking disappearance of a 6-year-old in 1979 forever alter how Americans raised children? Or were there other reasons for parents to be anxious? (Maag, 7/28)

To treat PTSD, the Department of Veterans Affairs put hundreds of thousands of patients on multiple streams of powerful medications despite suicide risk. (Ramachandran and McKay, 7/31)

As male social circles shrink, female partners say they have to meet more social and emotional needs. (Pearson, 7/28)

The rise of Botox as a casual beauty treatment has led to increased accessibility and a shift in societal attitudes towards cosmetic procedures. (Bergstein, 7/29)

Greysteel, a gym outside Detroit, teaches barbell lifting for older people. Some are well into their 80s and 90s. (Cohen, 7/26)

A method nicknamed “Japanese walking” on social media — also known as interval walking training, or I.W.T. — seems to offer greater advantages than a simple stroll, or even than walking at a moderate pace for 8,000 or more steps a day. (Friedman, 7/31)

The Atkinson Candy Co. prides itself on the distinctive taste of its Chick-O-Stick, a sweet, salty confection made from peanut butter and toasted coconut, with a crunchy outer shell. The first thing you notice about the Chick-O-Stick, though, is the color — a reddish orange that took years of trial and error to replicate when the company switched to natural food dyes. (Khimm, 7/27)

The parasitic fly that attacks warm-blooded animals was eliminated from the United States in the 1960s, but it’s creeping toward the Texas-Mexico border. (Salhotra, 7/28)

One of the most important lessons from the Covid-19 experience is that absolutes in scientific discourse are the exception. Science evolves as both controlled clinical research and real-world evidence show us how to use health care technologies to better advance the human condition. (Peter J. Pitts, 8/1)

The introduction of the GLP-1 class of medications for weight loss has, to date, been one of the rockiest rollouts of a major medical advance in the United States. This is unfortunate, to say the least. Americans are among the most overweight people on the planet, and obesity leads to all manner of life-threatening ills — type 2 diabetes, serious cardiovascular events like heart attacks and strokes, numerous cancers, and sleep apnea, to name a few. (Gavin Hart, 8/1)

The federal government has upended the U.S. vaccine policymaking process. The ACIP cannot be replaced, but it may be possible to limit the damage. In this vacuum, it is urgent that other organizations step forward to reassert an evidence-based, expert approach to vaccine recommendations to bring the nation back from the precipice of uncontrolled spread of infectious diseases and needless deaths. Families are counting on us. (Helen Y. Chu, Noel T. Brewer, Edwin J. Asturias, Oliver Brooks, Sybil Cineas, Denise J. Jamieson, Mini Kamboj, and Lin H. Chen, 7/30)

A month into his new job as health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. explained his view of America’s health woes to the Fox News host Sean Hannity: “We are poisoning ourselves, and it’s coming from principally these ultraprocessed foods.” (Helena Bottemiller Evich, 7/31)

After news came out that Vinay Prasad would be leaving the Food and Drug Administration, my colleague John M. Mandrola, a cardiologist and contributor to Sensible Medicine, wrote, “Mainly, I am sad.” I join him in being sad. I am also unsurprised — this administration acted exactly how I expected it would, with cowardice and short-sightedness — and angry. (Adam Cifu, 7/31)

“There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause.” Those two sentences are lifted verbatim from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s science website. You know, the folks who flew astronauts to the moon? But better check it out soon. It surely won’t be long before the Trump administration gets around to planting its own flag on NASA’s outpost of reason and removing the offending facts. (Jensen, 7/31)