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When Health and Human Services Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy answered questions during the first cabinet meeting of the new Trump administration, he incorrectly described the number of people who died in a West Texas measles outbreak and the reason people were hospitalized. Measles outbreaks are “not unusual,” Kennedy said. Doctors say that was wrong, too. (Mukherjee, 2/27)

In 2019, amid a measles outbreak in New York, federal health officials uniformly preached the power of immunizations. “Measles is preventable and the way to end this outbreak is to ensure that all children and adults who can get vaccinated, do get vaccinated,” said Robert Redfield, then the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health Secretary Alex Azar echoed that, saying “the suffering we are seeing today is completely avoidable.” President Trump, then in his first term, also implored people to get immunized. “They have to get the shot,” he said. “The vaccinations are so important.” The new Trump administration, at least so far, is sending a different message. (Joseph, 2/27)

More measles cases are being confirmed across the United States as health officials work to treat patients in an ongoing outbreak in Texas. The Kentucky Department for Public Health (KDPH) and the Franklin County Health Department announced on Wednesday a confirmed case of measles in an adult resident, the first in the state in two years. The departments said the resident recently traveled internationally to an area where measles is spreading. (Kekatos, 2/28)

Texas is facing its worst measles outbreak in decades, as cases have jumped from two to 124 in just one month. A child is dead, 18 more are hospitalized and the worst is likely still ahead, public health experts say, as Texas’ decreasing vaccination rates leave swaths of the state exposed to the most contagious virus humans currently face. State and local health officials are setting up vaccine clinics and encouraging people to get the shot, which is more than 97% effective at warding off measles. But neither Gov. Greg Abbott nor lawmakers from the hardest hit areas have addressed the outbreak publicly in press conferences, social media posts or public calls for people to consider getting vaccinated. (Klibanoff, 2/28)

Thanks to the introduction of a vaccine in 1963, measles was considered eliminated in the US in 2000. Yet the highly contagious disease has reemerged as a threat as declining vaccination rates have fueled outbreaks around the country. In Texas, an unvaccinated child died on Feb. 26 in the first reported US death from the disease in a decade. Other clusters of cases have occurred in recent years, including a large outbreak in New York State in 2019. (Nix and Gale, 2/27)

When Nikki Hill Johnson’s first daughter was born in 2012, Johnson didn’t hesitate to take her to the doctor for routine infant immunizations. Soon after the birth, South Carolina-based Johnson, now 42, joined a fitness- and nutrition-oriented multilevel marketing company (MLM). There, she encountered a colleague who made her question the safety of vaccines. (Matei, 2/27)

The Food and Drug Administration’s abrupt decision on Wednesday to cancel next month’s vaccine advisory committee meeting — where experts recommend the strains for next season’s flu shot — is raising concerns about whether the U.S. will have enough of the vaccine for the next flu season. Drugmakers already face a tight deadline each year to produce enough doses for distribution in the fall. (Lovelace Jr., 2/27)

This season's influenza vaccines may have been less effective against emergency room visits for some kids compared to last year, a new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests, though effectiveness was still high against hospitalization. So far this season, the vaccine's protection against flu hospitalization was at least 63% for children and at least 41% for adults. These estimates of effectiveness against hospitalization, released Thursday in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, are considered high for flu vaccines. (Tin, 2/27)

The Kent County Health Department and Michigan Department of Health and Human Services announced on Thursday that two more children have died from influenza in the 2024-2025 season, raising the total number of pediatric deaths to five. County officials did not immediately provide additional details on the cases but said, "We are deeply saddened by the loss of these young lives to influenza." (Booth-Singleton, 2/28)

Today in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) say that 13% of children who have died from seasonal flu this season had influenza-associated encephalopathy or encephalitis (IAE), a severe neurologic complication. (Soucheray, 2/27)

Now, agency officials are running into logistical challenges in reinstating its bird flu staff — and convincing them to return to jobs while the president repeatedly attempts to squeeze government workers. (Brown, 2/27)

As the bird flu outbreak continues gaining force in the US, a second company selling raw pet food issued a voluntary recall after cats from two different households in Oregon contracted H5N1 from the tainted meat earlier this month. Two more cats in different households in Washington state have tested positive for bird flu after eating the same brand of raw pet food nearly two weeks after the recall, officials announced on Wednesday. (Schreiber, 2/28)

Openly transgender service members will be disqualified from serving in the U.S. military and will soon be removed from the ranks, according to a Pentagon memo that marks a significant shift from previous Defense Department policy that prohibited discrimination based on gender identity. The memo was made public Wednesday as part of a lawsuit filed by LGBTQ+ rights groups against an executive order signed last month by President Donald Trump, which stated that the “medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria” are “inconsistent” with the high standards expected of U.S. troops. (Timsit, 2/27)

The military released on Thursday the number of transgender troops currently serving in the armed forces, revealing a population much smaller than recent estimates. Currently, according to those figures, 4,240 people in the military — about 0.2 percent of the 2 million people in uniform — have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. That diagnosis is the best way the military has of tracking the number of trans troops in the force. Previous estimates usually put the number of trans troops at about 15,000. (Philipps, 2/27)

The troops interviewed — three pilots, an explosives expert, a special operations officer, a nuclear reactor supervisor, a flight nurse, a missile battery commander and others — said they have faced some institutional barriers and heard a few cutting comments. But mostly, they say, they have been treated with respect. Their leadership has supported them, their peers have accepted them, and they have earned good performance reviews and promotions. Officers and troops who are not trans said in interviews they had not seen any negative impact from trans troops. (Philipps, 2/27)

A Maryland judge has extended a restraining order that prevents President Donald Trump's administration from cutting funding to hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to minors. The temporary restraining order is in place until March 5, but U.S. District Judge Brendan Hurson has said he may decide to grant a preliminary injunction before that date. (2/27)

Some major medical associations are pushing back against the Department of Health and Human Services' updated definitions of biological sex in federal policy in the wake of President Donald Trump's executive order. ... "There is extensive scientific research that supports the complexity of sex and gender beyond binary classifications," American Psychological Association CEO Arthur C. Evans Jr., Ph.D., told ABC News in a statement. "The new restrictive definition of sex ignores decades of science, increasing harm to youth and families, while undermining critical mental health outcomes." (Vaez, 2/27)

The US state department has ordered officials worldwide to deny visas to transgender athletes attempting to come to the US for sports competitions and to issue permanent visa bans against those who are deemed to misrepresent their birth sex on visa applications. (Gedeon, 2/25)

Iowa lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a bill on Thursday that would end state civil rights protections for transgender people. Advocates for L.G.B.T.Q. rights said that Iowa would become the first state to remove such broad and explicit protections for trans people if the Republican-backed measure was signed into law. The bill, which now goes to the desk of the Republican governor, passed 18 years after the state, then led by Democrats, enshrined those discrimination protections into Iowa code. (Smith, 2/27)

Legislation that would remove the expiration date on a pair of laws affecting transgender minors passed the Missouri Senate Thursday after a fight by Senate Democrats. It now heads to the Missouri House for consideration. The bill in question, which contained a litany of provisions removing sunset dates for various programs, would make permanent a ban on gender-affirming care for minors and restrictions on transgender athletes in public schools. (Hanshaw, 2/27)

A bill requiring clinics providing procedural abortions to be licensed as ambulatory surgical centers was signed by Republican Gov. Mark Gordon on Feb. 27. It goes into effect immediately. HB 42 will likely cause the closure of the only such clinic in the state, Wellspring Health Access in Casper. (Clements, 2/27)

A bill that would have potentially criminalized travel for women who went out of state for an abortion died in the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday. (Ehrlick, 2/27)

A prominent community health center with a long legacy of treating asylum-seekers is now requesting patients’ proof of citizenship, in an apparent response to the Trump administration’s broad threats to federal funding and anti-immigrant rhetoric. The Floating Hospital in Queens is asking patients to show their Social Security cards or other proof of citizenship, citing an unspecified executive order by the Trump administration, according to an audio recording reviewed by POLITICO and two city lawmakers who were briefed on the matter and granted anonymity to speak candidly about a sensitive issue. (Kaufman, 2/27)

Adm. William McRaven, a former Navy SEAL, and two other retired four-star officers have joined a lawsuit to force the Department of Veterans Affairs to build more housing for homeless veterans on the grounds of the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center. The failure of the VA to address the housing needs of veterans poses "a direct threat to national security" in the long term, according to the brief filed by McRaven, who as head of Joint Special Operations Command oversaw the 2011 raid by SEAL Team 6 that killed Osama Bin Laden. (Sisk, 2/27)

A pair of health care programs that benefit noncitizens — one of which is already on Gov. JB Pritzker’s budgetary chopping block — far outstripped its original estimated price tag and cost the state of Illinois $1.6 billion through last summer, according to a new audit of the programs published Wednesday. (Meisel, 2/27)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: A Runner Was Hit By A Car, Then By A Surprise Ambulance Bill

Jagdish Whitten was on a run in July 2023 when a car hit him as he crossed a busy San Francisco street. Whitten, then 25, described doing “a little flip” over the vehicle and landing in the street before getting himself to the curb. Concerned onlookers called an ambulance. But Whitten instead had friends pick him up and take him to a nearby hospital, the Helen Diller Medical Center, operated by the University of California-San Francisco. “I knew that ambulances were expensive, and I didn’t think I was going to die,” he said. (West, 2/28)

The human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is having a huge impact on cervical cancer prevention among young women, a U.S. government report published Thursday suggests. The CDC report showing rates of precancerous lesions among women aged 20-24 screened for cervical cancer from 2008-2022 fell by about 80% comes days after Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who once called the HPV vaccine "dangerous and defective," was confirmed as health and human services secretary. (Falconer, 2/27)

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest types of cancer, with fewer than 13% of people diagnosed with it surviving for more than five years. It kills 88% of its patients, and its recurrence rate, after surgery, is nearly 90% within seven to nine months. U.S. mortality rates, meanwhile, are on the upswing. But promising results from a small clinical trial for an mRNA pancreatic cancer vaccine are fueling new rays of hope. (Greenfield, 2/27)

Pranathi Perati was running out of time to treat her stage-four pancreatic cancer when she found out she would get another shot: a clinical trial testing a new experimental drug. Perati’s odds were slim—3% of late-stage pancreatic-cancer patients are still alive after five years. And half of all pancreatic-cancer patients live for less than a year after their diagnosis. For Perati, the drug, daraxonrasib from Revolution Medicines, has helped keep her alive for 17 months and counting. (Abbott, 2/28)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Future Of Cancer Coverage For Women Federal Firefighters Uncertain Under Trump

It took nearly three years to win presumptive workers’ compensation coverage for breast, cervical, and other cancers that firefighters who work for federal agencies may develop because of hazardous exposures on the job. Now, just weeks after the Labor Department added coverage for those illnesses, firefighters worry the gains may be in jeopardy after the Trump administration deleted information about the expansion of coverage for cancers that mostly affect women and transgender firefighters from a federal webpage and ducked questions about whether it will uphold the policy change made in the waning days of the Biden administration. (Mohr, 2/28)

Medical device recall events in 2024 reached their highest level since 2020 and more than 10% of them involved the most serious type of recall. There were 1,048 medical device recalls in 2024, an increase of almost 25% from the 840 recalls that occurred in 2023, according to the Food and Drug Administration. Class I recalls, the most serious type, accounted for 10.9% of recalls. (Dubinsky, 2/27)

Kristin King counts every day as a blessing ever since she received a heart transplant in September 2023. "Life can stop at any point in time," King told CBS News. "You never know when that will be. I was healthy, I had never had a heart problem in my life. And I needed a complete new organ." King's transplant occurred four months after her heart began to fail following childbirth. (Brand, 2/27)

A rumored private equity buyout of Walgreens could lead the company to be split up, according to media reports. People familiar with the discussions told the Financial Times that a buyout from Sycamore Partners, a firm that has a historical interest in retailers, would "set the stage for a three-way break-up." Sycamore is looking to split the three main divisions at Walgreens into their own segments, including their own capital structures. (Minemyer, 2/27)

After announcing plans to build four manufacturing sites in the U.S. on Wednesday, Eli Lilly CEO Dave Ricks skillfully demurred when asked if the move might forestall tariffs that President Trump has threatened to levy on the pharmaceutical industry. “There’s no discussion about that yet,” he told CNBC. “… But it makes no sense to punish companies that are pursuing this agenda.” (Silverman, 2/27)

Pfizer on Thursday made significant changes to its diversity, equity, and inclusion webpage, as companies across different industries seek to reposition their policies and messaging amid President Trump’s dismantling of DEI initiatives. The pharma company now emphasizes merit throughout its webpage. (Chen and Parker, 2/27)

President Donald Trump confirmed Thursday that new 25 percent tariffs will go into effect March 4th against two of the U.S.'s largest trading partners. Trump also threatened to add an additional 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods and services on the same date. Writing on Truth Social, Trump once again cited street drugs "pouring into our country from Mexico and Canada at very high and unacceptable levels" as a primary reason for the policy. (Mann, 2/27)

Republicans in Congress see a way around the $880 billion budget shortfall they need to fill to extend President Donald Trump’s tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year. States aren’t going to like it. To qualify for federal Medicaid dollars, states must also kick in their own matching funds. GOP lawmakers want to stop states from taxing insurers and health care providers to raise that money, a maneuver that would leave states with a $612 billion hole in their budgets over the next decade. (King, 2/27)

House Republicans are coalescing around work requirements in Medicaid as part of the massive budget blueprint the House adopted Tuesday. But there’s one problem: They don’t increase employment, experts say. They do, however, result in people losing coverage. (Hellmann and Raman, 2/27)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: �鶹Ů�� Health News’ ‘What The Health?’: House GOP Plan Targets Medicaid

The House passed a budget plan that likely would result in major cuts to the Medicaid program. But the plan now faces a battle in the Senate, where even Republicans seem reluctant to dramatically reduce a health program that covers roughly 1 in 5 Americans. Meanwhile, federal judges and the Trump administration continue to differ over whether the administration has the authority to unilaterally cancel programs approved and funded by Congress and to fire federal workers. (Rovner, 2/27)

Looming federal Medicaid cuts could shift a massive financial burden to state governments, potentially requiring them to make up between $700 billion and $1.1 trillion in funding over the next decade, according to a new analysis from the Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. On Feb. 25, House Republicans passed a budget resolution that orders the Energy and Commerce Committee, which oversees Medicare and Medicaid, to find $880 billion in savings from fiscal years 2025 through 2034. (Emerson, 2/27)

A Republican proposal to leave current levels of Medicaid coverage in place in Montana is headed to the governor’s desk as Congress considers billions of dollars in cuts to the low-income health program. The Montana Senate gave final legislative approval to the bill in a 30-20 vote Thursday. Expanded coverage had been set to expire on the safety net program that insures more than 76,000 Montana residents. Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte has voiced support for continuing coverage, but has not commented on the specific proposal. (Schoenbaum, 2/27)

When North Carolina started enrolling more people in the expanded Medicaid program almost 15 months ago, hundreds of thousands of low-income people became eligible for an array of dental services. But that didn’t mean dentists across the state started welcoming the new Medicaid beneficiaries onto their chairs. Nearly 60 percent of North Carolina dentists don’t accept Medicaid patients, and many of those who do aren’t taking on new patients with the government subsidized insurance plan. (Blythe, 2/28)

As Congress debates a new federal budget resolution, concern is growing among Floridians that Medicaid could face significant cuts, potentially impacting millions who rely on the program for healthcare. Cortes Maria Lewis, a South Florida foster mother, is among those worried. She cares for two infants, one who has spent most of his life in a cast due to improperly developed feet and his 2-month-old sister, who suffered from malnutrition in the womb. (Maugeri, 2/27)

Senior Republicans are seriously exploring how to include cuts made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency in an upcoming government funding bill — a move that would skyrocket tensions with Democrats and drastically raise the potential for a government shutdown. Top GOP leaders and President Donald Trump’s team have been discussing the idea, which is far from finalized, according to three people who were granted anonymity to discuss the conversations. (Hill and Bade, 2/27)

At least three government lawyers working on defending a major Biden-era drug pricing law were laid off in mass cuts across the agency this month, according to a source familiar with the terminations. The attorneys were doing legal work implementing and defending the Inflation Reduction Act, a law that allows Medicare to directly negotiate down the price of drugs for the first time. Medicare is facing an onslaught of lawsuits filed by pharmaceutical companies and their allies arguing the new law is unconstitutional. (Cohrs Zhang and Tozzi, 2/27)

Joe Cardiello, PhD, had moved his entire young family to the Fort Collins, Colorado area in September to take a new job in the division of vector-borne diseases at CDC. Only 5 months later, he now finds himself facing yet another move -- because he was caught up in the Trump administration's first round of mass firings at federal agencies. "For now, I'm just applying to jobs, getting on daycare lists closer to Boulder and Denver, where there are more biotech jobs, and just getting our family ready for the next potential move," Cardiello told MedPage Today. (Fiore, 2/27)

Federal health officials due to speak at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society meeting in Las Vegas next week have dropped out of the key health tech industry conference. (Trang, 2/27)

Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) are expressing concern to Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that recent layoffs at U.S. health agencies are threatening the modernization of the organ transplant system. The pair of lawmakers asked Kennedy in a Wednesday letter to disclose which staff at the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), tasked with implementing improvements to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), were impacted by layoffs. (Timotija, 2/27)

Starting Wednesday afternoon, a wave of emails went out from the State Department in Washington around the world, landing in inboxes for refugee camps, tuberculosis clinics, polio vaccination projects and thousands of other organizations that received crucial funding for lifesaving work. “This award is being terminated for convenience and the interest of the U.S. government,” they began. (Nolen, 2/27)

The watchdog for the U.S. Agency for International Development has yet to release two critical reports on the consequences of President Donald Trump’s funding freeze on crucial services in Africa and the Middle East, amid fears of retaliation from the White House, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Washington Post. (Rein and Hudson, 2/27)

People are increasingly wary of a healthcare system that is supposed to make them feel better but instead leaves them stressed and frustrated. And while much ire is directed at insurance and pharmaceutical companies, doctors are the front face of the system and are losing the public’s confidence, as well. (Ansberry, 2/23)

A hospital gave her a temporary, nonsensical name that appeared to be generated by a computer. The name was Unakite Thirteen Hotel. (Sanders, 2/25)

A group of researchers last week released a small, preliminary paper theorizing that Covid-19 vaccines may be linked in rare cases to a constellation of lingering symptoms not dissimilar to those associated with long Covid. They intended for their work to be the subject of academic discussion and to spur further study of what they dubbed “post-vaccination syndrome.” Instead, it has exploded online. (Branswell, 2/24)

She felt it from the very beginning of the pregnancy — a nagging intuition that something was very wrong, an undercurrent of dread that persisted no matter how many times the doctors assured Samina Ali that she was fine, her baby was fine, everything was normal. (Gibson, 2/25)

A little-known savings account called an ABLE account lets people people with disabilities save money beyond the $2,000 asset limit that’s linked to benefits like Supplemental Security Income and Medicaid. (Lewis, 2/24)

The former talk show host is Trump's pick to preside over the program that pays most shooting victims’ hospitals bills. (Brownlee, 2/20)

It was 45 seconds too late, but the teacher had a plan. A gunman had just barraged her classroom with an AR-15, killing two students and injuring four others before turning to a classroom across the hall. The bullet-riddled walls were crumbling. Ceiling tiles were falling. If the shooter came back to kill more of her students, the teacher decided, she would stand up and shout, “We love you.” (Baumgaertner Nunn, 2/23)

The news that an outbreak in Texas has caused the nation’s first confirmed measles death in a decade — an unvaccinated child — is as unsurprising as it is tragic. Spreading largely in rural Mennonite communities that typically have low vaccination rates, the outbreak has already grown to at least 124 cases since late January. Almost all of them are children. (Zeynep Tufekci, 2/28)

On Tuesday, House Republicans took the first step toward Medicaid cuts by passing a budget resolution that could mean up to $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid over 10 years. Now they have to actually identify specific cuts to the program — deciding which patients, providers and state governments will lose, and how much. (Michael Kinnucan, 2/28)

Republicans are taking a huge political gamble as they try to find money for tax cuts by threatening to slash Medicaid. As Congress has learned repeatedly, most recently in 2018, when the party in power messes with Americans’ health care, things don’t go well for them in midterm elections. (Mary Ellen Klas, 2/27)

With the right policies, advanced science, and strong leadership in government agencies, President Donald Trump has the power to save more American lives from rare diseases than any president in history. That might be a bold statement, but it is based on my prior conversations with him as well as his public statements and actions in his first term. And such leadership and change cannot come soon enough for so many in need. (John F. Crowley, 2/28)

Imagine this: someone you love has just heard the words “you have cancer.” They are meeting with their oncologist – perhaps even me, or one of my colleagues – and come to understand that there is specialized testing that can help decide what treatments might best target their specific cancer. The oncologist plans to rely on something called biomarker testing to find a treatment so precise that it targets the specific biology in hopes to keep that cancer from destroying their vital organ functions. (Andy Salner MD, 2/28)

In January, a user on X posted about how Grok, X’s artificial intelligence tool, diagnosed their daughter’s broken wrist from an X-ray that her care team had misread. The post now has more than 14 million views and, in the ultimate X win, got a shout-out from Elon Musk, who declared, “Grok can diagnose medical injuries.” (Kalyan Sivasailam, 2/28)