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Walgreens Boots Alliance said on Thursday that it had agreed to be acquired by Sycamore Partners, a private equity firm, in a $10 billion deal that will take the struggling pharmacy chain out of the glare of public markets. Walgreens has faced declining prescription reimbursements and falling sales at its retail locations for years — a trend that has hit a number of major pharmacy chains. After rapidly expanding their brick-and-mortar footprint, pharmacy companies now say it’s harder to turn a profit from selling prescriptions, citing pressure from middlemen. (Kaye, 3/6)

The company’s Walgreens and Boots units will continue to operate, as will its portfolio of consumer brands, and WBA will keep its headquarters in Chicago. The company intends to sell its VillageMD unit, which includes the Village Medical, Summit Health and CityMD businesses. The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025. Upon its completion, Walgreens will become a private company and its stock will no longer be listed on the Nasdaq. (Murphy, 3/6)

Providers, insurers, employers and patients grappling with steep drug costs are testing an unconventional model to rein in spending, and early signs indicate it may be working. The Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Co., named after its billionaire co-founder and also known as Cost Plus Drugs, has taken on the roles of online pharmacy, pharmaceutical manufacturer and drug wholesaler in a bid to disrupt the healthcare industry. (Berryman, 3/6)

Eli Lilly wants the most optimal locations to host its new manufacturing facilities in the U.S.—and it’s open to pitches. The Indianapolis pharma has established an online portal to accept submissions for possible locations of four future U.S. manufacturing sites. (Liu, 3/5)

A federal judge has effectively ended the ability of compounding pharmacies to make their own copies of Eli Lilly’s weight loss and diabetes drugs Zepbound and Mounjaro. In a sealed decision filed late Wednesday, Judge Mark Pittman of the Northern District of Texas declined to issue an injunction to stop the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from declaring there was no longer a shortage of the medicines’ active ingredient, tirzepatide. (Weixel, 3/6)

Teladoc and LifeMD are partnering with drugmaker Eli Lilly to offer the weight loss drug Zepbound directly to self-paying patients. The two telehealth companies said Thursday they’re working with Gifthealth, which is the pharmacy partner of Eli Lilly’s direct-pay, direct-to-consumer website LillyDirect. Their telehealth platforms will be integrated into LillyDirect, allowing patients to get a prescription to Zepbound through the two companies’ providers. (Perna, 3/6)

At a confirmation hearing for Dr. Marty Makary on Thursday, senators focused heavily on the safety of the abortion pill, with Republican lawmakers urging him to restrict access and Democratic lawmakers demanding that he maintain its current availability. Dr. Makary, President Trump’s nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration, signaled that he shared Republicans’ concerns about the current policy, issued during the Biden administration, which expanded access by allowing people to obtain the pills without an in-person medical appointment. (Jewett, 3/6)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Marty Makary, Often Wrong As Pandemic Critic, Is Poised To Lead The FDA He Railed Against

Panelists at a covid conference last fall were asked to voice their regrets — policies they had supported during the pandemic but had come to see as misguided. Covid contact tracing, one said. Closing schools, another said. Vaccine mandates, a third said. When Marty Makary’s turn came, the Johns Hopkins University surgeon said, “I can’t think of anything,” adding, “The entire covid policy of three to four years felt like a horror movie I was forced to watch.” (Allen, 3/7)

Jim Jones, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s food division, slammed the “indiscriminate firing” of dozens of his employees and recent rhetoric from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in his resignation letter to acting FDA commissioner Sara Brenner, which The Washington Post has reproduced below. (3/6)

Rural cancer patients may miss out on cutting-edge treatments in Utah. Therapies for intellectual disorders could stall in Maryland. Red states and blue states alike are poised to lose jobs in research labs and the local businesses serving them. Ripple effects of the Trump administration’s crackdown on U.S. biomedical research promise to reach every corner of America. It’s not just about scientists losing their jobs or damaging the local economy their work indirectly supports — scientists around the country say it’s about patient health. (Neergaard and Pananjady, 3/6)

Clampdowns on external communications and new contracts at the National Institutes of Health by President Donald Trump’s administration — which have effectively slowed the flow of grant funding to a trickle — are also blocking the agency from sharing research materials with collaborators and taking crucial steps to ensure the discoveries its own scientists are making can later be used in the development of drugs and vaccines. (Molteni, 3/7)

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to speed up its payment on some of nearly $2 billion in debts to partners of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department, giving it a Monday deadline to repay the nonprofit groups and businesses in a lawsuit over the administration’s abrupt shutdown of foreign assistance funding. U.S. District Judge Amir Ali described the partial payment as a “concrete” first step he wanted to see from the administration. (Knickmeyer and Kunzelman, 3/7)

Last week, the Trump administration terminated nearly all of the United States’ foreign aid contracts after telling a federal court that its review of aid programs had concluded, and it had shut down those found not to be in the national interest. But over the last few days, many of those same programs have received a questionnaire asking them for the first time to detail what their projects do (or did) and how that work aligns with national interests. (Nolen, 3/6)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: �鶹Ů�� Health News’ ‘What The Health?’: The State Of Federal Health Agencies Is Uncertain

The Supreme Court opined for the first time that Trump administration officials may be exceeding their authority to reshape the federal government by refusing to honor completed contracts, even as lower-court judges started blocking efforts to fire workers, freeze funding, and cancel ongoing contracts. Meanwhile, public health officials are alarmed at the Department of Health and Human Services’ public handling of Texas’ widening measles outbreak, particularly the secretary’s less-than-full endorsement of vaccines. (Rovner, 3/6)

Doctors and women now have the final say about when an abortion should be performed, after a Maricopa County Superior Court judge struck down the state’s 15-week ban following last year’s vote to enshrine abortion rights in the Arizona Constitution. (Gomez, 3/5)

Losing a baby late in pregnancy is more common in the South than in other regions of the United States, according to a new report given exclusively to NBC News. The difference is dramatic: Compared with other parts of the country, the odds of having a high rate of late-stage pregnancy loss are nearly three times greater in Southern states. The lack of Medicaid expansion in the South ... contributes to the high rates of fetal loss in the second half of pregnancy, according to the report by United States of Care, a nonpartisan health care advocacy organization. (Cohen, 3/6)

The Minnesota Department of Health has officially added two more diseases to the list of more than 60 conditions for which newborns are typically screened. Newborns in Minnesota can now be screened for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and guanidinoacetate methyltransferase (GAMT) deficiency. (Moser, 3/6)

Governor Josh Shapiro is pushing for universal health screenings to identify postpartum depression sooner. "By participating in the IOP in this room, I found out and connected with friends how common yet under-discussed how common postpartum and anxiety is," said Jessica Tucker. (Bah, 3/6)

Dr. Lillian Ruth Blackmon Crenshaw, a national medical leader in the care of premature infants, died of Lewy body disease Feb. 25 at her Guilford home. She was 87. Born in Benton, Arkansas, she was the daughter of George Truett Blackmon, a religion professor, and Bessie Hicks Blackmon, a teacher. A 1959 graduate of Ouachita Baptist University, she was one of the first female students to attend what is now the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. (Kelly, 3/7)

A total of 19.0% of 609 men who completed a survey in Japan and had persistent COVID symptoms reported erectile dysfunction (ED) 1 and/or 2 years post-infection, perhaps due to depression, anxiety, and/or sleep disturbances, suggest researchers with the COVID-19 Recovery Study II Group. (Van Beusekom, 3/6)

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) took early steps this week to pressure hospitals against the delivery of gender-affirming care to children and adolescents—a key policy of the Trump administration that has so far faced pushback from blue states, transgender rights advocates and the courts. Wednesday, the agency sent a special alert to hospitals across the country that it “may begin taking steps to appropriately update its policies to protect children from chemical and surgical mutilation,” language the White House has used in executive orders to describe hormonal treatments and surgical procedures used in transition-related care. (Muoio, 3/6)

Employees at the National Institutes of Health who formerly worked at the agency’s Sexual & Gender Minority Research Office were suddenly put on administrative leave Tuesday, according to three sources with knowledge of the situation. (Gaffney, 3/6)

David Page’s bio reads like a history of science in the age of genomics. In 1979 he was the first student to work on what we now know as the Human Genome Project. He then became a fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research before joining its faculty (and MIT’s), and later served as Whitehead’s president for 16 years. He’s mapped, cloned, and published the complete genomic sequence of the Y chromosome. Now back in his lab post-presidency, he studies how male and female cells, tissues, and organs are and aren’t essentially the same. (Cooney, 3/7)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom — an outspoken champion of LGBTQ+ rights since he was mayor of San Francisco — called transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports “deeply unfair” in his new podcast Thursday, splitting from his party on an issue that Republicans capitalized on in the presidential election. (Luna and Willon, 3/6)

Georgia lawmakers failed on Thursday to push forward a ban on diversity efforts in public schools and colleges and won’t let voters decide a constitutional amendment that could legalize sports gambling. It was the last day for legislation to pass either the House or Senate and advance to the other legislative chamber for consideration this session. Some top proposals moved ahead earlier, including an effort to limit lawsuits and a school safety bill that supporters hope will prevent school shootings. House lawmakers pushed ahead income tax cuts and rebates on Thursday. (3/7)

A new category may soon be added to Colorado death certificates — gender. The update is meant to recognize the identity of the deceased while also satisfying the needs of researchers. But already it’s become a fault line between conservatives and progressives in the state legislature. (Sisk, 3/7)

An unvaccinated person who died in New Mexico has tested positive for measles, state health officials said on Thursday, possibly the second such fatality in a growing outbreak that began in West Texas. The officials have not yet confirmed that measles was the cause of death, and said the person did not seek medical treatment before dying. (Rosenbluth, 3/6)

As a deadly measles outbreak spread across Texas, the nation’s top health official took to Instagram on Sunday to blast out a message to his nearly 5 million followers. “Afternoon mountaineering above Coachella Valley,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote in a caption alongside photos of himself hiking in California. The post quickly ricocheted around the department, dismaying officials working overtime to track and contain the highly contagious disease. (Cancryn, Gardner and Cirruzzo, 3/6)

Gaines County is a vast, flat expanse far in the west of Texas: more than 1,500 square miles of sparsely populated farmland. And right now, this is the epicenter of a measles outbreak the likes of which this state hasn’t seen in more than 30 years. Many here say the virus has spread quickly among the Mennonites, a tight-knit Anabaptist community that works much of this land. (Watt, 3/6)

Federal health agencies oppose the use of bird flu vaccines in poultry right now, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said, weighing in publicly on it for the first time in his new role. The Trump administration has been considering poultry vaccination as it seeks to combat the outbreak that is fueling a record surge in egg prices. (Tin, 3/6)

The H5N1 bird flu strain has infected humans and other animals in every continent except Australia, and scientists say it could serve as a model for other countries. (Falconer, 3/4)

Pigs are moderately susceptible to infection with a bovine-derived H5N1 avian influenza virus but don't spread it to other pigs, a non–peer-reviewed study published on the preprint server bioRxiv suggests. The investigators inoculated nine 4-week-old Yorkshire piglets through the trachea, nose, and mouth with the H5N1 B3.13 virus grown on bovine uterine surface cells. Three other uninfected piglets housed in the same pen served as sentinels. (Van Beusekom, 3/6)

The Idaho House — with support from every Republican House lawmaker — on Thursday widely passed a bill that proposes sweeping policy changes intended to cut Medicaid costs. House Bill 345 calls for Idaho to seek work requirements for able-bodied Idahoans on Medicaid, and to give Idahoans eligible for Medicaid expansion access to tax credits to buy insurance on Idaho’s health care exchange. (Pfannenstiel, 3/6)

As Congressional Republicans weigh major cuts to Medicaid, most voters do not want to see the public health plan’s funding dialed back, according to a poll released Friday by �鶹Ů��, a nonpartisan health research firm. Just 17 percent of respondents said they supported cuts to Medicaid, the government health insurance program that covers more than 70 million people. Forty percent said they wanted to keep spending unchanged, and 42 percent said they would like it increased. (Kliff, 3/7)

New weight-loss drugs are driving up costs for Pennsylvania’s Medicaid program, officials told legislators this week, likely leading to more than $1 billion in new costs this year. (Giammarise and Riese, 3/7)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Medicaid Advocates Say Critics Use Loaded Terms To Gain Edge In Congressional Debate

In Washington’s debate over enacting steep funding cuts to Medicaid, words are a central battleground. Many Republican lawmakers and conservative policy officials who want to scale back the joint state-federal health program are using charged language to describe it. Language experts and advocates for Medicaid enrollees say their word choice is misleading and aims to sway public opinion against the popular, 60-year-old government program in a bid to persuade Congress to cut funding. (Galewitz, 3/7)

Lawyers for Prospect Medical Holdings warned before a federal judge in Texas Thursday about the possible closure of the entire Crozer Health system in Pennsylvania. The judge did not issue a ruling. Instead, she called for all parties to meet next week in hopes of keeping Crozer-Chester Medical Center, Taylor Hospital and other outpatient facilities and doctors' offices open. The meeting could happen as early as Monday. Another hearing is scheduled for Tuesday in federal court. (Holden and Stahl, 3/6)

A coalition of industry organizations is pressing employers to offer coverage for obesity as they would for other chronic conditions. Groups that signed on to the open letter (PDF) include the National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions, the Obesity Care Advocacy Network and the National Consumers League. All told, 68 organizations are included. (Minemyer, 3/6)

After yet another record year for health data breaches, updated federal security rules to protect patient information are on the table in 2025. Patients and providers have long complained that HIPAA, or the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, is ill-suited to protect patients’ sensitive health data in the digital age — and in January, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed updated regulations to protect against the growing threat of cyberattacks. (Palmer, 3/7)

BrightSpring Health Services plans to double its home health business over the next few years, President and CEO Jon Rousseau said Thursday. The Louisville, Kentucky-based home care provider derives less than a quarter of its revenue from home health, hospice, and in-home primary care, with pharmacy services comprising the majority of its business. But Rousseau said during an earnings call that Medicare home health reimbursements could improve under the Trump administration, making the business ripe for expansion through acquisitions and new locations. (Eastabrook, 3/6)

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina has established a nonprofit holding company to house its insurance subsidiary and other businesses, making it the latest Blues carrier to seek stronger footing against for-profit insurers. A new holding company, CuraCor Solutions, will be able to invest in new programs for members and technologies for employers, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina said in a news release Thursday. The insurer's acquisition of 55 FastMed retail clinics last year is an example of the moves CuraCor will make, the company said. (Tepper, 3/6)

The Federal Trade Commission sued to block private equity firm GTCR BC Holdings' acquisition of medical device coating company Surmodics on Thursday, alleging the deal is anticompetitive because GTCR holds a majority stake in Surmodics’ competitor Biocoat. The deal, which was announced in May, was valued at $627 million and would have given GTCR more than 50% of the market for outsourced hydrophilic coatings, according to the FTC. Medical device manufacturers apply the coatings to devices such as catheters and guidewires so physicians can navigate the body’s tight spaces without harming delicate tissue or important structures. (Dubinsky, 3/6)

A Republican-backed proposal to eliminate New Hampshire’s mechanism for purchasing vaccines was approved by the state House of Representatives Thursday. The House voted, 189-181, in favor of House Bill 524, which seeks to terminate the New Hampshire Vaccine Association. Opponents say the bill wouldn’t save any money, as the funds that pass through it come from insurers, not the state itself. (Skipworth, 3/6)

State health officials confirmed Thursday that testing is underway among the city’s homeless population for tuberculosis after a resident of a local shelter was diagnosed with the contagious disease. (Robidoux, 3/6)

The Washington State House of Representatives has advanced a bill to allow meal- and rest-break schedule flexibility for hospital workers. House Bill 1879 passed unanimously March 4 on a 95-0 vote, according to the chamber's website. State senators will now consider the legislation. Under current law, hospitals are required to provide meal breaks between the first two to five hours of an eight-hour shift. However, many hospital workers' shifts are often longer, according to a news release from bill sponsor Rep. Brianna Thomas. (Gooch, 3/6)

A violent attack inside a local hospital left several first responders injured and now the man behind the attack will head behind bars. The suspect's name is Steven Christopher Couch and he's accused of attacking staff members inside of Jefferson Hospital on Wednesday. Police said not only did he punch several nurses in the face, he also attacked the Highmark Health Police officer sent up to the floor to try to stop the violence. (Schiller, 3/6)

Homeless services provided by the city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority are disjointed and lack adequate data systems and financial controls to monitor contracts for compliance and performance, leaving the system vulnerable to waste and fraud, an audit ordered by a federal judge has concluded. The audit by the global consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal found that the city was unable to track exactly how much it spent on homeless programs and did not rigorously reconcile spending with services provided, making it impossible to judge how well the services worked or whether they were even provided. (Smith, 3/6)

A new state law meant to ensure that more Texans recovering from substance abuse in residential facilities have uniform standards of care and living conditions may not have the effect lawmakers intended. (Simpson, 3/7)

Members of the Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Board want the state to reverse its decision to omit some of their recommendations regarding how the funds should be allocated. A Hochul official, last month, said the requests could violate state and federal laws. The state is at odds with board members over their calls to invest settlement funds in overdose prevention centers and the state Office of Drug User Health. (Cordero, 3/6)

The Trump administration’s orders have created more turmoil and damage at the National Institutes of Health than was previously known. (Johnson and Achenbach, 3/5)

Uganda’s L.G.B.T.Q. population was already struggling to cope with the fallout of a harsh anti-gay law when the disruption of U.S. aid put people at even greater risk. (Dahir, 3/4)

There are now two fully approved drugs on the market that can, sometimes, slow down the progression of Alzheimer's disease. One is marketed as Leqembi and the other, Kisunla. Both have been shown to slow down the mental decline of Alzheimer's by more than 25%. But that's in a group of patients—an individual may do much better, or not be helped at all. NPR Science Correspondent Jon Hamilton has been talking to people who've taken these drugs. Today he has the story of two patients to receive them. (Hamilton, Grayson, Barber and McCoy, 3/3)

In places like Mingo County, W.Va., where working-age people are dying at record rates, a nurse learns what it takes to make America healthy. (Saslow, 3/2)

For those hoping to cure death, and they are legion, a 2016 experiment at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in San Diego has become liminal — the moment that changed everything. The experiment involved mice born to live fast and die young, bred with a rodent version of progeria, a condition that causes premature aging. Left alone, the animals grow gray and frail and then die about seven months later, compared to a lifespan of about two years for typical lab mice. (Reynolds, 3/6)

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)