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HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s visit to the FDA Friday was supposed to introduce him as a trusted leader to agency employees. It did anything but. Over the course of 40 minutes, Kennedy, in largely off-the-cuff remarks, asserted that the “Deep State” is real, referenced past CIA experiments on human mind control and accused the employees he was speaking to of becoming a “sock puppet” of the industries they regulate. (Cancryn, Gardner and Lim, 4/11)

The Food and Drug Administration is finalizing plans to replace some of the employees it laid off with contractors, three FDA officials tell CBS News, after steep cuts to the agency's workforce disrupted drug and food safety inspections. "Recent adjustments in staff numbers have created a heightened need for the FDA to be nimble, efficient and respond creatively, in order to continue and maintain FDA's regulatory inspection presence and the gold standard of excellence," agency officials wrote, in emails and draft contracting documents obtained by CBS News. (Tin, 4/11)

Pete Marocco, a State Department official who oversaw the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), has left the agency after less than three months, according to a senior Trump administration official. The official, who like others in this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters, confirmed to The Washington Post on Monday that Marocco had stepped down. The reason for his departure, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, was not immediately clear. (Hudson and Jeong, 4/14)

Weeks after Donald Trump won reelection, Keith Ives held an all-staff meeting at his Denver-based company to reassure his 30 employees that their work evaluating the success of US aid projects overseas wasn’t under threat. “I enthusiastically told them, ‘I’m not worried at all — the work we do isn’t political,’” said Ives, who founded Causal Design more than a decade ago. “We weren’t working in climate. We’re not working in gender. We’re not doing DEI work. We’re monitoring and evaluating emergency food aid.” (Marlow, 4/12)

After being indefinitely suspended in the first days of the Trump administration, key National Institutes of Health committees that approve research grants resumed meeting this week. It appears to be a positive step toward restoring the flow of billions of dollars in biomedical research funding to universities and medical schools that for months has been significantly staunched. (Molteni, 4/11)

The National Institutes of Health mistakenly fired — and then rehired — one of its most distinguished scientists amid a slapdash effort to shrink the agency’s workforce. NIH employees were shocked last week when Richard Youle emailed them to say he’d been among those caught up in the reduction in force, according to three people with knowledge of the dismissal who requested anonymity to discuss the situation. They had believed the NIH’s 1,200-person downsizing plan meant consolidating communications, human resources and procurement functions — not axing scientists. (Schumaker, Paun and Reader, 4/11)

Department of Health and Human Services officials during a closed-door briefing could not give a full accounting of the number of people who have been fired from the agency, a Democratic aide for the House Energy and Commerce Committee said Friday. HHS officials insisted to committee staff that the agency’s massive staffing cuts had been performed “with a scalpel” and “with nuance” but they did not have any numbers of who had been laid off, the aide told reporters. “There did not seem to be a function level understanding of who had been terminated,” they added. (Weixel, 4/12)

Amid the 10,000 job cuts so far this month at the U.S. health department, what happened to OSH is “the greatest gift to the tobacco industry in the last half century,” said Tim McAfee, who headed the division from 2010 to 2017. (Todd, 4/14)

An estimated 4 million Americans are infected with hepatitis C, a disease that can go undetected for years. Another 2.4 million people in this country are chronically infected with hepatitis B, which is the leading cause of liver cancer globally. (Branswell, 4/14)

Andrea Gilbert thought she knew what would happen to her brain. The 79-year-old retired attorney, who has Alzheimer’s disease and receives care at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, agreed to donate it for research in 2023. She hoped to help scientists unlock the keys to a disease that had left her writing notes to remind herself if she’d already brushed her teeth. The fate of that program is now in limbo because the Trump administration has upended the system that funds biomedical research. (Bush, 4/13)

The future of a technology modernization program, meant to help the government understand if the billions of tax dollars it spends on community health centers are in fact making Americans healthy, now looks uncertain. (Trang, 4/14)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: �鶹Ů�� Health News’ ‘On Air’: Journalists Delve Into Effects Of Deep Federal Cuts On Public Health

�鶹Ů�� Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner and national public health correspondent Amy Maxmen discussed the impact of federal cuts on public health on Connecticut Public Radio’s “The Wheelhouse” on April 9.Click here to hear Rovner and Maxmen on “The Wheelhouse” (4/12)

President Donald Trump said he underwent and passed a cognitive exam during a roughly four-hour physical exam conducted on Friday by his physician. “I took a cognitive test and I don’t know what to tell you other than I got every answer right,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Florida. (Sullivan and Wingrove, 4/12)

Donald Trump’s doctor says the oldest man elected president is “fully fit” to serve as commander in chief as the White House released results Sunday of Trump’s recent physical exam. The 78-year-old Trump is 20 pounds lighter since his checkup as president in 2020 showed him bordering on obesity. His physician, Navy Capt. Sean Barbabella, cited an “active lifestyle” that ”continues to contribute significantly” to the Republican president’s well-being. Trump turns 79 on June 14. (Superville, 4/14)

From scarring to his right ear due to a gunshot wound – confirming July’s assassination attempt – to a 62 beats-per-minute resting heart rate that could be attributed to his “frequent victories in golf events”, here are the results of Trump’s 2025 physical exam. (Gossling, 4/14)

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is urging states to not use Medicaid funds for gender-affirming care for minors, specifically gender reassignment surgeries or hormone treatments. “As a doctor and now CMS Administrator, my top priority is protecting children and upholding the law,” Mehmet Oz, the recently confirmed agency head, said in a statement Friday. (O’Connell-Domenech, 4/11)

The Trump administration has ordered the National Institutes of Health to study the physical and mental health effects of undergoing gender transition, including regret. The research comes at a time when the administration has cut hundreds of grants for research into health issues affecting the LGBTQ community. (Stein, 4/11)

President Donald Trump’s pick for a top health post has called for transgender youth to undergo “corrective care” instead of transitioning and has repeated conspiracy theories about the covid-19 pandemic, according to a Washington Post review of his podcast and radio appearances. Brian Christine, a 61-year-old Alabama urologist, would succeed former U.S. assistant secretary for health Rachel Levine, who made history during the Biden administration when she became the highest ranking openly transgender federal government official. (Nirappil, 4/12)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Families Of Transgender Youth No Longer View Colorado As A Haven For Gender-Affirming Care

On a Friday after school, 6-year-old Esa Rodrigues had unraveled a ball of yarn, spooked the pet cat, polled family members about their favorite colors, and tattled on a sibling for calling her a “butt-face mole rat.” Next, she was laser-focused on prying open cherry-crisp-flavored lip gloss with her teeth. “Yes!” she cried, twisting open the cap. Esa applied the gloopy, shimmery stuff in her bedroom, where a large transgender pride flag hung on the wall. Esa said the flag makes her feel “important” and “happy.” (Bichell, 4/14)

If you visit the website for Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), you'll find a "Wall of Receipts" listing more than 7,000 federal contracts it has terminated. Little detail is provided, besides the "savings" from each cancellation, and it's hard to determine the cost or collateral damage of all these cuts. But for some families, there has been a cost. (Turner, 4/14)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, pledged on Thursday to seek out experts globally to discover the reasons for the increasing rates of autism in the United States. “We’ve launched a massive testing and research effort that’s going to involve hundreds of scientists from around the world,” Mr. Kennedy announced at a cabinet meeting held by President Trump. “By September, we will know what has caused the autism epidemic and we’ll be able to eliminate those exposures.” (Jewett, 4/11)

Leadership at The Autism Society of America is pushing back against Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s recent pledge to find the cause of autism spectrum disorder. Kennedy promised to launch a “massive testing and research effort” on Thursday to figure out what has caused the “autism epidemic” by September. “We find that unrealistic and misleading,” President and CEO of The Autism Society of America Christopher Banks told The Hill. ... It is unclear who will lead the new testing and research effort and what methodology will be used in the process.  (O’Connell-Domenech, 4/11)

Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks weighed in on Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s remarks about finding a cause of autism, saying giving people false hope is “wrong.” Marks joined CBS News’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, where host Margaret Brennan asked him about Kennedy’s claim that the world will find the cause of the “autism epidemic” by September. (Irwin, 4/13)

A senior executive who objected was marched out of his office and put on leave, while earlier warnings about the agency’s deaths database were ignored. (Natanson, Rein and Kornfield, 4/12)

Medicare reimbursements for inpatient hospital care would increase 2.4% in fiscal 2026 under a proposed rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services published Friday. Long-term care hospitals would get a 2.6% pay hike under the same draft regulation. A separate rule issued Friday calls for a 2.4% boost to inpatient psychiatric facility rates next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. (Early, 4/11)

Skilled nursing homes would receive a 2.8% payment bump in fiscal 2026 under a proposed rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced late Friday. MS said the proposed rate increase includes a market basket update of 3%, a 0.6% market basket forecast error adjustment and a cut of 0.8% due to a productivity adjustment. The proposed pay hike is far below the 4.2% pay increase CMS gave nursing homes in fiscal 2025. (Eastabrook, 4/11)

Last year, Medicare Advantage (MA) plans spent $38 billion on services traditional Medicare doesn't pay for, such as gym memberships, meals, transportation, and dental care. But a report presented to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) Thursday lamented the agency's inability to evaluate the value of those services, to what extent beneficiaries actually used them, and with which companies the plans contract to provide them. (Clark, 4/11)

The Trump administration announced Friday it would delay the implementation of a Biden-era rule meant to restrict coverage of unproven and costly bandages known as skin substitutes. The policy will be delayed until 2026, allowing companies to continue setting high prices for new products, taking advantage of a loophole in Medicare rules. The companies sell those bandages at a discount to doctors, who then charge Medicare the full sticker price and pocket the difference, The New York Times reported on Thursday. (Kliff and Thomas, 4/11)

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is cutting off funding for initiatives designed to address health-related social needs for Medicaid enrollees, the agency notified states in a letter Thursday. So-called designated state health programs and designated state investment programs currently in operation under 1115 waivers may continue, but CMS will not extend them nor approve new applications, Center for Medicaid Director Drew Snyder wrote in a letter to state officials. (Early, 4/11)

An obscure set of state taxes on hospitals and other health providers is in the crosshairs of congressional budget cutters because the levies can lead to higher federal spending on Medicaid. Known as provider taxes because states impose them on hospitals, nursing homes and other facilities that provide healthcare, the taxes boost a state’s budget for funding Medicaid. That in turn attracts more matching federal dollars to fund the program—money that is ultimately directed back to the hospitals and clinics. (Walker, 4/14)

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Sunday that Republicans would protect entitlement programs as they press ahead with deep cuts to federal spending, but he added the government must “eliminate people on Medicaid” who are not “eligible to be there.” “The president has made absolutely clear many times, as we have as well, that we’re going to protect Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, for people who are legally beneficiaries of those programs,” Johnson told Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures.” (Suter, 4/13)

Thousands of miles from a manufacturing plant in China, where the key active ingredient in heparin is sourced, Wanda Crowell receives a daily infusion of the drug in her bed at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Doctors give Crowell the inexpensive, essential anticoagulant every day, to prevent life-threatening blood clots from forming in her central line, a plastic tube inserted in her chest that delivers the nutrients she needs to live. ... She also needs heparin to treat a history of blood clots. (Malhi, 4/11)

Tariffs on pharmaceuticals would hurt patients and drugs should be exempt from these levies, AstraZeneca Plc’ Chairman Michel Demaré said. US President Donald Trump has warned that tariffs on pharmaceutical companies — which weren’t part of the so-called reciprocal tariffs he imposed and then paused — are imminent. (Furlong, 4/11)

In her eight-year tenure as chief executive officer of GSK Plc, Emma Walmsley has seen off a combative activist investor, navigated multi-billion dollar litigation in the US and spun out a consumer health company, Haleon Plc. Her latest challenge is preparing the drugmaker for the looming threat of getting dragged into President Donald Trump’s trade war. (Furlong and David, 4/11)

President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff-driven reversal of decades of free trade is creating financial chaos for the very sector it’s meant to rebuild: American manufacturing. Although the full extent of economic damage is still unclear, volatile tariff policies are making it tougher for American companies to make and sell goods, whether they’re producing medical devices in Florida, toys in Ohio or bicycles in California. (Bhattarai, 4/13)

President Trump signaled on Sunday that he would pursue new tariffs on the powerful computer chips inside smartphones and other technologies, just two days after his administration excluded a variety of electronics from the steep import taxes recently applied on goods arriving from China. (Romm, Swanson and Mickle, 4/13)

An abortion in Idaho is not prohibited if pregnancy complications could cause a woman’s death, even if that death “is neither imminent nor assured,” a state judge said Friday in a ruling that loosens one of the strictest abortion bans in the U.S. Four women have sued over Idaho’s strict abortion bans. The women, who are represented by the Center for Reproductive Rights, aren’t asking for the state’s abortion ban to be overturned. Instead, they want the judge to clarify and expand the exceptions to the strict ban so people facing serious pregnancy complications can receive abortions before they are at death’s door. (4/12)

When a Wyoming woman phoned the state’s only abortion clinic recently to make an appointment to end her pregnancy, she received news that complicated her life even more. Wellspring Health Access had stopped providing abortions that same day, responding to a slew of new requirements for the Casper clinic to become a licensed surgical center. ... Though abortion remains legal in Wyoming, it has become increasingly difficult because of new requirements for abortion clinics and women seeking abortions. In this case, the woman had to go to Colorado, which partially borders southern Wyoming. (Gruver, 4/13)

For the first time since Texas banned nearly all abortions, Republican lawmakers are considering tweaking the language of the law to protect the lives of pregnant women. But this much-lauded bipartisan effort will offer no reprieve for women carrying doomed pregnancies diagnosed with lethal fetal abnormalities. (Klibanoff, 4/11)

As Kristan Hawkins, president of the national anti-abortion group Students for Life, tours college campuses, she has grown accustomed to counterprotests from abortion rights activists. But more recently, fellow abortion opponents, who call themselves abortion abolitionists, are showing up to her booths with signs, often screaming “baby killer” at her while she speaks with students. Hawkins has had to send alerts to donors asking them to help pay for increased security. (Fernando, 4/12)

The federal teams that count public health problems are disappearing — putting efforts to solve those problems in jeopardy. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s purge of tens of thousands of federal workers has halted efforts to collect data on everything from cancer rates in firefighters to mother-to-baby transmission of HIV and syphilis to outbreaks of drug-resistant gonorrhea to cases of carbon monoxide poisoning. (Ollstein, 4/13)

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in its latest weekly update today reported 105 more measles cases, pushing the national total to 712, which is more than double the cases reported for all of 2024. Seven outbreaks have been reported across the country, and 93% of the cases reported so far are part of outbreaks. Infections have been reported from 25 jurisdictions, 3 more than last week. Among the sick patients, 97% were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status. (Schnirring, 4/11)

The number of measles cases reported in the U.S. in a single week has topped 90 for the first time since a record wave in 2019, according to figures published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Ninety-one cases of measles were reported with rashes that began the week of March 23, with Arkansas, Hawaii and Indiana joining the list of two dozen states with confirmed measles cases. (Tin, 4/11)

The measles outbreak in West Texas didn’t happen just by chance. The easily preventable disease, declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, ripped through communities sprawling across more than 20 Texas counties in part because health departments were starved of the funding needed to run vaccine programs, officials say. “We haven’t had a strong immunization program that can really do a lot of boots-on-the-ground work for years,” said Katherine Wells, the health director in Lubbock, a 90-minute drive from the outbreak’s epicenter. (Ungar, Smith and Shastri, 4/13)

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) applauded Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for promoting measles vaccination amid a deadly outbreak in Texas. Since the start of the spread, the U.S. has reported 700 cases of the measles virus in states across the country. The Louisiana lawmaker said immunizations were safe and would be crucial to saving lives during a Sunday interview with radio host John Catsimatidis on WABC 770 AM’s “The Cats Roundtable.” (Fields, 4/13)

During his Senate confirmation hearings to be health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. presented himself as a supporter of vaccines. But in office, he and the agencies he leads have taken far-reaching, sometimes subtle steps to undermine confidence in vaccine efficacy and safety. The National Institutes of Health halted funding for researchers who study vaccine hesitancy and hoped to find ways to overcome it. It also canceled programs intended to discover new vaccines to prevent future pandemics. (Mandavilli, 4/13)

After visiting the families of measles victims in Texas, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stated on X, "The most effective way to prevent the spread of measles is the MMR vaccine." But his history promoting the anti-vaccination cause alongside questionable alternative medicines has public health officials, parents, and even the MAHA constituency on edge. For the second episode in our Road to MAHA series, NPR's senior science and health editor Maria Godoy and NBC News senior reporter, Brandy Zadrozny, walk us through how anti-vaccine rhetoric has led to this moment in public health. (Luse, Godoy, Williams and Pathak, 4/14)

In an unusual move, an audit of commercial health plans by Tennessee officials found that Express Scripts, one of the largest pharmacy benefit managers in the United States, violated state laws in its dealings with pharmacies, according to newly released documents. (Silverman, 4/13)

Part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ crusade to defeat a Florida recreational pot ballot measure received $10 million from two groups that got money from a nonprofit associated with first lady Casey DeSantis’ community-based assistance program. Hope Florida has received heightened scrutiny over whether it improperly received money intended for the state. Two organizations said to Hope Florida in letters that they did not use the money for political activity. (Sarkissian and Fineout, 4/11)

The University of Maryland Upper Chesapeake Medical Center’s inpatient pediatric unit has delayed its planned closing from May to June, the president and CEO of the center announced Thursday. (Foster, 4/14)

In the chaotic early weeks of the Covid pandemic, nothing consumed Andrew Cuomo’s administration like the frantic effort to acquire medical equipment. But all that energy might have been wasted. An audit released this morning by Comptroller Tom DiNapoli found the state spent $453 million on 247,343 devices like pulse oximeters, oxygen tanks, X-ray machines and ventilators in 2020. Just three of those devices have been used. The remaining 247,340 are still sitting in the manufacturers’ packaging in warehouses throughout the state. (Mahoney, 4/11)

North Carolina has reported a record number of flu deaths this respiratory virus season, health officials said this week. More than 500 flu-related deaths were reported for the 2024-25 respiratory virus season, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services said in a Wednesday press release. The figure marked the highest statewide total since reporting began in 2009. (Lavietes, 4/12)

Susan O’Connell moved into Enso Village in Healdsburg on the day it opened last July: She was 77, a Zen teacher from San Francisco and enthusiastic about this next stage of her life. “I’m living the dream right now,” O’Connell told the Chronicle. “I’m watching this community get formed from the ground up.” (Allday, 4/12)

Ozone exposure early in life raises the risk a child will develop asthma and wheezing by age 4, a recent analysis found. The study, published in JAMA Network Open, analyzed data on 1,188 children in Washington state, Minnesota, New York, California and Tennessee who were drawn from three cohorts in the National Institutes for Health’s Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes program. All of the children were exposed to modest ozone pollution between birth and age 2, and 81.9 percent had mothers with no history of asthma. (Blakemore, 4/13)

New studies from the United States and Poland detail COVID-19's cardiovascular toll, with one suggesting that infected children face significantly higher odds of conditions such as high blood pressure and heart failure and the other revealing that post-infection heart symptoms are common in adults. (Van Beusekom, 4/11)

Creatine is a popular supplement used to help build muscle, but researchers in Australia are questioning its effectiveness. Investigators from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney found that individuals who took creatine while performing a three-month weightlifting regimen put on the same amount of muscle as those who did not take the supplement while lifting. (McGorry, 4/13)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Magic Happens When Kids And Adults Learn To Swim. Tragedy Can Strike If They Don’t

At a swim meet just outside St. Louis, heads turned when a team of young swimmers walked through the rec center with their parents in tow. A supportive mom kept her eye on the clock while the Makos Swim Team athletes tucked their natural curls, braids, and locs into yellow swimming caps. In the bleachers, spectators whispered about the team’s presence at the pool in Centralia, Illinois — as they do at almost every competition. (Anthony, 4/14)

Surgeons removed a genetically engineered pig’s kidney from an Alabama woman after she experienced acute organ rejection, NYU Langone Health officials said on Friday. Towana Looney, 53, lived with the kidney for 130 days, which is longer than anyone else has tolerated an organ from a genetically modified animal. She has resumed dialysis, hospital officials said. (Caryn Rabin, 4/11)

Nick Kharufeh said he never thought he would see out of his left eye again after suffering an injury several years ago. Now, he is advocating for the procedure that restored his vision. The accident that cost Kharufeh his vision occurred on July 4, 2020, when he was at his aunt's house in Rialto, California -- about 10 miles north of Riverside -- for a block party, he said. Fireworks were lit for the holiday, with one of them exploding onto the ground instead of shooting up in the air, he told ABC News. (Forrester, 4/9)

Scientists achieved “a milestone” by charting the activity and structure of 200,000 cells in a mouse brain and their 523 million connections. (Zimmer, 4/9)

An investigational peripheral nerve stimulator worn as a wristband helped people with upper limb essential tremor perform daily activities better than a sham device, the pivotal TRANQUIL trial showed. (George, 4/9)

The tattoo removal clinic, run by a UCSF doctor at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, forges deep bonds with patients who are trying to mend old wounds. (Gonzalez, 4/7)

On a warm Saturday morning in March, while the 20-something influencers and young finance bros of Williamsburg were still asleep, a group of more than 30 men gathered in McCarren Park. Some were coming from as far as the Catskills and others from a few steps away. Greetings transitioned to talk of sleep training and stroller envy, and the bonding happened quickly. After all, they all had one major thing in common: babies. “How old is yours?” they asked one another as the group grew. (Benveniste, 4/12)

CRISPR is not a miracle product that can magically cure cancer. It is, however, an exceptionally powerful tool that is creating entirely new possibilities in cancer treatment. (Kelly Banas and Eric B. Kmiec, 4/14)

The administration is exploring so-called “most-favored nation” (MFN) pricing, which pegs U.S. drug prices to the lowest level paid by comparable countries. At the end of his first term, President Trump ordered Medicare to implement such an MFN policy, only to have the order blocked by the Biden administration. (Darius Lakdawalla and Dana P. Goldman, 4/14)

Some 10,000 federal health workers lost their jobs earlier this month — among them, a group of regulators who help new medicines get approved. If Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. doesn’t reverse course, American patients will suffer and half a century of US leadership in pharmaceutical innovation could come to a precipitous end. (4/14)

When Donald Trump accepted the 2024 GOP nomination for president, he included in his speech the importance of American leadership in biomedical innovation. “We’re going to get to the cure for cancer and Alzheimer’s and so many other things,” he said. “We’re so close to doing something great. But we need a leader that will let it be done.” (Fred Upton and Diana DeGette, 4/14)

By the time their spending accounts were reactivated on Thursday, some scientists at the National Institutes of Health said they were running on fumes. (Jeneen Interlani, 4/11)

According to the CDC, RSV is the leading cause of infant hospitalization in the U.S. It’s estimated that 58,000-80,000 children younger than five years old are hospitalized each year due to RSV. What’s so scary about RSV is that babies and kids are dying from this virus. (Sophia Bechenek, 4/14)