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The Trump administration intends to use funds from a decades-old federal program that provides birth control to low-income women to ramp up efforts to help aspiring mothers get pregnant, signaling a shift in policy that will appease both religious conservatives and adherents of its Make America Healthy Again agenda. The first sign of the change appeared on a little-noticed government website last week, in a post offering a $1.5 million grant to start an “infertility training center.” (Kitchener and Gay Stolberg, 7/18)

Planned Parenthood Great Rivers is laying off 10 St. Louis-area employees. The organization said Friday the move prioritizes the needs of patients and the sustainability of its six health centers, years after Missouri politicians and regulators removed Planned Parenthood from the state’s Medicaid program, and as the Trump administration works to keep federal funding from abortion providers. (Suntrup, 7/18)

Jaycee Foran from Holly Springs has a 3-year-old son. She had planned to start trying for her second child around this time, always envisioning multiple kids running around the house. But not anymore. At least not for the foreseeable future. (Crumpler, 7/21)

Women feel more anger but express less of it as they age, according to a recent analysis in the journal Menopause. Researchers looked at health reports and menstrual data from 501 participants in the Seattle Midlife Women’s Health Study, analyzing a subset of data from 271 women to look for possible connections between age, reproductive stage and anger in women. The women who were studied were between 35 and 55 and still menstruating. (Blakemore, 7/19)

For well over a decade, Grace Hamilton, 27, experienced hair loss, heavy periods, infrequent menstrual cycles, mental health issues and difficulty losing weight without knowing why. It wasn’t until 2023 when she was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, a hormonal disorder common among women of reproductive age. (Constantino, 7/20)

A study published Friday in the journal Science Advances describes the odds of having a boy or girl as akin to flipping a weighted coin, unique to each family. It found evidence that an infant’s birth sex is associated with maternal age and specific genes. The findings challenge assumptions that birth sex is random. They mirror the results of similar studies in Europe that have also found that birth sex does not follow a simple 50-50 distribution. (Malhi, 7/18)

The Trump administration’s proposed cuts at the National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration could lower the number of new drugs that come to market in the next three decades, according to an analysis released Friday by the Congressional Budget Office. (Cohen, 7/18)

Trump administration officials rejected a series of rules Friday to help the international community prevent and respond to public health risks. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a joint statement formally rejecting the 2024 International Health Regulations (IHR) Amendments by the World Health Organization (WHO). (O’Connell-Domenech, 7/18)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: $50B Rural Health ‘Slush Fund’ Faces Questions, Skepticism
A last-minute scramble to add a $50 billion rural health program to President Donald Trump’s massive tax and spending law has left hospital and clinic leaders nationwide hopeful but perplexed. The Rural Health Transformation Program calls for federal regulators to hand states $10 billion a year for five years starting in fiscal year 2026. (Tribble, 7/21)

Capitol developments —

The House passed legislation on Thursday clawing back $9 billion in federal funding for global aid projects, which would significantly impact public health domestically and abroad, physicians and policy experts told MedPage Today. The Rescissions Act of 2025 homed in on programs related to the U.S.'s response to conflict, hunger, disease, and democratic decline, noted a Center for American Progress fact sheet. (Firth, 7/18)

Personal care, salon and beauty products sold across the U.S. are subject to little federal oversight — and many have been found to contain toxic ingredients. The average American adult uses about 12 personal care products a day, Consumer Reports says, resulting in exposure to an average of 168 chemicals. Those can include formaldehyde, mercury, asbestos, lead and parabens, which have been linked to cancer, brain damage and reproductive harm. Women of color are thought to use twice as many products, according to Consumer Reports. (Treisman, 7/21)

HHS and MAHA —

An insomnia diagnosis yielded a recommendation for a five-pack of beef hot dogs. An acne diagnosis brought a medical note proposing that the condition be treated with classes at a mixed-martial-arts gym. Decades-old arm fractures earned a nurse practitioner’s order to buy a kettlebell from Nike. And because a medical provider had blessed the purchases, they came with the promise of a major perk: People could buy them using money not subject to federal income taxes. (Lieber and Mueller, 7/18)

WK Kellogg Co. will remove synthetic dyes from its cereals, including Froot Loops and Apple Jacks, by the end of 2027, joining a growing cohort of other US companies that have committed to eliminate colorants such as Red 40 and Yellow 5 from their foods. The Battle Creek, Michigan-based company said it would remove the additives on its website on Friday. It had previously announced that it wouldn’t introduce new products with the dyes beginning in 2026 while also committing to eliminate the ingredients from its cereals served in schools by the 2026-2027 school year. (Kubzansky and Peterson, 7/18)

Also —

The Environmental Protection Agency said Friday it is eliminating its research and development arm and reducing agency staff by thousands of employees. The agency’s Office of Research and Development has long provided the scientific underpinnings for EPA’s mission to protect the environment and human health. The EPA said in May it would shift its scientific expertise and research efforts to program offices that focus on major issues like air and water. (Daly, 7/19)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Journalists Dig Into Megabill's Slashing Of Medicaid. Plus, How To Avoid Tick Bites
�鶹Ů�� Health News journalists made the rounds on national and local media recently to discuss topical stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances. ... �鶹Ů�� Health News Nevada correspondent Jazmin Orozco Rodriguez discussed the potential impact of Medicaid cuts on rural hospitals on KNPR’s “State of Nevada” on July 17. ... �鶹Ů�� Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner discussed Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s megabill on WAMU’s “1A” on July 16. Rovner also discussed immigrant health coverage on MSNBC’s “Velshi” on July 13. (7/19)

The Joint Commission has eliminated 714 requirements from its accreditation standards in an effort to streamline expectations and improve hospital compliance. The changes will be reflected in the nonprofit accrediting agency’s Accreditation 360 program and are set to go into effect Jan. 1. (DeSilva, 7/18)

Hospitals are steadily buying small physician practices and, in the process, driving up the price of care, a new National Bureau of Economic Research study shows. It's the latest evidence of consolidation in health care that's left more than three-quarters of U.S. doctors employed by health systems or corporations. (Reed, 7/21)

Pharma developments —

Prescription drug denials by private insurers in the United States jumped 25 percent from 2016 to 2023, according to a new analysis of more than four billion claims, a practice that has contributed to rising public outrage about the nation’s private health insurance system. The report, compiled for The New York Times by the health analytics company Komodo Health, shows that denial rates rose from 18.3 percent to 22.9 percent. The rejections went up across many major health plans, including the country’s largest private insurer, UnitedHealthcare. (Kliff, 7/18)

Drugmaker Sarepta Therapeutics said late Friday it won’t comply with a request from the Food and Drug Administration to halt all shipments of its gene therapy following the death of a third patient receiving one of its treatments for muscular dystrophy. The highly unusual move is a latest in a string of events that have hammered the company’s stock for weeks and recently forced it to lay off 500 employees. The company’s decision not to comply with the FDA also places future availability of its leading therapy, called Elevidys, in doubt. (Perrone, 7/19)

Health industry updates —

Humana’s bid to get its Medicare Advantage quality scores boosted failed in federal court Thursday, at least for now. The insurer, second in Medicare Advantage market share to UnitedHealth Group subsidiary UnitedHealthcare, sued the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in October, alleging the agency’s metrics are arbitrary and that the lower star rating it received will have a significant impact on its 2026 earnings. (DeSilva, 7/18)

Elon Musk’s health tech company Neuralink labeled itself a “small disadvantaged business” in a federal filing with the U.S. Small Business Administration, shortly before a financing round valued the company at $9 billion. Neuralink is developing a brain-computer interface (BCI) system, with an initial aim to help people with severe paralysis regain some independence. BCI technology broadly can translate a person’s brain signals into commands that allow them to manipulate external technologies just by thinking. (Kolodny, 7/18)

Health systems are learning that investing in digital health companies isn’t for everyone. The way health systems invest in startup companies has transformed as their operating budgets strain from persistent labor costs and a challenging reimbursement climate. These venture arms are giving way to spinoffs, strategic partnerships, incubator models and passive investing strategies, and that could change how the next wave of digital health companies are funded. (Perna, 7/18)

Wendy Horton, CEO of UVA Health’s University Medical Center, and Dr. Melina Kibbe, dean of the University of Virginia School of Medicine and chief health affairs officer for UVA Health, plan to step down from their positions. Horton will depart the Charlottesville, Virginia-based organization for a role as senior vice president and president of adult care services at UCSF Health in San Francisco, Dr. Mitchell Rosner, interim executive vice president for health affairs, said Friday. She is expected to leave in September. (DeSilva, 7/18)

Los Angeles County’s health system, which is responsible for the care of the region’s poorest, is careening toward a financial crisis because of cuts from a presidential administration and Republican-led Congress looking to drastically slash the size of government. President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which passed earlier this month, is expected to soon claw $750 million per year from the county Department of Health Services, which oversees four public hospitals and roughly two dozen clinics. In an all-staff email Friday, the agency called the bill a “big, devastating blow to our health system” and said a hiring freeze had gone into effect, immediately. (Ellis and Ordner, 7/20)

One recent morning, not long after the Trump administration launched its extraordinary immigration crackdown in Los Angeles, Alfredo Contreras pulled a large RV into the parking lot of a rehab center south of the city’s skyline. The RV is part of a small fleet of rolling exam rooms run by St. John’s Community Health that have taken on heightened importance in the city’s health care — and, increasingly, political — landscape since the start of the raids. (Bluth and Schultheis, 7/20)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Georgia Shows Rough Road Ahead For States As Medicaid Work Requirements Loom
Every time Ashton Alexander sees an ad for Georgia Pathways to Coverage, it feels like a “kick in the face.” Alexander tried signing up for Pathways, the state’s limited Medicaid expansion, multiple times and got denied each time, he said, even though he met the qualifying terms because he’s a full-time student. Georgia is one of 10 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid health coverage to a broader pool of low-income adults. (Rayasam and Whitehead, 7/21)

Around the nation —

Bowing to federal pressure under the Trump administration, UChicago Medicine has become the latest Illinois hospital to end gender-affirming pediatric care. The decision, announced Friday, leaves no room for ongoing transitional care, and an unknown number of patients in limbo. (Channick, 7/18)

The recent mass overdose in West Baltimore underscored the need to expand drug treatment and harm reduction services, addiction specialists say. But efforts to build out services addressing the opioid crisis often face resistance that some say is rooted in prejudice. (Belson and Nordstrom, 7/20)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Louisiana Upholds Its HIV Exposure Law As Other States Change Or Repeal Theirs
When Robert Smith met his future girlfriend in 2010, he wanted to take things slowly. For Smith, no relationship had been easy in the years since he was diagnosed with the human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV. People often became afraid when they learned his status, even running away when he coughed. The couple waited months to have sex until Smith felt he could share his medical status. To prepare her, Smith said, he took his girlfriend to his job in HIV prevention at the Philadelphia Center, a northwestern Louisiana nonprofit that offers resources to people with HIV, which also provided him housing at the time. (Parker, 7/21)

James Granger says primary care doctors shouldn’t just focus on patients’ physical health. Their mental well-being is just as important. (Perez-Moreno, 7/20)

Early on the morning of July 12, a young woman walked into MetroHealth Medical Center’s emergency room, bleeding from the face after being pistol-whipped at a gas station. “My face,” the woman said, seeing the image of her injuries. “My face.” Her brother met her with a hug and assured her that he would retaliate. Moments later, Jeff Crosby, a violence interrupter for the Cleveland Peacekeepers Alliance, stepped in to prevent that. (Daprile, 7/20)

For years, doctors have known that high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking and excessive alcohol increase your risk of dementia. More recently, a growing body of evidence also suggests a link to vision problems, leading to the influential Lancet Commission in 2024 to add untreated vision loss to the list of 14 modifiable risk factors for dementia. The commission, which issues periodic recommendations on public health matters, found that about 45% of dementia cases in the world are potentially preventable by addressing 14 modifiable risk factors — which also include high cholesterol, social isolation and hearing loss — and that 2% of cases can be prevented or delayed by addressing treatable vision loss. (Ho, 7/20)

When Gretchen Dunoyer heard that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was recruiting people with lingering Lyme disease symptoms for a study, she burst into tears. Dunoyer, 63, had near-constant fatigue and vertigo for years, after an odd, flulike illness in the summer of 2002. She bounced around from doctor to doctor looking for answers. Many of them told her that she was depressed, but she had a gut feeling that something else was wrong. Around 2015, she was told the root of her distress was likely Lyme disease, courtesy of a tick bite that she didn’t remember. (Abbott, 7/20)

A new analysis of four randomized clinical trials provides evidence that a stewardship prompt embedded in a hospital's electronic health record to improve empiric antibiotic prescribing in the early days of hospitalization can help reduce unnecessary use of extended-spectrum antibiotics in patients throughout their hospital stay. The findings are from a research letter published yesterday in JAMA by the team of researchers who conducted the INSPIRE (Intelligent Stewardship Prompts to Improve Real-Time Antibiotic Selection) trials. (Dall, 7/18)

Intermittent dosing of daily antiretroviral therapy (ART) showed no difference in efficacy as continuous regular daily dosing in maintaining viral suppression when ART supplies are limited, according to a systematic review and meta-analysis. (Haelle, 7/20)

Whether triggered by pollen, pet dander or peanuts, allergies in this day and age seem nearly impossible to avoid. But one group appears virtually immune, a mystery to experts who study allergies. Despite the increasing rate of allergic diseases, both in industrialized and in developing countries, the Amish remain exceptionally — and bafflingly — resistant. Only 7 percent of Amish children had a positive response to one or more common allergens in a skin prick test, compared with more than half of the general U.S. population. (Kim, 7/20)

Last spring at a small Alabama hospital, a team of transplant surgeons prepared to cut into Misty Hawkins. The clock was ticking. Her organs wouldn’t be usable for much longer. Days earlier, she had been a vibrant 42-year-old with a playful sense of humor and a love for the Thunder Beach Motorcycle Rally. But after Ms. Hawkins choked while eating and fell into a coma, her mother decided to take her off life support and donate her organs. She was removed from a ventilator and, after 103 minutes, declared dead. (Rosenthal and Tate, 7/20)

If there is a small red heart with the words “organ donor” at the bottom of your driver’s license, that puts you in a group of over 173 million Americans who are in the national organ donor registry. Organ donation has wide public support, but medical ethicists say there is still confusion about what it looks like and how it affects patients and families. (Webster-Bass, 7/20)

Outbreaks and health threats —

Though COVID-19 activity in the United States is still low, infections are on the rise in some parts of the country, including states in the Southeast, South, and West, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its latest respiratory virus updates. The upward trend is reflected mainly in early indicators, including emergency department visits for COVID, which are still very low nationally, at 0.5%. Visits were up 10.9% from the week before, with greater increases in children ages 4 years old and younger. (Schnirring, 7/18)

Though H5N1 avian flu outbreaks in dairy cattle and commercial poultry are at low levels in the United States, scientists continue to sort out how the virus spreads on farms, and two new pieces of information this week shed more light on potential spread in dairy cattle: contamination from house flies and “milk snatching”. Over the last 30 days, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has reported only one detection in poultry, a game bird farm in Pennsylvania, and two detections in dairy cattle, which involved herds from California and Arizona. (Schnirring, 7/18)

An Oregon man contracted plague from his pet cat in January last year—by far the earliest case ever recorded in a calendar year in the state—possibly indicating a seasonal shift of the disease in people. The man's case was detailed yesterday in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, is most commonly confirmed in people in late spring or summer. It typically spreads through fleas from rodents. Oregon had not confirmed a human plague case since 2015, when it recorded two. (Wappes, 7/18)

Dexcom has recalled 19 models of its Dexcom G6, G7, One and One+ glucose monitoring receivers. The speakers may fail to sound an alert when a patient’s blood sugar reaches dangerously low or high levels, which could lead to seizures, vomiting, loss of consciousness or death. The Food and Drug Administration has reported 56 injuries and no deaths linked to this recall, according to a notice issued Thursday. The agency classified the recall as Class I, its most serious category. (Dubinsky, 7/18)

Kayem Foods Inc. is recalling over 24,000 pounds of ready-to-eat chicken sausage products that may be contaminated with pieces of plastic, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service said Thursday. The company reported to FSIS that it had received three consumer complaints reporting white plastic pieces in the food products. There have been no reports of injuries linked to the plastic pieces, according to FSIS' announcement. (Breen, 7/19) 

Children's health —

David Gomez, a school resource officer for the Boise County Sheriff’s Office in Idaho, started noticing caffeine pouches last spring. Students were using the pillow-shaped pouches, which can contain more than 200 milligrams of caffeine, alongside nicotine pouches like Zyn. They’ll use them either as a disguise for nicotine pouch usage — caffeine and nicotine pouches often look virtually identical — or a complement to it, Gomez said. (Ducharme, 7/20)

Emiliano Slesaransky, 17, joined Santa Monica High School's football team as a freshman and — at the urging of coaches and teammates— started hitting the gym whenever possible: in the morning, after school, and on the weekends. The people he met there would share their strategies for bulking up. "They would take protein powders, other supplements like some people I know take ashwagandha, and maybe creatine," he says, citing popular energy and exercise-enhancing supplements. Emiliano started taking some of them, too. (Noguchi, 7/21)

Parents should avoid preteens’ use of smartphones and social media, according to new research. A study released Monday found that using smartphones before age 13 could damage kids’ mental health. (Alaimo, 7/20)

Also —

A long-practiced food processing method has been up for debate in recent years, with some opting to drink and eat without sterilizing it first. The polarizing process is pasteurization — a heating process that kills the microbes behind common foodborne illnesses. ... By getting rid of harmful microbes, pasteurization can prevent foodborne illnesses like listeriosis, typhoid fever, tuberculosis, diphtheria, Q fever, and brucellosis, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Pasteurization can also change the nutritional value, flavor and appearance of food, though only minimally, per the National Library of Medicine. (Kutz, 7/19)

For decades, the Food and Drug Administration has partnered with clinicians and industry to deliver evidence-based medical innovations using a gold-standard framework for drug development and oversight. The agency has the authority to review any approved drug, and such reviews are a vital part of ensuring public health. That process has long been grounded in transparent and methodologically sound science. (Grace Colon, 7/19)

The move by HHS comes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s June 27 decision in Kennedy v. Braidwood Management Inc., in which the justices ruled against a group of Christian-owned businesses and individuals challenging the constitutionality of the task force’s role in mandating what private insurance policies cover. (Karen Tumulty, 7/18)

Kennedy, who has no training in medicine or health, has long been the nation’s foremost peddler of junk science and the crackpot conspiracy theories that flow from it. The greatest danger in elevating him to HHS secretary was always that he would use his position to undermine public confidence in vaccines, which would lead to needless suffering and even death. And so it has come to pass. (Michael R. Bloomberg, 7/21)

My mother died in January 2007. She told the family that she had breast cancer in 2002. We still don’t know when she knew, or when she had been diagnosed. One thing we did know: She chose not to treat the cancer. (Joy Lisi Rankin, 7/21)

Sometime next year, my wife and I will look for a new health insurance plan. She is retiring early, and we won’t have access to the plans offered by her employer. Thanks to President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress, our replacement likely will not be from the Colorado individual health insurance marketplace. (Mario Nicolais, 7/20)

They say death is one of life’s few certainties. For a boy or young man living with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, that certainty has a cruel twist: the anticipation of dying young. As mothers of children with this disease, we have wept helplessly in recent months as friends — fellow members of a club we never asked to join — said goodbye to their sons, the babies they once held in their arms, whose dreams they held in their hearts until Duchenne robbed them of working muscles or a healthy future. (Jennifer Handt and Kelly Maynard, 7/18)

From gene therapies to cancer breakthroughs, California has been the driving force behind America’s biotechnology industry. But today, that edge is slipping. A National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology report to Congress in April stated that the U.S. is dangerously close to falling behind China in biotechnology innovation, and called for urgent investment and strategic coordination to maintain global leadership. (Ash Jogalekar, 7/20)