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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is planning to remove all the members of an advisory panel that determines what cancer screenings and other preventive health measures insurers must cover, people familiar with the matter said. Kennedy plans to dismiss all 16 panel members of the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force because he views them as too “woke,” the people said. The task force has advised the federal government on preventive health matters since 1984. The Affordable Care Act in 2010 gave it the power to determine which screenings, counseling and preventive medications most insurers are required to cover at no cost to patients. The group, made up of volunteers with medical expertise who are vetted for conflicts of interest, combs through scientific evidence to determine which interventions are proven to work. (Whyte, 7/25)

A top US medical body has expressed “deep concern” to Robert F Kennedy Jr over news reports that the health secretary plans to overhaul a panel that determines which preventive health measures including cancer screenings should be covered by insurance companies. The letter from the the American Medical Association comes after the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Kennedy plans to overhaul the 40-year old US Preventive Services Task Force because he regards them as too “woke”, according to sources familiar with the matter. (Yang, 7/27)

On federal funding cuts —

Initial analyses of the Trump administration’s proposed National Institutes of Health budget cuts have overlooked key aspects of their long-term economic and health impact, according to a newly released paper, which suggests the effects will be sprawling and ultimately cost the country more than is being saved through the cuts. (Oza, 7/28)

Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) and 13 other Senate Republicans are urging the Trump administration to release National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding that has been held up for months. The GOP senators warned in a letter to White House budget chief Russell Vought that the “slow disbursement of funds” that Congress appropriated in March “risks undermining critical research and the thousands of American jobs it supports.” (Bolton, 7/25)

A group that advocates for better treatment and prevention for tuberculosis (TB), HIV, and hepatitis C yesterday is calling for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to restore funding for scores of TB research projects. (Dall, 7/25)

Carol Seeger finally escaped her debilitating depression with an experimental treatment that placed electrodes in her brain and a pacemaker-like device in her chest. But when its batteries stopped working, insurance wouldn’t pay to fix the problem and she sank back into a dangerous darkness. She worried for her life, asking herself: “Why am I putting myself through this?” (Ungar, 7/27)

Also —

Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Marty Makary argued women’s health care has not received proper funding and research, attributing the lack of attention to the industry’s male-dominated culture. “It does feel like the system just doesn’t think specifically about the very particular needs of women’s bodies and doesn’t do enough research into this,” Makary told POLITICO White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns on an episode of “The Conversation” podcast, which was taped on Wednesday. (Long, 7/27)

Dr. Bruce Siegel plans to spend the remainder of his time as president and CEO of America’s Essential Hospitals defending providers from the new tax law. Siegel, who will retire at the end of the year, said the estimated $960 billion in Medicaid cuts will upend safety-net hospitals, but he believes Congress could ultimately unwind some of those cuts and other policies to protect providers. He has led the association, which represents more than 300 safety-net hospitals, for 15 years. (Kacik, 7/25)

Medicaid cuts under President Trump’s sweeping tax and spending package will harm family caregivers, experts warn, by reducing access to health care for themselves and the people they care for, which could then lead to more caregiving responsibilities.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates the package will reduce Medicaid spending by roughly $911 billion over the next 10 years and increase the number of uninsured Americans by up to 10 million. (O’Connell-Domenech, 7/27) 

Millions of older Americans living in poverty are entitled to free or heavily subsidized Medicare coverage. But the new Republican tax law will keep that benefit out of reach for many by reintroducing confusing and onerous paperwork requirements. (Herman, 7/28)

The road to four struggling rural hospitals now hosts a political message: “If this hospital closes, blame Trump.” In a series of black-and-yellow billboards erected near the facilities, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) seeks to tell voters in deep red states “who is responsible for gutting rural healthcare.” (Glenza, 7/27)

Several Planned Parenthood clinics are already closing after Republicans’ massive tax law immediately cut off Medicaid funds to the organization for one year. Facilities in at least three states announced closures amid a challenging legislative and legal environment that came to a head after Congress banned organizations from receiving Medicaid dollars for other services if they also provide abortions. (Hellmann and Raman, 7/25)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: �鶹Ů�� Health News’ ‘On Air’: Journalists Drill Down How Federal Cuts Will Affect Medicaid, Cancer Research, And Uninsured Rates
�鶹Ů�� Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner discussed the impact of Medicaid cuts on WAMU’s “1A” on July 23. ... �鶹Ů�� Health News correspondent Rachana Pradhan discussed cuts at the National Cancer Institute and the ensuing chaos on PBS’ “PBS News Weekend” on July 19. (7/26)

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on Monday reaffirmed its support for ending nonmedical vaccine exemptions for daycare and school attendance in the U.S. In an updated policy statement in Pediatrics, AAP reiterated its support for laws and regulatory measures that require certification of immunization for attending child care and school, along with support for medical exemptions for specific vaccines, as determined for individual children, according to authors led by Jesse Hackell, MD, of New York Medical College in Valhalla and chair of AAP's Committee on Pediatric Workforce. (Henderson, 7/28)

Governors from across the country played host to a variety of health conspiracy theories in Colorado Springs on Saturday, as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. expounded on his “Make America Healthy Again” initiative in a fireside chat. With Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee moderating, Kennedy repeated a litany of false and misleading claims, including assertions that aluminum in vaccines causes food allergies and that diabetes can be cured through diet, to about a dozen governors gathered together for their National Governors Association summer meeting. (Fraieli, 7/26)

On the covid vaccine —

A Stanford University-led study estimates that COVID-19 vaccinations saved 2.5 million lives from 2020 to 2024, about 17 million fewer than earlier reports suggested, primarily among older adults. That’s the equivalent of one death averted for every 5,400 vaccine doses administered worldwide during the period, according to the findings published Friday in JAMA Health Forum. Official estimates say 7 million people died from the virus worldwide in those years. (Salai, 7/25)

COVID-19 is once again on the rise in California. It remains to be seen whether this latest uptick foreshadows the sort of misery seen last year — when the state was walloped by its worst summertime surge since 2022 — or proves fleeting. But officials and experts say it’s nevertheless a reminder of the seasonal potency of the still-circulating virus. “We are definitely are seeing an uptick in the summer,” Dr. Erica Pan, director of the California Department of Public Health and the state health officer, said during a recent webinar. (Lin II, 7/28)

On vaccine innovations —

A fear of needles is a common reason for avoiding vaccines, even among many adults. Now researchers have come up with a rather clever alternative: dental floss. Led by a team from Texas Tech University, the researchers first identified an often overlooked surface in the mouth as an entry point for vaccines: the junctional epithelium (JE), which sits where the gums meet the teeth. (Nield, 7/28)

William J. Rutter, a scientist who helped create the modern biotechnology industry as a founder of a company that turned breakthroughs from academic labs into commercial medicines, including the first genetically engineered vaccine and a therapy for multiple sclerosis, died on July 11 at his home in San Francisco. He was 97. His daughter, Cindy Rutter, said the cause was complications of urothelial carcinoma, a cancer of the urinary system. (Gabriel, 7/27)

One Middle Tennessee school district will no longer accept doctor's notes to excuse student absences. Lawrence County School System officials announced the new attendance policy during a June 26 board meeting, where Director of Schools Michael Adkins cited high rates of "chronic" absenteeism among students. "You can bring all the doctor's notes you want, but it's still unexcused," Adkins continued. (Leyva, 7/28)

Anna Olson is set to finish her master's degree in school counseling at the University of Oklahoma next spring. Once that happens, she'll be able to provide much-needed mental health services. She says she never would have considered becoming a counselor if it weren't for a federally funded program that covered all the costs of her education. (Wallis and Pfeifer, 7/28)

Nancy Jensen believes she’d still be living in an abusive group home if it wasn’t shut down in 2004 with the help of the Disability Rights Center of Kansas, which for decades has received federal money to look out for Americans with disabilities. But the flow of funding under the Trump administration is now in question, disability rights groups nationwide say, dampening their mood as Saturday marks the 35th anniversary of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act. (Hanna and Hunter, 7/26)

You wouldn’t guess that Matt Keeth has a severe visual impairment from the way he skateboarded up and down Chicago’s Disability Pride Parade in the Loop — if not for the red-and-white striped cane he rolls in front of him. Keeth, 31, a southern Idaho native, had always experienced a small degree of visual snow — like television static in the eyes — but three years ago, he woke up to the more extreme visual snow syndrome, a neurological condition in which visual snow is accompanied by other symptoms such as headaches, migraines and vertigo. (Weaver, 7/26)

Dozens of people were accidentally dosed with THC, the primary psychoactive compound in cannabis, after consuming food served by a pizzeria in Wisconsin, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report shared Thursday. Famous Yeti's Pizza, a pizzeria in Stoughton, Wisconsin, is located in a building with a shared kitchen used by a state-licensed vendor who produced edible THC products, the CDC said. (Breen, 7/25)

When Jarvis Parker was looking to buy a house in Waterbury in late 2019, he had several basic criteria. He wanted to avoid properties with leaking roofs and flooded basements. And he needed a place with enough space for himself, his daughter and his now 4-year-old grandson. The modest two-bedroom home that Parker eventually purchased in Waterbury’s East End checked all of those boxes. (Brown, Carlesso, Daou and Rasekh, 7/27)

The Trump administration said Friday it’s investigating the Oregon Department of Education after receiving a complaint from a conservative non-profit group alleging the state was violating civil rights law by allowing transgender girls to compete on girls sports teams. It’s the latest escalation in the Republican administration’s effort to bar transgender athletes from women’s sports teams nationwide. President Donald Trump signed an executive order in February to block trans girls from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity. (Bellisle, 7/25)

Dr. Meena Seshamani says she’s focused on behavioral health and other priorities as she passes her 100th day heading the state’s Department of Health, though she avoided direct answers to many of The Sun’s questions on major health topics during a wide-ranging interview Wednesday. (Conrad, 7/24)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: California Looked To Them To Close Health Disparities, Then It Backpedaled
Fortina Hernández is called “the one who knows it all.” For more than two decades, the community health worker has supported hundreds of families throughout southeast Los Angeles by helping them sign up for food assistance, sharing information about affordable health coverage, and managing medications for their chronic illnesses. She’s guided by the expression “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” (Sánchez, 7/28)

People who grew up in U.S. areas with high atmospheric lead levels were about 20% more likely to report memory problems 50 years later, a study of more than 600,000 older adults showed. Compared with people from areas with the lowest atmospheric lead levels, the odds of reported memory impairment were higher in people from areas with moderate levels, high levels, and extremely high levels, said Eric Brown, MD, MSc, of the University of Toronto, at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC). (George, 7/27)

Serious liver disease is becoming more common among Americans who drink heavily, according to a new study from Keck Medicine of USC. It’s not that more people are partying with alcohol. And it’s not that the drinkers are having more drinks. It’s that more of the people who drink regularly are becoming sick. (Ordner, 7/26)

If you needed another reason to get your daily steps in, science just handed you one. A new study shows that walking daily can reduce the risk of cognitive decline — especially among those with a genetic predisposition for Alzheimer’s disease. Almost 3,000 participants between the ages of 70 and 79 reported their daily walking habits over the course of 10 years, according to research that will be presented Tuesday at the annual Alzheimer’s Association International Conference. Those who reported maintaining or increasing their walking habits over the years showed greater improvements in processing speed and executive function. (Griesser, 7/28)

A new report by California health officials highlights the risks posed by consuming raw dairy products. The report, published yesterday in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports, describes an outbreak of Salmonella Typhimurium linked to raw milk from a California dairy farm. The outbreak, which stretched from October 2023 to March 2024, sickened 171 people in California and four other states, including 120 children and adolescents. Children were the most likely to be hospitalized among all age-groups. (Dall, 7/25)

The antiparasitic drug ivermectin reduced the incidence of malaria by 26% in a cluster randomized trial conducted in Kenya, which has a high rate of the disease and of use of bed nets against mosquito bites, according to a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). "We are thrilled with these results," first author Carlos Chaccour, MD, PhD, said in a news release from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), which led the study. "Ivermectin has shown great promise in reducing malaria transmission and could complement existing control measures." (Wappes, 7/25)

Also —

A team of researchers in California drew notoriety last year with an aborted experiment on a retired aircraft carrier that sought to test a machine for creating clouds.  But behind the scenes, they were planning a much larger and potentially riskier study of salt water-spraying equipment that could eventually be used to dim the sun’s rays — a multimillion-dollar project aimed at producing clouds over a stretch of ocean larger than Puerto Rico. (Hiar, 7/27)

Researchers have come up with a less invasive way to collect amniotic stem cells — a development they say could reduce dangers for pregnant women and other pregnant individuals as well as fetuses and help researchers grow cells that can help children born with congenital conditions. Scientists use amniotic stem cells to treat congenital anomalies such as spina bifida and heart defects. (Blakemore, 7/26)

More pharma and tech developments —

US regulators are investigating the death of an 8-year-old boy in Brazil who received Sarepta Therapeutics Inc.’s Elevidys. The death occurred on June 7, according to a statement from the US Food and Drug Administration, which did not specify where the boy lived. On Thursday, Sarepta’s partner, Roche Holding AG, which markets the treatment outside the US, said that a patient in Brazil recently died after being treated with Elevidys for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Brazilian authorities said that the death was unlikely to be due to the drug. (Smith and Langreth, 7/25)

Jack Welter didn’t feel sick when he agreed to take a new blood test that looks for multiple types of cancer. But, approaching 60, he thought it couldn’t hurt. To his surprise, the test came back positive. Welter then underwent multiple rounds of follow-up tests, and ultimately, doctors found cancer in his throat. The now 61-year-old Elkhart, Indiana, resident endured radiation and chemotherapy in 2023 and is now cancer-free. (Schencker, 7/26)

For over an hour, Jeff Vierstra lay still in Columbia University’s ALS clinic, as a doctor poked him ankle-to-throat with an electric needle. Sometimes, he wiggled it around in Vierstra’s skin. Sometimes, he asked Vierstra to flex a muscle. A computer tracked the results. Later, another doctor would read Vierstra’s future in the graphs it wrote, fate engraved in the curves of an electrical wave pattern. (Mast, 7/28)

Katie Duffy had already lost 50 pounds on Zepbound when she learned some unsettling news: Her drug-benefit plan would no longer cover the medication because of new, more favorable pricing for another drug, Wegovy. The acupuncturist was devastated. She had tried various methods to lose weight over the years including diet and exercise until one finally stuck—Eli Lilly’s leading weight-loss drug Zepbound. The 50-year-old is now on Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, but worries because it is less effective. Studies have shown Wegovy helps people lose less weight, on average, than Zepbound. (Loftus, 7/27)

The biggest buzz around GLP-1 drugs these days has nothing to do with weight loss. And that might lead to some problems for patients and insurers. Blockbuster treatments like Ozempic have been found to lower the risk of everything from Alzheimer's and addiction, to sleep apnea, seizures and bacterial infections. More potential uses keep surfacing. (Bettelheim and Goldman, 7/28)

A quarter-size device that tracks the rise and fall of sugar in your blood is the latest source of hope — and hype — in the growing buzz around wearable health technology. Continuous glucose monitors, small patches that provide 24-hour insight into concentrations of sugar in the blood, could be a tool for Americans to “take control over their own health,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently told federal lawmakers. “They can take responsibility,” Kennedy said. “They can begin to make good judgments about their diet, about their physical activity, about the way they live their lives.” (Aleccia, 7/26)

Just more than a month after judges made what some saw as the final decision in a case over new hospital beds for Buncombe County and the surrounding region, Mission Hospital signaled in the state’s highest court that it’s not giving up a nearly three-year fight over which health system gets to expand in western North Carolina. (Jones, 7/27)

In the winter of 2021, social workers in rural Wilson County were overwhelmed by a surge in reports of adults with disabilities being abused. In a typical month, the county’s Department of Social Services receives about 30 such complaints. But that February, the agency fielded 33 reports in just seven days. (Baxley, 7/28)

Hospitals are partnering with companies to offer student loan repayment in an effort to recruit and retain staff in a more competitive, cost-effective way. The concept of using loan repayment as a recruiting tool isn’t new, but it may grow in popularity with the passage of the new tax law, which includes lifetime caps on federal student loan borrowing and fewer loan repayment plans. (DeSilva, 7/25)

As hospitals continue to grapple with long wait times in emergency departments (EDs), some patient advocates have pushed for "safe staffing committees" to deal with the problem, but the idea has proven to be controversial. Maryland, which has the longest ED wait times in the country, is one state where the idea appears to be gaining momentum. (Frieden, 7/25)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Cosmetic Surgeries Led To Disfiguring Injuries, Patients Allege
A few days after a harrowing cosmetic surgery procedure, Erin Schaeffer said, she woke up with fluid leaking from an open wound in her stomach. Schaeffer went on to spend a week in a Florida hospital battling a severe infection after a type of tummy tuck and liposuction at the Jacksonville branch of Sono Bello, a national cosmetic surgery chain. (Schulte, 7/28)

Over the past decade, the United States has made meaningful progress in expanding health coverage and improving care for millions of Americans. But that progress is now in jeopardy. The newly passed “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” will have far-reaching consequences for the health insurance of millions of Americans. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that nearly 10 million Americans could lose their health insurance by 2034 as a result of the new legislation. In Massachusetts, officials estimate 300,000 people are at risk of losing their health coverage. (Ashish K. Jha, 7/28)

The sudden closure of five Planned Parenthood clinics in Northern California last week reveals a sad, stark truth: California is not the national “haven” for abortion rights that it has aspired to be since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. No state could be under Republican rule in Washington, or while federal law trumps state law, the Supreme Court majority opposes abortion rights and clinics are reliant on federal money to survive. (Joe Garofoli, 7/27)

The Food and Drug Administration this month asked Sarepta Therapeutics to suspend shipments of its gene therapy Elevidys. The drug treats Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and few ailments are more wrenching: Young boys lose muscle function as the disease progresses and eventually need wheelchairs, often before they’re teenagers. Some die in their 20s. The stakes here for drug development are enormous if Mr. Trump’s regulators crush a drug that has already won FDA approval. Several early gene therapies aren’t home runs, but drug development is iterative and builds on trial and error. Forget about better drug iterations if the agency kills a company for an emerging safety warning in some patients. (7/27)

As Covid-19 has receded from everyday life, New Yorkers — and Americans more generally — haven’t shown much interest in poring over their governments’ pandemic-era performance. In 2024, congressional Republicans released a deeply partisan Covid-19 report, focused on issues like the lab-leak origin theory. But there has been little neutral analysis of real-time policy decisions aimed at truly learning what worked, what didn’t, and what if. The U.K., by contrast, set up a Covid inquiry in June 2022 so that, as a nation, it is better prepared next time. (Nina Schwalbe, 7/28)

I’m crying more these days because I recently tapered off antidepressants after nearly 10 years. Escitalopram (the generic version of Lexapro) had long helped improve my mental health with minimal side effects — apart from stopping up my tear ducts. Now I’m in the process of discovering what my mind is like without the assistance of medication. (Sarah Todd, 7/28)