�鶹Ů��

Two top aides to Health and Human Services Department Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. were dismissed from their roles this week after just months on the job. Both Heather Flick Melanson, chief of staff, and Hannah Anderson, deputy chief of staff for policy, were let go, HHS confirmed. (Cirruzzo, 7/16)

July has been a month of shake-ups for the NIH, with advisory council scientists dismissed, the Advisory Committee to the Director disbanded, and research perceived to be risky put on pause, according to reports. NIH will soon disinvite dozens of scientists who were about to take positions on advisory councils, Nature reported. These groups make final decisions on funding grant applications for the agency. (Fiore, 7/16)

In May, President Donald Trump signed an executive order in the Oval Office surrounded by his top health officials, vowing a crackdown on “dangerous gain-of-function research” on viruses and pathogens that he alleged was occurring in the United States with inadequate oversight. “It’s a big deal,” Trump had said, alluding to the highly contested theory that the covid pandemic was caused by a lab leak related to such research in China. Soon after, researchers at the National Institutes of Health spent weeks assessing experiments for risk and preparing a report for the White House on what studies to halt. (Natanson, Johnson and Achenbach, 7/16)

President Trump on Wednesday signed legislation aimed at cracking down on illegal fentanyl and toughening prison sentences for those who traffic the drug. Trump signed the Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl Act at a White House ceremony, where he was joined by lawmakers and individuals whose family members have died from fentanyl overdoses. The president called the bill signing a “historic step toward justice for every family touched by the fentanyl scourge as we sign the HALT Fentanyl Act into law.” (Samuels, 7/16)

The White House says a key national fentanyl overdose prevention grant program, currently underfunded by roughly $140 million, will eventually be fully paid for, but with a catch. A protestor is holding a sign that says, "End overdose deaths now." There are very tall buildings on both sides of her and blue skies behind her. (Mann, 7/17)

Brian Christine, MD, the Trump administration's nominee for assistant secretary for health, fielded questions on a wide variety of topics at his Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, which was holding the hearing, asked Christine about the reconciliation bill President Trump signed into law July 4. Sanders wanted to know whether Christine, a urologic surgeon from Mountain Brook, Alabama, thought the law would "help make America healthy again" if it throws 17 million Americans -- many of whom are on Medicaid -- off of their health insurance. (Frieden, 7/16)

The Trump administration says it has a compelling reason to ask the Senate to claw back $7.9 billion in foreign aid funds that Congress had approved prior to his taking office: evidence of what President Trump called "billions and billions of dollars in waste, fraud and abuse" that his staff had uncovered. It's an issue that comes to a head this week, with the Senate about to vote on the rescission of the nearly $8 billion (as well $1.1 billion allocated to the Corporation of Public Broadcasting). The deadline for a final decision on the package, which was approved by the House of Representatives on June 12, is midnight Friday. (Tanis, 7/16)

Amid a worsening national affordable housing and homelessness crisis, President Donald Trump’s administration is determined to reshape HUD’s expansive role providing stable housing for low-income people, which has been at the heart of its mission for generations. The proposed changes include a two-year limit on the federal government’s signature rental assistance programs. At a June congressional budget hearing, HUD Secretary Scott Turner argued policies like time limits will fix waste and fraud in public housing and Section 8 voucher programs. (Ho and Kramon, 7/16)

For decades, proponents of psychedelic drugs have come to Washington with a provocative message: Illegal, mind-altering substances like LSD and ecstasy should be approved for Americans grappling with depression, trauma and other hard-to-treat conditions. A presidential administration finally seems to agree. “This line of therapeutics has tremendous advantage if given in a clinical setting and we are working very hard to make sure that happens within 12 months,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently told members of Congress. (Perrone, 7/16)

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that Coca-Cola in the United States will begin to be made with cane sugar, but the company did not explicitly say that was the case when it was asked later about Trump’s claim. Trump said Wednesday afternoon on Truth Social that he had been speaking to Coca-Cola about using cane sugar in the sodas sold in the United States and that the company agreed to his idea. ... But Coca-Cola did not commit to the change when NBC News asked it later about Trump's post. (Cohen and Kopack, 7/17)

The Medicaid cuts in President Donald Trump’s domestic policy bill could result in more than 1,000 additional deaths every year, according to a report published Wednesday in JAMA Health Forum. The cuts could also lead to nearly 100,000 more hospitalizations each year, the report found, and around 1.6 million people may delay seeking care. (Lovelace Jr., 7/16)

The Trump administration plans to claw back $7.8 billion in Medicare payments to hospitals a decade sooner than originally proposed, potentially sparking another legal challenge from the hospital industry. (Herman, 7/17)

The Trump administration is opening the floodgates for more surgeries to be done in outpatient facilities like ambulatory surgery centers, proposing a Medicare policy that could accelerate the shift away from hospital-based care. (Bannow, 7/17)

Remote patient monitoring and digital therapeutics companies would see potential reimbursement wins in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ proposed physician fee schedule. On Monday, CMS added six new billing codes for shorter-term remote patient monitoring and remote therapeutic monitoring within its physician fee schedule proposal. It also proposed a new code for digital therapeutics and raised the possibility of adding more when the final schedule is released. (Turner, 7/16)

A federal-state program aimed at keeping older adults out of nursing homes could come out a winner under the new federal tax law. Nevada was the latest state to approve a Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly last month before President Donald Trump signed the tax law. South Dakota is considering PACE as well. The program can save states money by caring for adults at home, rather than in nursing homes. However, PACE is a relatively small and not widely known initiative, which could make it a low priority for states weighing the best way to spend fewer Medicaid dollars. (Eastabrook, 7/16)

Maine Family Planning filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the Trump administration seeking to restore Medicaid funding that is set to be stripped under the president’s sweeping tax and spending package. A provision in the law bans health care providers that perform abortions and receive more than $800,000 in federal reimbursements from receiving Medicaid funding for one year. Republicans included the provision in the legislation to cut off funding to Planned Parenthood even though the organization is not named in the language of the law. (O’Connell-Domenech, 7/16)

Colorado health insurers have proposed huge price increases for next year for people who purchase coverage on their own — a consequence, state officials say, of the recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act tax and spending measure. (Ingold, 7/17)

Millions of low-income Americans already face the prospect of losing their health insurance, and now they're looking at another worry: lower credit scores. Poor credit scores not only make it harder to borrow money, but also to accomplish such basic things as land a job or rent an apartment. (Peck, 7/17)

States and mental health organizations are bracing for the closure of a specialized service within 988, the National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, for LGBTQ youth on Thursday under orders from the Trump administration amid its broader spending cuts and the dismantling of programs dedicated to diversity and inclusion. “When the line goes silent, there are a lot of open questions that we’re trying to prepare for,” said Mark Henson, vice president of government affairs at the Trevor Project, an LGBTQ youth suicide prevention organization that responds to roughly half of 988’s calls and text messages from LGBTQ young people. (Migdon, 7/16)

LGBTQ+ youth no longer have a specially tailored option for help at the 988 National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. The Trump administration announced a month ago that beginning July 17, it would eliminate the “Press 3 option” on the free, 24/7 national hotline. The specialized service had been active for about three years. (Oliverio, 7/17)

Baltimore’s 988 mental health crisis hotline is getting a boost, thanks to a $10 million grant agreement approved by the Board of Estimates Wednesday. The five-year agreement between Mayor Brandon Scott’s Office of Recovery Programs and Behavioral Health System Baltimore Inc. (BHSB) allocates $2 million each fiscal year through 2030, according to ORP acting director Elizabeth Tatum. A presentation by Tatum showed that more than $7.35 million of the total funds will be allocated to “contracts and consultants,” while $1.3 million will go toward “indirect costs.” (Swick, 7/16)

After a decade-long rise in suicide rates among young Americans — and with depression diagnoses soaring in this age group during the pandemic — the U.S. surgeon general issued a report in 2021 warning about the “devastating” state of youth mental health. The American Psychological Association declared it a “crisis.” Meanwhile, another demographic has gone largely overlooked. (Goldhill, 7/17)

Katherine Wells still remembers finding out that measles had hit West Texas. It was late January, and Wells, the director of the Lubbock Health Department, was notified that a child from nearby Gaines County was being treated for the respiratory disease at one of the local hospitals in Lubbock County. (Rodriguez, 7/16)

The proportion of severely overweight children in the US has skyrocketed in recent years, with the highest rates seen in adolescents and Black children, a new study found. Roughly 23% of all children were obese in 2023, up from 19% in 2008, according to the survey published Wednesday in JAMA Network Open. Additionally, more than 1% of children between the ages of 2 and 18 had “extremely severe obesity” — a 250% increase from the start of the study, the researchers from the University of California, San Diego, found. (Amponsah, 7/16)

A new report finds that only a third of states protect access to affordable contraception through their policies, such as Medicaid expansion or requiring health insurers to pay for prescriptions for months at a time. The report, released Wednesday, analyzed current birth control policies across the 50 states and Washington, D.C. ... The report — a state-by-state contraceptive policy scorecard — shows how important local legislation is to family planning and health care. (Sullivan, 7/16)

Overcoming meth addiction has become one of the biggest challenges of the national drug crisis. Fentanyl deaths have been dropping, in part because of medications that can reverse overdoses and curb the urge to use opioids. But no such prescriptions exist for meth, which works differently on the brain. ... Lacking a medical treatment, a growing number of clinics are trying a startlingly different strategy: To induce patients to stop using meth, they pay them. (Hoffman, 7/16)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Maybe It’s Not Just Aging. Maybe It’s Anemia

Gary Sergott felt weary all the time. “I’d get tired, short of breath, a sort of malaise,” he said. He was cold even on warm days and looked pale with dark circles under his eyes. His malady was not mysterious. As a retired nurse anesthetist, Sergott knew he had anemia, a deficiency of red blood cells. In his case, it was the consequence of a hereditary condition that caused almost daily nosebleeds and depleted his hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells that delivers oxygen throughout the body. But in consulting doctors about his fatigue, he found that many didn’t know how to help. (Span, 7/17)

Drugmaker Pfizer is warning doctors that it expects to run low on supplies of Bicillin L-A, a long-acting injection of the antibiotic penicillin, the preferred option for treating syphilis during pregnancy. The news – the latest twist in a drug shortage that began in 2023 – follows a July 10 recall of certain lots of Bicillin L-A that were found to be contaminated with floating particles. Pfizer says it has not received any reports of adverse events related to the recalled shots. (Goodman, 7/16)

A growing number of Americans find themselves living in "health care deserts," areas lacking in the specific infrastructure and services needed to ensure timely access to medicine and care, new data suggests. According to new research from health care and prescription price-comparison website GoodRx, 81 percent of U.S. counties—home to more than 120 million Americans—fall under this definition in some way. This includes those which lack proper access to either pharmacies, primary care, hospital beds, trauma centers or community health centers. (Cameron, 7/16)

Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare is cutting about 160 jobs in August. The layoffs, which represent about 1% of the Memphis, Tennessee-based system’s 12,000-person workforce, are part of a plan to consolidate labor and delivery services at Methodist South with services at Methodist Le Bonheur Germantown and Methodist Olive Branch hospitals, effective Aug. 1, according to a Wednesday news release. (Hudson, 7/16)

Geisinger Health System will eliminate nearly 100 jobs as it seeks to shore up finances in its insurance operation. That represents less than 1% of Geisinger Health Plan employees, a spokesperson for the Danville, Pennsylvania-based nonprofit company wrote in an email. The layoffs will leave the insurance unit with about 1,100, workers, the spokesperson wrote. (Tepper, 7/16)

Virtua Health and ChristianaCare signed a nonbinding letter of intent to create an eight-hospital nonprofit health system spanning four states. The proposed $6 billion merger, announced Wednesday, would create a regional system across more than 10 contiguous counties in New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania and Maryland. The combined system would employ nearly 30,000 workers. Virtua and ChristianaCare did not say when the proposed transaction is expected to close or disclose governance details. (Kacik, 7/16)

Medicare Advantage insurers are shying away from their most popular type of health plan as cost pressures continue to strain the sector. Beginning this month, companies such as UnitedHealth Group subsidiary UnitedHealthcare and Blue Shield of California stopped compensating brokers and other third-party marketers for enrolling new beneficiaries into many PPOs. Similarly, Elevance Health pulled most of its Medicare Advantage plans from online brokerages in May and began requiring paper applications in 22 states. (Tepper, 7/16)

Steward Health Care sued Dr. Ralph de la Torre, alleging the former hospital chain chair and CEO, along with other former executives, bankrupted the company through a series of fraudulent transactions. In the lawsuit, the Dallas-based for-profit health system cited several deals that allegedly prioritized personal profits over the well-being of the company. One of those transactions included a January 2021 $111 million dividend, allegedly orchestrated by de la Torre and another board member, which benefited Steward insiders while the company was insolvent. (Kacik, 7/16)

A former coworker of Tampa General Hospital CEO John Couris has been arrested for allegedly sending him death threats for at least the past two years. Lawrence Brunn, 63, of Oakmont, Pennsylvania, and Couris previously worked together at Jupiter Medical Center in Jupiter, Florida, before Couris joined Florida-based Tampa General, according to a criminal complaint the FBI filed Tuesday in federal court in Florida. (DeSilva, 7/16)

KKR & Co., the buyout firm that’s been scouting for takeover targets amid the recent market volatility, is considering a potential acquisition of Italian health-care technology firm GPI SpA, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The US private equity firm has been speaking with advisers in recent weeks as it considers a potential deal to take Trent-based GPI private, the people said, asking not to be identified as the matter is private. Shares of GPI have risen 24% in Milan trading this year, giving the company a market value of about €377 million ($438 million). (Nair and Gopinath, 7/16)

Artificial intelligence has started to integrate with so-called traditional medicine to prevent and treat illnesses, according to a new report from the World Health Organization and other United Nations bodies. But the organizations warn that this practice can lead to exploitation of indigenous people and their resources. (Paun and Schumaker, 7/16)

If there’s one constant in healthcare cybersecurity, it’s change.From the ever-evolving tactics to the Whack-a-Mole of hacker groups, health system cybersecurity leaders must remain vigilant to protect their organizations today while preparing for tomorrow’s threats. (Bruce, 7/16)

Yesterday in JAMA Network Open, researchers published a study highlighting higher COVID-19 hospitalization rates among Black and Hispanic children in the United States during the first 3 years of the pandemic. The cross-sectional study, which was based on population-based surveillance, identified 13,555 pediatric COVID-19–associated hospitalizations from March 2020 to September 2023. Hospitalizations occurred in 12 states: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Tennessee, and Utah, covering approximately 10% of the US population. (Soucheray, 7/16)

An oral capsule can efficiently deliver liquid mRNA therapy directly to the gut, a possible new delivery mechanism for mRNA vaccines, a new study finds. (Russo, 7/16)

Two university hospitals are pioneering new ways to expand lifesaving heart transplants for adults and babies — advances that could help recover would-be heart donations that too often go unused. The new research aims to overcome barriers for using organs from someone who dies when their heart stops. Called DCD, or donation after circulatory death, it involves a controversial recovery technique or the use of expensive machines. Surgeons at Duke and Vanderbilt universities reported Wednesday that they’ve separately devised simpler approaches to retrieve those hearts. (Neergaard, 7/16)

Ondansetron reduced the risk of recurrent gastroenteritis and vomiting when prescribed to children at discharge from emergency department (ED) visits for acute gastroenteritis-associated vomiting, a randomized trial showed. In children assigned to oral ondansetron or placebo to be given as needed for vomiting after discharge, just 5.1% of the treatment group experienced moderate-to-severe gastroenteritis compared to 12.5% of the placebo group, a research team led by Stephen Freedman, MDCM, of Alberta Children's Hospital in Calgary, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine. (Minerd, 7/16)

A Northwestern Medicine research lab has found a usually harmless virus in brain samples from Parkinson’s patients. The idea that Parkinson’s could be linked to a virus had been theorized for years, but this is the first study to pinpoint a specific virus as more common in Parkinson’s patients. (Weaver, 7/16)

A new review published in JAMA Network Open describes how often ethics are incorporated in infectious diseases international clinical practice guidelines (CPGL) and finds planning and actual consideration of ethical issues in infectious disease CPGL are limited. ... “Less than a third of CPGL dedicated a section or paragraph to ethical considerations, and only half of guidelines addressed minority populations,” the authors wrote. “The most common ethical issues addressed were related to justice (including affordability and access to care).” (Soucheray, 7/16)

Maryland is the first state to tap into a 15-year-old fund connected to the Affordable Care Act, to help solve a more recent problem: helping pay the expenses of patients who travel to Maryland for an abortion. The law passed this spring, and went into effect on July 1. (Maucione, 7/17)

Days after the Donald J. Trump administration announced that undocumented immigrants will no longer have access to certain federal benefits, including funding that supports care at community health centers, Gov. Ned Lamont encouraged all residents to continue seeking medical treatment at Connecticut’s health centers. (Carlesso, Munde and Phaneuf, 7/16)

A new study has shed light on a shocking radiation-related health risk in Missouri. According to the research led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, children who lived near Coldwater Creek— a tributary of the Missouri River north of St. Louis— during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s faced an elevated risk of cancer due to pollution from nuclear waste associated with the development of the first atomic bomb. (Morava, 7/16)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Los Angeles Weighs A Disaster Registry. Disability Advocates Warn Against False Assurances

In the wake of January’s deadly wildfires, Los Angeles County leaders are weighing a disaster registry intended to help disabled and senior residents get connected to emergency responders to bring them to safety during disasters. County supervisors approved a feasibility study this spring for such a voluntary database. Supporters applauded the effort to give more notice and assistance to the more than 1 million county residents with some type of disability, such as cognitive impairment or limited mobility. (Green, 7/17)

The Massachusetts assisted-living facility where a fatal fire killed nine people was caring for dozens of aging residents reliant on wheelchairs and oxygen tanks, but it lacked the safety measures and most of the staffing requirements that are commonplace in nursing homes. As an assisted-living center, Gabriel House in Fall River, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Boston, offered a type of housing for older residents that has expanded nationally in recent decades. But advocates argue that the absence of any federal regulations and spotty state rules mean the sector is largely left to police itself. (Casey and Smith, 7/17)

A new medical school in Bentonville, Arkansas, has officially welcomed its first class of students. The Alice L. Walton School of Medicine was founded by Walmart heir and philanthropist Alice Walton in 2021. The school aims to reimagine medical education by leaning on whole health principles. The curriculum includes an emphasis on art, the humanities and bringing empathy back into medicine. (Gliadkovskaya, 7/16)

With certain exceptions, US adults could safely forego tetanus and diphtheria booster vaccination—if uptake of childhood vaccines stays high, an Oregon Health & Science University–led research team wrote yesterday in Clinical Microbiology Reviews. (Van Beusekom, 7/16)

Mitochondrial donation through pronuclear transfer resulted in several live births and reduced transmission of pathogenic mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variants, researchers reported. The study involved 22 women with pathogenic mtDNA variants who underwent an intracytoplasmic sperm injection procedure for pronuclear transfer to reduce the transmission of these variants to their children. This resulted in eight live births and one ongoing pregnancy, reported Louise A. Hyslop, PhD, of Newcastle Fertility Centre in England, and colleagues. (Monaco, 7/16)

Surveillance data from a network of Canadian acute-care hospitals suggests that the incidence of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales (CPE) infection and colonization is low but increasing exponentially, according to a study published last week in Antimicrobial Resistance and Infection Control. (Dall, 7/15)

Allowing nursing-home visitors was safe for residents during the COVID-19 pandemic—even during community case surges and before vaccine availability, concludes a study published yesterday in the American Journal of Infection Control. (Van Beusekom, 7/16)

Researchers in Australia have created a biodegradable gel that delivers Parkinson’s medications through a single weekly shot, replacing the need for multiple daily pills. Injected just under the skin, the gel steadily releases levodopa and carbidopa for seven days, helping keep tremors and stiffness in check while easing side effects linked to fluctuating doses. (University of South Australia, 7/14)

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seems ready to flip the script on Food and Drug Administration oversight of biologics like stem cells. Normally, the FDA is in the driver’s seat, determining proper oversight and regulations based on its scientific, medical, and legal expertise. However, under Kennedy, the FDA instead looks ready to follow the lead of a hodge-podge of state laws, politicians, and stem cell clinic doctors. (Paul Knoepfler, 7/17)

The more you learn about PFAS — per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — the worse it gets. Though improvements in monitoring and remediation techniques are welcome, what the world needs first and foremost is a universal ban on the chemicals. In fact, we needed it yesterday. (Lara Williams, 7/17)

In March 2020, I disobeyed an order from the City of San Francisco to close down the H.I.V. clinic where I serve as medical director. I knew that complying with the order, which came as part of the city’s stringent Covid-19 lockdown, would have left our poor and homeless patients without anywhere to get treatment. (Monica Gandhi, 7/17)

For decades, the consensus among research ethicists and federal regulators has been that compensation of medical research participants runs a serious risk of undue influence or inducement: making a participant an offer that is so enticing that they can’t refuse, even against their better judgment. In practice, this means that institutional review boards (IRBs) often try to avoid payment that is “too high.” But what if this approach is wrong? (Jake Eberts and Jill Fisher, 7/17)

Some days, I feel that my body and the American body politic are both dying of a similar disease: a deadly cancer, impervious to standard treatment, that is rapidly spreading through blood, bone and lymph to destroy vital organs and connective tissue. (Kim Fellner, 7/15)

As we approach the start of fraternity hazing season, a new Missouri law will go a long way to help prevent future tragedies. On July 10, Gov. Mike Kehoe signed what is now known as Danny’s Law. State Rep. Sherri Gallick and state Sen. Kurtis Gregory co-sponsored the bill, which is intended to incentivize witnesses to hazing incidents to call 911 before the damage is irreversible. (David W. Bianchi, 7/16)