�鶹Ů��

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is considering appointing seven members to the new CDC independent vaccine advisory panel — many of whom share his skepticism of Covid-19 vaccines or the pharmaceutical industry — according to an internal list seen by POLITICO and confirmed by two people with knowledge of the list. The list of names — which was first made public by Dr. Jeremy Faust, an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston — includes at least three people who have questioned the safety of messenger RNA vaccines against Covid. (Gardner and Gardner, 9/3)

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. heads to Capitol Hill for testimony Thursday, a week after Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez was fired and a series of vaccine-related decisions drew criticism from lawmakers, including Senate health committee chair, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La. Monarez’s firing led several senior CDC officials to resign and fueled a staff protest outside the agency’s Atlanta headquarters last week. In a scathing editorial in The New York Times on Monday, nine former CDC directors called Kennedy “dangerous” and said his actions are “unlike anything our country has ever experienced.” (Lovelace Jr., Kamisar, Kapur and Thorp V, 9/3)

In the days after health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pushed out the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, he suggested sweeping changes were needed to reform the agency — and that the ouster was part of his plan. (Payne, 9/3)

Memos released in recent days by the Food and Drug Administration show that the agency’s vaccine chief overruled staff scientists who favored widespread access to Covid shots, setting off a firestorm of criticism from lawmakers, state officials and doctors. Agency staff members had concluded that the F.D.A. should allow a wide range of age groups to receive the vaccines, citing high hospitalization rates among young children with Covid and saying that the virus’s evolution is “complex and remains unpredictable.” (Jewett, 9/3)

Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary says the agency will not overlook anything in developing new guidelines for updated COVID-19 vaccines. “A lot of people report vaccine injury,” Makary told “Elizabeth Vargas Reports” on Tuesday evening. “A lot of people report complications, including children who have died from the vaccine. So, we can’t just be blind.” (Taub, 9/3)

The Food and Drug Administration is scrutinizing the common practice of giving coronavirus and flu shots together, signaling a reversal of years of federal guidance and a broader crackdown on administering multiple vaccines at the same time. Vinay Prasad, the FDA’s top vaccine regulator, recently announced that his team will require new clinical trials before allowing pharmaceutical companies to claim that coadministering multiple respiratory virus vaccines is safe and effective — a plan that was dismissed by outside experts as unnecessary and potentially counterproductive. (Diamond, Roubein and Sun, 9/3)

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the face of the federal government’s health care policies, but a new poll suggests few Americans trust his advice when it comes to their own medical decisions. An Economist/YouGov poll released Wednesday found that 26 percent of respondents said that they at least “somewhat” trust Kennedy’s medical advice, compared to 48 percent who said that they distrust him. (Crisp, 9/3)

A Trump pollster briefed Republican congressional staff on Wednesday about polling that showed broad support for childhood vaccines even among voters who supported the president, according to people familiar with the discussions. Voters’ opinions were divided, however, on Covid-19 shots. The presentation comes ahead of a hearing with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday where lawmakers may question him about vaccine policy. (Cohrs Zhang, 9/4)

A national coalition of health professionals and scientists is warning Americans not to believe any new alleged causes for autism spectrum disorder announced by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as the agency prepares to reveal “interventions” contributing to the rising rates of the condition. The group, called Defend Public Health, urges the public to confirm whatever new information is released from HHS with other sources before accepting it as fact, especially if it related to a possible link between vaccines and autism. (O’Connell-Domenech, 9/3)

Erin McCanlies was listening to the radio one morning in April when she heard Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promising to find the cause of autism by September. The secretary of Health and Human Services said he believed an environmental toxin was responsible for the dramatic increase in the condition and vowed to gather “the most credible scientists from all over the world” to solve the mystery. Nothing like that has ever been done before, he told an interviewer. McCanlies was stunned. The work had been done. “That’s exactly what I’ve been doing!” she said to her husband, Fred. (Lerner, 9/2)

Pledging communication about vaccines that will be “grounded in science, not ideology,” the governors of California, Washington and Oregon announced Wednesday they will form a West Coast Health Alliance to begin coordinating public health guidelines separate from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Goodman, 9/3)

Vaccine policy has begun to fracture along state and political lines in the United States, with some states breaking away from guidelines set by the Trump administration and others going even further to loosen vaccine requirements. “In the absence of federal leadership, we will have 50 states doing 50 different things,” Kyle McGowan, a former chief of staff at the CDC during the first Trump administration, said in a text message. “We saw this during the early stages of COVID as well with states just doing what they hoped was right because of the chaos at the federal level.” (Sun and Weber, 9/4)

Colorado officials on Wednesday issued public health orders aimed at making it easier for Coloradans to receive a COVID vaccine booster this fall. The orders essentially create a standing prescription allowing for any Coloradan ages 6 months or older to receive a COVID shot if they or their parents choose. (Ingold, 9/3)

Some Pennsylvanians will be able to more easily get a COVID-19 vaccine from their pharmacists this fall because the state Board of Pharmacy voted Wednesday to change how its policies are guided. The Board of Pharmacy met Wednesday and voted to revise its rules to allow Pennsylvania pharmacists to follow the vaccine recommendations of medical authorities other than the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee. (Koscinski, 9/3)

Under Governor Maura Healey’s direction, the Department of Public Health (DPH) issued a standing order Wednesday to ensure that anyone in Massachusetts over the age of 5 can get a COVID-19 booster shot despite federal limitations. The standing order authorizes pharmacists in Massachusetts to administer the COVID vaccine to “all eligible persons.” Standing orders for physicians to determine eligibility and record administration of the vaccine can be found on the DPH’s website. (Zullo, 9/3)

Children in Florida will no longer be required to receive vaccines against preventable diseases including measles, mumps, chickenpox, polio and hepatitis, said Joseph Ladapo, the state’s surgeon general, on Wednesday in a speech during which he likened vaccine mandates to “slavery”. Ladapo, hand-picked for the role by Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, is a longtime skeptic of the benefit of vaccines, and has previously been accused of peddling “scientific nonsense” by public health advocates. (Luscombe, 9/3)

Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor who oversees Medicaid and Medicare for the Trump administration, on Wednesday threw his support behind Florida’s effort to end mandatory vaccinations in schools. In an interview on “The Story with Martha MacCallum,” the Fox News host asked Oz whether he agrees with officials who want to make Florida the first state in the nation to end childhood vaccine requirements and whether Oz would “recommend the same thing to your patients.” “I would definitely not have mandates for vaccinations,” the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator told MacCallum. (Fortinsky, 9/3)

Harvard University scored a major legal victory in its battle with the Trump administration after a court ruled that the US illegally froze more than $2 billion in research funding. The US government violated Harvard’s free speech rights and didn’t follow proper procedures when it suspended a wide range of research grants in April, according to a federal judge. The ruling on Wednesday paves the way for the funding to be released to the school, but the judge didn’t order it. (Voreacos, 9/3)

More than 30 National Institutes of Health grants in Ohio have been impacted by recent cuts at the federal level. The cuts represent an estimated loss of $16.75 million for various Ohio universities and hospitals. (Henry, 9/3)

A Washington federal judge has barred the Trump administration from unilaterally cutting roughly $12 billion in US foreign assistance funding that Congress approved and is poised to expire at the end of this month. US District Judge Amir Ali ruled Wednesday that the administration’s refusal to spend the aid likely violated a US law that governs how federal agencies make decisions. (Tillman and Burnson, 9/4)

Doctors, nurses, patients and other experts describe the loss of decades of progress in beating the virus in 100 days after Pepfar was disrupted. (Lay, 9/3)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Listen: Limiting Benefits And Adding Restrictions, ‘MAHA’ Reshapes Food Aid

The Trump administration is making historic changes to federal food aid as part of its plan to “Make America Healthy Again.” But some nutrition experts warn recent cuts to funding and more stringent rules to qualify for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program could do the opposite: Worsen food insecurity and push families toward cheaper, less nutritious options. (Rayasam, 9/4)

More than 70 million meal packets for severely malnourished children in Africa have stacked up in warehouses in Georgia and Rhode Island since March amid the Trump administration’s massive cuts to foreign aid, according to the food manufacturers in those states. The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the manufacturers said, has caused monthslong delays in federal food inspections and distribution, a process that once took weeks. (Redmon, 9/4)

There is no time like late August for a farmers market, when the earth blesses shoppers with its juiciest delights. The folding tables and tents pop open, and by 9 a.m. a musician is crooning over the zucchini, bubbles from a nearby face-painting stall drifting by. In this small borough near Gettysburg, in the southern part of the state, summer’s finest produce comes within reach for even the poorest residents with help from vouchers, food stamps, and wooden tokens. (Cueto, 9/3)

The House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee is planning to mark up legislation that would extend a slate of expiring health care provisions, subcommittee Chairman Morgan Griffith said Wednesday. Griffith, R-Va., noted the bipartisan support for legislation as members look to prevent provisions from expiring as the end of the fiscal year approaches on Sept. 30. An aide said the panel is still finalizing the exact lineup. (DeGroot, Raman and Hellmann, 9/3)

As the Trump administration takes aim at fraud, waste and abuse in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) market, Republicans in Congress are touting new data from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as evidence backing the effort. Legislators asked the CBO to dig further into the potential coverage impacts of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a massive and far-reaching reconciliation package that includes significant overhauls in healthcare. The analysis (PDF) found that 2.3 million individuals received premium tax credits improperly by misstating their income. (Minemyer, 9/3)

The growing influence of artificial intelligence in health care was on display Wednesday as House lawmakers peppered invited witnesses with pointed questions about how technology might influence seemingly disparate topics like drug development, experimental Medicare models, and teen mental health. (Trang, 9/3)

The Department of Health and Human Services’ investigation unit and health IT offices are stepping up enforcement of information blocking committed by providers, health IT developers and health information exchanges, the department announced Wednesday. The news comes as Trump’s HHS is trying to improve the flow of patient health information by securing voluntary commitments by 60 major healthcare and tech companies to advance interoperability. (Beavins, 9/3)

John Keating doesn’t think he’d be alive today if he’d gotten sick under President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” His reasons are the same ones keeping healthcare leaders in rural Adams County, Pennsylvania, up at night as they scramble to confront potentially catastrophic consequences from the tax law just over a year from now, when more than $1 trillion will begin disappearing from the healthcare system. (McAuliff, 9/3)

Cigna is selling 18 Evernorth Care Group clinics in the Phoenix area to HonorHealth. Upon closing, the Evernorth locations will become part of HonorHealth’s integrated system. The deal is expected to close in January, pending legal and regulatory approvals, according to a Tuesday news release. Evernorth Care Group, formerly Cigna Medical Group, is a subsidiary of The Cigna Group and provides primary care to nearly 80,000 patients. (Hudson, 9/3)

A Bay Area woman received a nearly $2,000 insurance claim denial from her maternity stay two years prior. Stunned, she decided to fight it and said, at one point, the bill even came back with her toddler's name on it. That's when she turned to AI. (Nam, 9/3)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Fighting A Health Insurance Denial? Here Are 7 Tips To Help

When Sally Nix found out that her health insurance company wouldn’t pay for an expensive, doctor-recommended treatment to ease her neurological pain, she prepared for battle. It took years, a chain of conflicting decisions, and a health insurer switch before she finally won approval. She started treatment in January and now channels time and energy into helping other patients fight denials. (Sausser, 9/4)

Texas lawmakers voted to enact sweeping new restrictions on abortion pills mailed to the state, offering a possible blueprint for other states that have banned abortion. (Luthra, 9/3)

Texas is poised to become the latest state to bar transgender people from using public bathrooms after the Senate passed a bill late Wednesday night that also bans transgender people from using locker rooms or from being incarcerated in facilities that align with their genders. (Sosin, 9/3)

Physicians at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) have developed a project to track pediatric health misinformation. Joanna Parga-Belinkie, MD, an attending neonatologist at CHOP, said she developed the project along with Katie Lockwood, MD, MEd, a pediatrician at CHOP, because they wanted to find a way to get "good pediatric health content out there." (Henderson, 9/3)

Greensboro-based Cone Health is expanding its school-based telehealth program to offer remote mental health services for the first time. Students struggling with anxiety, depression or other mental or behavioral health issues can be connected to a therapist during the school day, said John Jenkins, medical director of Cone Health School-Based Care. (Fernandez, 9/4)

Under a big white tent in the parking lot of a busy St. Cloud strip mall last week, nurses in black scrubs strapped blood pressure cuffs and pricked the fingers of waiting patients. To mark the one-year anniversary of Hayat Clinic opening, staff were offering free blood pressure and glucose checks. The clinic’s founder, Dr. Bashir Moallin, chatted in Somali with a smiling man who’d just gotten an all-clear on a pre-diabetes test. (Marohn, 9/4)

Burning Man medics treated nearly 1,500 people during this year’s festival, where dozens of people were transferred to outside hospitals, officials said Tuesday. Royal Ambulance, the Bay Area–based provider contracted to staff Black Rock City’s emergency facility, reported that its Nevada-licensed center, known as Rampart, cared for about 1,450 patients. (Vaziri, 9/3)

More than 60% of Medicare enrollees with opioid use disorder are getting substandard care, according to a new study in Health Affairs. Opioid use is a growing health problem for older adults in the U.S. Drug overdose deaths for people age 65 and older increased 11.4% between 2022 and 2023, per Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data — the largest increase of any age group that year. (Goldman, 9/4)

Private equity acquisition of opioid treatment programs did not appear to increase the methadone supply, according to a difference-in-differences study. While opioid treatment programs acquired by private equity firms had a "consistent differential increase" in methadone shipments (159.9 g per program, or 13.3%) during the 2 years post-acquisition relative to matched controls (P=0.007), the pooled increase was not significantly different from the pre-acquisition trend (P=0.214), reported Yashaswini Singh, PhD, of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and co-authors. (Firth, 9/3)

Japanese scientists have developed ADRIANA, a non-opioid painkiller that could provide powerful relief without the dangers of addiction. With successful trials already completed, large U.S. studies are now underway, raising hopes for a safer future in pain treatment. (9/2)

The debate over how to deal with homelessness, drug addiction and mental health issues has intensified in recent months — with a renewed focus on a controversial strategy of forcing people into treatment. The practice, known as civil commitment, has gained national prominence after President Trump issued an executive order in July embracing the approach. Massachusetts has used involuntary commitment for decades. While some people say it helped them, state data calls into question its effectiveness more broadly. (Becker, 9/3)

A drug dealer dubbed the “Ketamine queen” who provided the drugs that ultimately killed actor Matthew Perry pleaded guilty on Wednesday to several criminal charges in federal court. Jasveen Sangha, 42, was charged with conspiracy to distribute ketamine to Perry, whose struggles with drug addiction and numerous rehab visits were well documented and who died from acute effects of the drug in October 2023. (Winton, 9/3)

The Trump administration says Venezuela is sending vast amounts of cocaine to the United States. Venezuela’s role in the drug trade is overstated, experts say. (Glatsky, 9/3)

In a startling failure of quality control, Amneal Pharmaceuticals relied on contaminated bags for a sterile injectable drug even after identifying the risk and then lowered its standards so that the bags could continue to be used, according to an Aug. 27 warning letter issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (Silverman, 9/3)

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, a drugmaker lobbying group, has launched an advertisement campaign that takes aim at the 340B Drug Pricing Program. The campaign’s message is that nonprofit hospitals’ expanded use and abuse of the program lead to significant markups on drug costs for patients, employers and taxpayers, according to a Wednesday news release. The video ad also closes with a call to action for viewers to “tell Congress to fix 340B.” (DeSilva, 9/3)

The results of randomized clinical trial show that a single shot of the antibiotic benzathine penicillin G (BPG) is as effective in treating early syphilis as the three-injection regimen used in many patients, researchers reported today in the New England Journal of Medicine. The findings come at a time when the United States and other countries around the world have been experiencing shortages of BPG, which has been the standard treatment for early syphilis since the early 1950s. (Dall, 9/3)

CARB-X (Combating Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Biopharmaceutical Accelerator) announced today that it is awarding $1 million to biotechnology company Zeteo Tech to advance work on a noninvasive diagnostic test that can diagnose lower respiratory tract infections (LRTIs) from exhaled breath. (Dall, 9/3)

A GLP-1 receptor agonist may help improve metabolic profiles for certain schizophrenia patients on antipsychotics, the randomized HISTORI trial indicated. (Monaco, 9/3)

A team of scientists was crunching Danish health registry data several years ago when it noticed something surprising: Diabetes patients who’d used Novo Nordisk A/S’s last-generation diabetes medicine Victoza or similar GLP-1 drugs appeared to be getting dementia at noticeably lower rates than those treating their diabetes another way. Specifically, adults who’d been taking the injectable for two years had about a 20% lower risk of a dementia diagnosis. “That is in and of itself not proof,” says Martin Holst Lange, the drugmaker’s chief scientific officer. But “it did catch our attention.” (Kresge, 9/4)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: As Insurers Struggle With GLP-1 Drug Costs, Some Seek To Wean Patients Off

After losing 50 pounds on the injectable weight loss medication Zepbound, Kyra Wensley received a surprising letter from her pharmacy benefit manager in April. Her request for coverage had been denied, the letter said, because she’d had a body mass index of less than 35 when she started Zepbound. The 25-year-old who lives in New York had been taking Zepbound without incident for months, so she was confused: Why was her BMI, which had been around 32 when she started, becoming an issue only now? (Ducharme, 9/4)

A previously "hidden" subtype of Multiple Sclerosis (MS)—a condition that affects the brain and spinal cord—has been uncovered. The distinct subtype exhibits "significant cognitive deficits with minimal motor impairment," as established in new research led by King's College London. This MS subtype may often go undetected and untreated due to the lack of visible impairment it causes. However, the researchers present a new online assessment tool that's accessible and effective at scale. (Millington, 9/3)

People who consumed the highest levels of certain artificial sweeteners — equivalent to just one diet soda a day — saw a significant decline in their ability to remember and recall words when compared to people who consumed the lowest levels, a new study found. (LaMotte, 9/3)

Federal health officials are warning that certain lots of raw cat food may be contaminated with H5N1 bird flu after a pet cat in San Francisco that ate the food became infected with the virus and had to be euthanized. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday that two lots of RAWR Raw Cat Food Chicken Eats tested positive for the virus. Analysis by San Francisco health department officials showed that the same strain of the H5N1 virus was present in the pet food and in the cat that died. (Aleccia, 9/4)

Marking the first H5N1 avian flu detection at a US commercial poultry farm since early July, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) on August 28 confirmed an outbreak at a South Dakota turkey farm. The facility in Faulk County has 55,400 birds. The last detection at a commercial farm occurred in early July at a game bird facility in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. (Schnirring, 9/2)

In a weekly update, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today reported 23 more measles cases, lifting the country’s total to 1,431, the most since the country reached elimination status in 2000. For the first time, health officials divided out the cases confirmed in international visitors, which account for 18 of the national cases. The number of outbreaks remained the same, at 35, double the number for 2024. So far, 86% of cases are linked to outbreaks, compared to 69% last year. (Schnirring, 9/3)

In Wisconsin, health officials in Oconto County have confirmed 9 more measles cases, raising the state's outbreak total to 23. The outbreak in Oconto County, located in northeastern Wisconsin, began in early August. The Wisconsin Department of Health Services (WDHS) said in an August 29 update that two people have been hospitalized. (Schnirring, 9/2)

The war on vaccines and public health reached new heights on Aug. 27, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director was ousted from her position after refusing to endorse unfounded, unscientific Covid-19 vaccine recommendations promoted by the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. (Jane R. Zucker, Noel T. Brewer and Yvonne A. Maldonado on behalf of 17 former members of ACIP, 9/4)

On Aug. 8, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff in Atlanta came under attack. A gunman fired hundreds of rounds at CDC’s campus, shattering 150 windows. While public health experts crouched under their desks and their expelled colleagues watched the TV news in despair, many felt it to be the obvious result of the slander, disinformation campaigns, and conspiracy theories wielded against them for months by President Trump, amplified by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Melissa Fay Greene, 9/3)

In my role as the CDC’s chief medical officer as well as the agency’s lead last winter for the transition to the Trump administration, I have had a firsthand view of how public health policy has been affected by the arrival of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health and human services. (Debra Houry, 9/3)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is converting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from an evidence-based beacon to an unreliable ideological rubber stamp of the Trump administration. Purging CDC director Susan Monarez and presiding over the resignation of her deputies enables Kennedy to promote his anti-vaccine agenda through the CDC. He promised he would not undermine vaccines. He lied. (Ezekiel J. Emanuel, Abe G. Baker-Butler and Merjan L. Ozisik, 9/4)

In an episode of the “Conspirituality” podcast, which analyzes wellness, fitness and New Age trends, the hosts, Derek Beres and Julian Marc Walker, make explicit parallels between the performative failure of “The Biggest Loser” and the antics of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Make America Healthy Again followers. (Jessica Grose, 9/3)

In the event of a conflict, or even just trade tensions, China could restrict drug exports — as it was willing to do for rare earth minerals — and threaten hundreds of thousands of American patients. The rare earth mineral tensions leave no doubt that China is perfectly willing to go after our most vulnerable targets. Leaving our citizens vulnerable to such a threat to our medicine cabinet is unacceptable. But there is no such thing as a free lunch, so reducing the risk of this threat may be costly. (Tomas J. Philipson, 9/4)