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The nation's most distinguished health agencies fired thousands of probationary workers, starting Feb. 13 and extending into the holiday weekend, in what is becoming informally known among federal workers as the Valentine’s Day Massacre. The firings began at the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, before extending throughout virtually all of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) divisions by the end of the weekend, reported numerous media outlets. Impacted workers took to social media to confirm the news. (Tong, 2/17)

“Read this email immediately.” That was the subject line of emails that landed in the inboxes of thousands of workers at federal health agencies across the government beginning Friday and continuing throughout the weekend. The news was not good: Recipients, workers who were still on probation at the Department of Health and Human Services and the agencies it oversees, were informed that they were being terminated for poor performance, even though many said they had previously received only strong performance evaluations. Though their employment was effectively terminated immediately, they were told they would receive 30 days of administrative leave. (Branswell, 2/17)

The firings have excised the next generation of leaders at the C.D.C., the N.I.H., the Food and Drug Administration, and other agencies that the department oversees. “It seems like a very destructive strategy to fire the new talent at an agency, and the talent that’s being promoted,” said Dr. David Fleming, the chairman of an advisory committee to the C.D.C. director. He added, “A lot of energy and time has been spent in recruiting those folks, and that’s now tossed out the window.” (Gay Stolberg, 2/18)

Jim Jones, the head of the food division at the US Food and Drug Administration who oversaw the agency’s banning of the food dye Red No. 3 earlier this year, stepped down on Monday, citing widespread cuts across the agency that he said will make it hard to implement the types of changes the Trump administration is seeking, according to a document viewed by Bloomberg News. (Edney and Shanker, 2/18)

The Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to the federal government as it tries to cut costs and workforce. But administration officials on Friday defended the cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services as far more surgical. HHS, in coordination with the Department of Government Efficiency, on Friday began the process of dismissing 3,600 probationary employees, according to administration officials, who were granted anonymity to share details that have not yet been made public. (Messerly and Cancryn, 2/15)

A federal judge on Monday questioned the authority of billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency but was skeptical of a request to block DOGE from accessing sensitive data and firing employees at half a dozen federal agencies. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan held a hearing on a request from 14 states for a temporary restraining order seeking to curtail Musk’s power in President Donald Trump’s quest to downsize the federal government. Chutkan said she would rule within 24 hours. (2/17)

The Trump administration slashed funding for Affordable Care Act navigators, which help people sign up for ObamaCare coverage on the law’s exchanges, by 90 percent. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) on Friday announced health insurance navigators will receive just $10 million per year over the next four years. Navigators received $98 million in 2024. (Weixel, 2/14)

Federal research funding to tackle areas like cancer, diabetes and heart disease is lagging by about $1 billion behind the levels of recent years, reflecting the chaotic start of the Trump administration and the dictates that froze an array of grants, meetings and communications. The slowdown in awards from the National Institutes of Health has been occurring while a legal challenge plays out over the administration’s sudden policy change last week to slash payments for administrative and facilities costs related to medical research. (Jewett and Rosenbluth, 2/14)

For Nancy Hastings, the face of the federal government is the young man who picks her up every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 5:45 a.m. to drive her to dialysis. She’s 86, and frail, and he stands behind her in the smoky half-light as she maneuvers down her front stairs. “If you happen to fall, don’t get scared,” he tells her. “Just fall on me, and I’ll shield you.”Then suddenly, in late January, word came that he was gone. With the Trump administration’s spending freeze, the five-person nonprofit where he’d worked didn’t have money to keep paying everyone, and he was among the three workers laid off. One of the two remaining employees called Hastings to let her know. “She said, ‘We’ll come and get you one way or the other,’” Hastings recalled — both a reassurance and a reminder of her own fragility. The staff calls her dialysis “life-sustaining,” which is a nice way of saying that if she doesn’t receive it, she’ll die. (Boodman, 2/18)

President Donald Trump’s government-wide directive to slash regulations doesn't appear likely to hamstring day-to-day operations for companies that do business with programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. Trump’s executive order requires federal agencies to cut 10 regulations for each new one proposed. But its impact seems poised to be minimal at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, largely because most of the rules it issues are mandatory under statute. (Early, 2/14)

Just over a mile from where Patricia Flores has lived for almost 20 years, a battery smelter plant spewed toxic elements into the environment for nearly a century. Exide Technologies in southeast Los Angeles polluted thousands of properties with lead and contributed to groundwater contamination with trichloroethylene, or TCE, a cancer-causing chemical. Since Exide declared bankruptcy in 2020, California has invested more than $770 million to clean the various properties. But much more cleanup is needed, and with Donald Trump’s return to the White House, those efforts are uncertain. (Pineda, 2/15)

The Trump administration has directed the nation’s premier health agencies to place a notice harshly condemning “gender ideology” on agency webpages that a federal judge ordered be restored online this week. Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration were asked to place a notice on “any restored pages that were taken down due to their content promoting gender ideology,” according to an email sent from an official at the Department of Health and Human Services on Thursday evening. (Sun, Roubein and Rizzo, 2/14)

A second federal judge has blocked enforcement of President Donald Trump’s executive order threatening the federal funding of hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to teenagers. U.S. District Court Judge Lauren King in Seattle — a Joe Biden appointee — sided Friday with the Democratic attorneys general of Washington state, Oregon and Minnesota who had sued to restore access to health services for transgender patients 19 years and younger. The services were disrupted by the administration’s “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation” executive order. (Ollstein, 2/14)

President Donald Trump has instructed his administration to scrutinize the “threat” to children posed by antidepressants, stimulants and other common psychiatric drugs, targeting medication taken by millions in his latest challenge to long-standing medical practices. The directive came in an executive order Thursday that established a “Make America Healthy Again” commission led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has criticized the use of those drugs and issued false claims about them. (Nirappil, Eunjung Cha and Gilbert, 2/16)

In Atlanta, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was told Friday to lay off an estimated 10 percent of its staff, including nearly an entire class of “disease detectives” — the infectious-disease experts charged with helping spot the next epidemic. In West Texas, local officials warned about the spreading risk of measles, saying that an outbreak of the vaccine-preventable disease had doubled to 48 cases since early last week. (Diamond and Sun, 2/15)

The ongoing measles outbreak in West Texas has doubled in size to 48 cases, mostly in children and teens, making it the state’s worst in nearly 30 years. State health officials said Friday in a news release that those who are infected are either unvaccinated or their vaccination status is unknown. Thirteen people have been hospitalized. (Murphy and Shastri, 2/14)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Urgent CDC Data And Analyses On Influenza And Bird Flu Go Missing As Outbreaks Escalate

Sonya Stokes, an emergency room physician in the San Francisco Bay Area, braces herself for a daily deluge of patients sick with coughs, soreness, fevers, vomiting, and other flu-like symptoms. She’s desperate for information, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a critical source of urgent analyses of the flu and other public health threats, has gone quiet in the weeks since President Donald Trump took office. (Maxmen, 2/14)

A woman living in Platte County has contracted Wyoming's first case of H5N1 avian flu and is the fourth American to be hospitalized for the virus, the Wyoming Department of Health (WDH) confirmed late last week. The infected woman is hospitalized in another state, is older, has underlying medical conditions, and was likely exposed to H5N1 through contact with her infected backyard poultry flock. (Van Beusekom, 2/17)

Ohio's health department confirmed Saturday that a farmer in the state was discharged from the hospital after being sickened by bird flu, marking the fourth American to have been hospitalized with the H5N1 virus. "The individual had respiratory symptoms. He was previously hospitalized and has since been released," a spokesperson for Ohio's health department told CBS News in an email Saturday. (Tin, 2/15)

For the second time in just over a week, national milk testing has identified another spillover of H5N1 avian influenza into dairy cows, with investigators linking detection to a herd in Arizona’s Maricopa County. In other developments, agriculture officials in Oregon and Washington warned pet owners about the risk of raw pet food after tests on sick domestic cats from different households in Multnomah County linked the infections to contaminated food from the same company.(Schnirring, 2/17)

Bird flu is here to stay. The H5N1 avian influenza is proliferating among U.S. cows and there are now two strains circulating among mammals and birds. Though there are only 68 confirmed cases in people—largely dairy workers—public-health officials think bird flu is likely more widespread. Last week, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report documented three asymptomatic cases in veterinarians who took care of cattle they didn’t know had H5N1. (Reddy, 2/17)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: �鶹Ů�� Health News’ ‘On Air’: Journalists Talk Southern Health Care: HIV Drug Access, Medicaid Expansion, Vaccination Rates

�鶹Ů�� Health News contributor Sarah Boden discussed cats and bird flu on KVPR’s “Central Valley Daily” on Feb. 12. �鶹Ů�� Health News South Carolina correspondent Lauren Sausser juxtaposed the increasing trendiness of rural health care and the lack of Medicaid expansion in the South on America’s Heroes Group on Feb. 12. (2/15)

President Trump ordered on Friday that federal funding be withheld from schools and universities that require students to be vaccinated against Covid, White House officials said, another step in the administration’s campaign against coronavirus vaccine requirements. It was not clear how widely impactful the order would be. No states require K-12 students to be vaccinated against Covid. Only 15 colleges still required Covid vaccines for students as of late last year, according to No College Mandates, an advocacy group. (Mueller, 2/14)

The worst flu season in 15 years has left hundreds of thousands of Americans hospitalized while straining physicians' offices and emergency departments. This flu season is classified as a "high-severity" season, with estimates of at least 29 million cases, the most since the 2009-2010 flu season, according to the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. (Reed, 2/18)

The U.S. is in peak flu season, as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says "seasonal influenza activity remains elevated and continues to increase across the country." Case counts vary by state, however. Each week, the CDC releases a map of influenza activity across the country. The color-coded map indicates each state’s activity level, ranging from minimal to very high. The most current map reflects data from the week ending Feb 8, 2025. (Rudy, 2/17)

The respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine triggered strong immune responses among people aged 60 years and older during its first two seasons for use, according to the final findings of a phase 3 randomized controlled trial published last week in Clinical Infectious Diseases. (Van Beusekom, 2/17)

Drugmakers Sanofi and Johnson & Johnson announced yesterday that they're pulling the plug on a phase 3 trial of their joint vaccine candidate for extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli. The companies said in a news release that in a scheduled review of the E.mbrace 3 trial, an independent data monitoring committee (IDMC) determined that the vaccine—ExPEC9V—was not sufficiently effective at preventing invasive E coli disease (IED) compared with placebo and recommended discontinuing the study. Initiated in 2021, the trial was testing the efficacy, safety, and immunogenicity of the vaccine in preventing IED, which includes sepsis and bloodstream infections, in adults 60 and older. (Dall, 2/14)

The number of Americans with confirmed illness caused by contaminated food rose by 25% last year, according to a new report from the US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) Education Fund. The Food for Thought 2025 report shows a total of 1,392 Americans in 2024 became ill after consuming a contaminated food item, up from 1,118 in 2023. What's more, the number of hospitalizations more than doubled, rising from 230 to 487, and deaths climbed from 8 to 19. (Dall, 2/17)

Abortions are set to resume in Missouri after a judge blocked regulations that had restricted providers even after voters approved enshrining abortion rights into the state’s constitution. Friday’s ruling came after a Kansas City judge ruled last year that abortions were now legal in the state but kept certain regulations on the books while a lawsuit by abortion-rights advocates played out. That meant abortion facilities still had to be licensed by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. (Ballentine and Golden, 2/15)

New Jersey plans to go statewide with a program aimed at caring for older adults outside of nursing homes. The New Jersey Human Services Department announced Friday it is expanding the Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly to four counties in the state that don’t offer the program. PACE provides in-home and center-based services to mostly Medicare and Medicaid dual-eligible older adults. (Eastabrook, 2/14)

Seven hospitals in Tarrant County are the first in Texas to adopt a program meant to improve the health outcomes for moms and babies. It's part of an initiative to reverse an alarming statistic: mothers in Tarrant County are dying at a significantly higher rate than the national average, according to state data. (Vandergriff, 2/17)

In a pastoral Vermont valley, a former hospice chaplain named Suzanne runs a retreat center for artists, health-care workers and educators — and, since mid-2023, terminally ill people seeking a safe, peaceful place to die. Suzanne, who asked that her last name not be used for privacy reasons, is one of a small but growing number of property owners who have been providing space to people coming to Vermont for physician-assisted dying since the state lifted the residency requirement for a 2013 law allowing terminally ill patients to end their lives on their schedule. (Waldman, 2/16)

Utah students in as early as kindergarten would be required to learn about firearm safety in the classroom under a bill that passed the state House with overwhelming support Friday. The Republican-controlled chamber approved the measure in a 59-10 vote and sent it to the Senate, despite concerns from some gun violence prevention advocates that it places an undue burden on children. (Schoenbaum, 2/15)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Iowa Medicaid Sends $4M Bills To Two Families Grieving Deaths Of Loved Ones With Disabilities

Collection agents for the state of Iowa have sent letters seeking millions of dollars from the estates of at least two people with disabilities who died after spending most of their lives in a state institution. The amounts represent what Medicaid spent covering the residents’ care when they lived at the Glenwood Resource Center, a state-run facility that closed last summer. (Leys, 2/18)

Internet searches seeking help for gambling addiction have "increased substantially" as the number of states with legalized sports betting has expanded in recent years, prompting a need for more public health awareness, according to a study released Monday. The findings "suggest that sportsbooks pose a substantial health concern," researchers at the University of California, San Diego, and Bryn Mawr College wrote in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. (Ortiz, 2/17)

Heart failure is a condition that occurs when the heart can’t pump out enough blood and oxygen to meet the body’s needs. Deaths from it have been climbing steadily nationwide since 2012, wiping out earlier declines. Rising rates of metabolic disorders like obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure are likely contributing. There are medications to treat one of the two main types of heart failure, but they aren’t used as much as they should be, doctors said. “The treatments that have been proven in trials to work are not getting prescribed to people in a timely way,” said Dr. Janet Wright, the director of the division for heart disease and stroke prevention at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (Agrawal, 2/18)

A woman treated with a pioneering type of immunotherapy for a solid tumour has been in remission for more than 18 years with no further treatments, experts have revealed. The therapy involves taking T-cells, a type of white blood cell, from a patient and genetically engineering them to target and kill cancer cells. These modified T-cells are grown in a laboratory and then infused back into the patient. (Davis, 2/17)

Much of what people have been taught about making America healthier is wrong, Dan Buettner, the originator of the term "Blue Zones," told members of the Senate Aging Committee Wednesday. Why are the people in Blue Zones living 10 years longer than Americans? "Because they're avoiding the diseases that shorten Americans' lives and are bankrupting us in many ways," Buettner, of Miami, Florida, said at a hearing on "Optimizing Longevity: From Research to Action." (Frieden, 2/17)

Children and teens should drink water, plain pasteurized cow’s milk and limited amounts of 100 percent fruit and vegetable juices, according to healthy beverage guidelines recently released by an expert panel. In a consensus statement, the panel recommended limiting plant-based milk alternatives, flavored milk, caffeine and beverages sweetened with both sugar and nonsugar sweeteners. (Blakemore, 2/15)

Uncertainty over interest rates, as well as Medicaid reimbursement and immigration policy, are prompting some private equity investors to delay investments in companies that provide skilled and nonmedical care in the home. Still, attorneys and advisors who help broker home care deals said the highly fragmented sector could remain a long-term sweet spot for investment as an aging population pushes more care to where patients live. (Eastabrook, 2/14)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Pain Clinics Made Millions From ‘Unnecessary’ Injections Into ‘Human Pin Cushions’

Each month, Michelle Shaw went to a pain clinic to get the shots that made her back feel worse — so she could get the pills that made her back feel better. Shaw, 56, who has been dependent on opioid painkillers since she injured her back in a fall a decade ago, said in both an interview with �鶹Ů�� Health News and in sworn courtroom testimony that the Tennessee clinic would write the prescriptions only if she first agreed to receive three or four “very painful” injections of another medicine along her spine. (Kelman, 2/18)

Medical doctors face higher rates of burnout and depression than the general population and are twice as likely to die by suicide. The risks were magnified at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, but the problem existed long before that. More than 40 percent of physicians, medical school students and residents cite fear of disclosure requirements on licensure forms as a main reason they don’t seek mental health care, according to the American Medical Association, which has been pushing for legislative and regulatory changes. (Hassanein, 2/17)

Chiquita Brooks-LaSure has joined other former senior Biden administration officials at the Century Foundation, the progressive think tank announced Friday. The former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will be a senior fellow at the organization, which previously brought aboard former Health Resources and Services Administration Administrator Carole Johnson and former acting Labor Secretary Julie Su, each of whom served under President Joe Biden. (Early, 2/14)

At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of people in poor nations died literally gasping for breath, even in hospitals. What they lacked was medical oxygen, which is in short supply in much of the world. On Monday, a panel of experts published a comprehensive report on the shortage. Each year, the report noted, more than 370 million people worldwide need oxygen as part of their medical care, but fewer than 1 in 3 receive it, jeopardizing the health and lives of those who do not. Access to safe and affordable medical oxygen is especially limited in low- and middle-income nations. (Mandavilli, 2/17)

An analysis of data from US hospitals found that ceftolozane-tazobactam and ceftazidime-avibactam are the most frequently used new antibiotics, researchers reported this week in Open Forum Infectious Diseases. (Dall, 2/14)

If you need a prescription filled in the coming years, don’t be surprised if it flies in and lands in your backyard. Hospitals and doctors are increasingly experimenting with the use of drones to deliver medications, lab tests and supplies to patients being treated at home. Some are testing whether drones can be used to deliver organs for transplant more quickly and cheaply. And in some cities, a 911 call today could set off a drone carrying a defibrillator, Narcan spray or tourniquet to the scene of an emergency ahead of the arrival of paramedics. (Boston, 2/17)

As the Trump administration’s recently launched Department of Government Efficiency continues its largely unchecked expansion into federal agencies, the health of Americans is increasingly at risk. In the name of “efficiency,” President Donald Trump and DOGE’s leader, Elon Musk, have pursued a federal funding freeze that threatens Medicaid insurance for low-income Americans, cuts to biomedical and public health research, and efforts to push out large swaths of the civil service workforce, including nurses who care for veterans. (Victor Roy, 2/17)

What has been overlooked in discussions about Mr. Kennedy’s future agenda is one key fact: Vaccines remain enormously popular. Given this broad support, politicians should think twice about targeting something so widely valued. (Caitlin Rivers, 2/16)

In our careers as pulmonary and critical-care doctors, we have witnessed a revolution in treating asthma, a disease that affects one in 12 Americans. Newer medications make it possible to reverse the course of the disease and bring people with severe asthma into remission. (Jehan Alladina, C. Corey Hardin and Alexander Rabin, 2/18)

A decade ago this past June, my sister died at the National Institutes of Health. Despite that, the NIH gave my family hope and continues to do so. Human suffering happens without a care for who we are, without regard for our beliefs or stance. Medical research, like that done at the NIH, offers a chance beyond partisan lines to help alleviate some of that suffering and deliver hope, to learn from complications and be better clinicians. Despite my pain, I have faith in that mission. (Ariel Reinish, 2/18)

Despite (or perhaps because of) this trust, Epic’s aggressive push for MyChart adoption has caused concern. Hospitals that resist consolidation face increased fees, reduced support, and deprecated features for pursuing independent strategies. Many worry that their reliance on Epic for EHRs could evolve into dependence on Epic for all consumer-facing tools, leaving them with few options to differentiate or maintain control over patient relationships. (Seth Joseph, 2/17)