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President Donald Trump said Tuesday that pharmaceutical imports will soon be hit with “major” tariffs as part of his efforts to drive manufacturing back to the U.S. Drug imports evaded the first round of tariffs that Trump imposed on countries around the world, but the president said they will not be spared. (Svirnovskiy, 4/8)

The president revealed his administration's plan at a National Republican Congressional Committee dinner on Tuesday. Trump said at the dinner: "We're going to be announcing very shortly a major tariff on pharmaceuticals. And when they hear that, they will leave China. They will leave other places because they have to sell—most of their product is sold here and they're going to be opening up their plants all over the place." Historically, pharmaceutical drugs have been manufactured in the U.S., but this is no longer the case, with only 28 percent of manufacturers of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in the country as of August 2019, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). (King, 4/9)

Unless Europe delivers “rapid, radical policy change,” pharmaceutical R&D and manufacturing is “increasingly likely to be directed towards the U.S.,” pharma CEOs in the European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) warned European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen Tuesday. (Liu, 4/8)

Even before President Trump's announcement that he plans a "major tariff" on pharmaceuticals, the sector was getting hammered in the markets — and not just over concerns about higher costs. ... Concern has been growing that drug reviews and other key functions of the FDA may be slowed in light of cuts at the agency, which could be particularly devastating for small and midsized companies that have just one or a handful of products. The markets are also reacting to leadership shakeups, most notably the high-profile ouster of Peter Marks, former director of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. (Reed, 4/9)

More than $1 billion in federal funding for Cornell University and around $790 million for Northwestern University have been frozen while the government investigates alleged civil rights violations at both schools, the White House says. ... The moves come as the Trump administration has increasingly begun using governmental grant funding as a spigot to try and influence campus policy — previously cutting off money to schools including Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. That has left universities across the country struggling to navigate cuts to grants for research institutions. (4/9)

Sarah Fortune is a Harvard scientist leading one of the world’s preeminent tuberculosis research programs. Her lab, along with its collaborators at 11 other sites across the country and in Africa, has solved some of the crucial mysteries of this disease, and continues making discoveries that could prove life-saving for generations to come. That enterprise is now at risk, caught up in the Trump administration’s antisemitism investigation at Harvard. Fortune’s $60 million contract with the National Institutes of Health was the number one project threatened in a memo the Trump administration sent to Harvard last week, apparently because it was the largest. If that contract is cancelled, “it’s over,” Fortune said in an interview Monday at her Boston laboratory.(Damiano, 4/8)

At the very moment that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was set to take the stage, the governor of Gila River Indian Community was still standing at the podium, articulating his uneasiness around recent Trump administration moves. “Let me repeat that: We have spent a good part of this year providing education on why tribes have a political status that is not D.E.I.,” Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis said to a room of 1,200 people, who clapped and cheered. (Baumgaertner Nunn, 4/8)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's team of lead poisoning experts remained off the job Tuesday, a week after they were first laid off by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s sweeping cuts to the nation's public health agencies. Cuts to the CDC's branch responsible for investigating and preventing lead poisoning has brought multiple efforts to help local health authorities to a virtual standstill, current and laid-off agency officials say, including for lead poisoning responses that could have helped children in Milwaukee and on an American Indian reservation. (Tin, 4/8)

The Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked a ruling from a federal judge in California that had ordered the Trump administration to rehire thousands of fired federal workers who had been on probationary status. The court’s brief order said the nonprofit groups that had sued to challenge the dismissals had not suffered the sort of injury that gave them standing to sue. (Liptak, 4/8)

A week after widespread cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services, many workers are left wondering: Was that legal? Some lawyers and labor experts say errors in termination notices and the swift speed and scale of the firings raise legal questions. (Cueto, 4/8)

The American Society of Hematology (ASH) and nearly 100 other organizations blasted the dismantling of CDC's Division of Blood Disorders and Public Health Genomics (DBDPHG) and called for its full restoration. Nearly all staffers at DBDPHG -- which works with states, patients, and providers to reduce the impact of serious blood disorders -- were placed on administrative leave amid the mass layoffs and restructuring at HHS last week. (Ingram, 4/8)

The Trump administration’s move to gut the agency tasked with ensuring workplace safety is facing intensifying pushback, including from the nation’s largest auto union and a conservative lawmaker, in one of the more prominent public fights against some of the widespread cuts last week. On Tuesday, the United Auto Workers union said it “adamantly opposes” the cuts to almost 900 workers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which does research and makes recommendations to prevent work-related injuries and illnesses, including chemical hazards. (Smith, 4/8)

Sam Petsonk grew up around southern West Virginia's mining communities, visiting patients with his father, one of the country's first doctors to specialize in Black Lung Disease. "When I was a child, I'd look up and I'd see coal miners — seemingly larger than life, doubled over coughing, scarcely able to walk, work or breathe," Petsonk says, "I've seen it my whole life. I remember it as a kid, and still see it today." (Noguchi, 4/9)

The Trump administration has dismissed the few remaining health officials who oversaw care for some of the world’s most vulnerable people: more than 500,000 children and more than 600,000 pregnant women with H.I.V. in low-income countries. Expert teams that managed programs meant to prevent newborns from acquiring H.I.V. from their mothers and to provide treatment for infected children were eliminated last week in the chaotic reorganization of the Health and Human Services Department. (Mandavilli, 4/8)

For public health agencies across the country, the Trump administration has meant taking blow after destabilizing blow. Covid-19 pandemic dollars were pulled. States like Minnesota and cities like Austin cut jobs that had been federally funded. Research grants were canceled in the name of excising diversity programs. (Cooney, 4/9)

The Trump administration formally barred federal workers from listing their preferred pronouns in email signatures, calling it a symptom of a misguided “gender ideology.” Some White House officials are taking a similar approach with the journalists who cover them. On at least three recent occasions, senior Trump press aides have refused to engage with reporters’ questions because the journalists listed identifying pronouns in their email signatures. (Grynbaum, 4/8)

President Donald Trump’s administration withdrew 11 pieces of guidance last month related to the Americans with Disabilities Act that helped stores, hotels and other businesses understand their obligation to the law. The guidance included tips on how to create accessible parking and fitting rooms, talk to hotel guests about accessible features and decide when a person with a disability could be assisted by a family member during hospitals’ COVID-19 no-visitor bans. Five pieces of guidance were from the pandemic, while the oldest two were issued in 1999. (Hunter, 4/8)

The health secretary has been on a tour out West this week in an effort to promote his Make America Healthy Again movement and draw attention to the slew of state bills that address MAHA goals like banning fluoride from drinking water and getting rid of food dyes and additives. Another key item on Kennedy’s agenda: making soda ineligible for food benefits. (Todd, 4/9)

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) already collects fees from drug and medical device companies, but it may want to consider collecting fees from food companies as a way to fund the agency's oversight of food safety efforts, according to an analysis yesterday in Health Affairs. (Soucheray, 4/8)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Federal Judge Blocks Mandate On Nursing Home Staffing

A federal judge in Texas blocked a Biden administration rule to boost staffing at nursing homes, even though many homes lack enough workers to maintain residents’ care. �鶹Ů�� Health News walked through the decision from the judge and what it could mean for nursing home staffing. (Lofton, 4/8)

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seemed to imply in recent days that the measles outbreak in western Texas was slowing down. In a post on X on Sunday, Kennedy remarked on the second death linked to the outbreak, which occurred in an unvaccinated school-aged child. About 10 minutes later, Kennedy edited the post to add that the curve has been flattening since early March, when he started sending in reinforcements from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- supplying clinics with vaccines and other medications. (Kekatos, 4/8)

The measles outbreak in western Texas is continuing to grow, with 24 new cases confirmed over the last five days, according to data published Tuesday. Almost all of the cases are in unvaccinated individuals or in individuals whose vaccination status is unknown, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS). (Kekatos, 4/8)

In Lubbock, measles exposure in a day care center has resulted in seven cases in children under the age of 5, Katherine Wells, director of Lubbock Public Health, said Tuesday. This is a particularly vulnerable community, as many of the children are not old enough to get their second dose of the measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine. Under normal circumstances, the CDC recommends one dose of MMR between 12 to 15 months of age and another between 4 and 6 years. In outbreak situations, these guidelines may be updated. (Mukherjee, 4/8)

There are now three confirmed cases of measles in Colorado --  in Pueblo, Denver and Archuleta counties -- according to public health officials. All investigations are ongoing and are typically handled at the county level with support from the state. ... As for whether this constitutes an outbreak, Bob Belknap, the executive director of the public health institute at Denver Health, says it does not -- at least not yet. This is not currently an outbreak as we do not have evidence that the cases are linked. Per public health definition, an outbreak would be once Colorado has three or more related cases of measles, according to a spokesperson for the state. (Arenas, 4/8)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Slashed Federal Funding Cancels Vaccine Clinics Amid Measles Surge

More than a dozen vaccination clinics were canceled in Pima County, Arizona. So was a media blitz to bring low-income children in Washoe County, Nevada, up to date on their shots. Planned clinics were also scuttled in Texas, Minnesota, and Washington, among other places. Immunization efforts across the country were upended after the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention abruptly canceled $11.4 billion in covid-related funds for state and local health departments in late March. (Sable-Smith, Zionts and Fortiér, 4/9)

A legal effort could upend a nearly 40-year program that compensates people who say they were injured by vaccines. ... The attempt by Rolf Hazlehurst, a Children’s Health Defense attorney whose son was diagnosed with autism in the early 2000s, hinges on fraud allegations he and then-CHD leader Robert F. Kennedy Jr. leveled at two Justice Department attorneys in 2018. Content published on the website of the anti-vaccine group has suggested that Hazlehurst only recently gathered enough evidence that was admissible in court. (Gardner and Lim 4/8)

Concern is growing among public health experts that anti-vaccine sentiment within federal and state governments may derail emerging and cutting-edge vaccines that are now awaiting regulatory approval in the United States – essentially leaving those vaccines in limbo. (Howard, 4/8)

Tracy Beth Høeg, MD, PhD, who was named a special assistant to new FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, MD, MPH, previously opposed some health policies during the COVID-19 pandemic and has questioned the use of some childhood vaccines. Recent research by Høeg, a sports medicine physician and epidemiologist, includes an examination of visitation restrictions for COVID patients, which showed that current data do not support a net benefit of such restrictions, and a study that found a lack of robust evidence of benefit for the use of face masks among children to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses, as well as potential harms. (Henderson, 4/8)

Five years ago, the COVID-19 pandemic first swept across the U.S., infecting millions and claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. Scientists are already concerned about the next airborne threat, but in the future, a powerful new weapon may be waiting in the wings. Far-UVC light is a form of ultraviolet light that can kill viruses and bacteria in the air without harming humans. Researchers say it could be instrumental in stopping the spread of illnesses like the flu and possibly future pandemics. (LaPook, 4/8)

The deal to save the Crozer Health system in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, is on the brink of collapse. An attorney for Prospect Medical Holdings, which owns Taylor Hospital and Crozer-Chester Medical Center, told the judge on Tuesday an additional $9 million is needed by 4 p.m. Wednesday to keep the hospitals open, or Prospect attorneys said they'll pursue a closure motion with the court for an orderly closure. (Holden and Kenworthy, 4/8)

Northwell Health and Nuvance Health have cleared the last regulatory hurdle in their proposed merger after receiving certificate of need approval from Connecticut's Office of Health Strategy, a spokesperson for the agency said Tuesday. The two systems will follow terms outlined by New York's and Connecticut's attorneys general in August, including expansion of women’s health services through labor and delivery at Nuvance's Sharon (Connecticut) Hospital, ... according to a news release from Connecticut's Office of Health Strategy. (DeSilva, 4/8)

Ascension Saint Thomas and PathPoint Health formed a joint venture to open two outpatient centers in Tennessee. The centers, which will open near Ascension Saint Thomas' Midtown hospital in Nashville and near Ascension's Rutherford hospital in Murfreesboro, will focus on treating metabolic conditions such as diabetes and obesity. They will offer medical care, exercise and nutritional planning, lifestyle counseling, diagnostic assessments and care coordination services with in-person and virtual visits, according to a Tuesday news release. (Hudson, 4/8)

Transcarent closed its acquisition of Accolade for approximately $621 million, the company said Tuesday. Transcarent, which connects self-insured employer customers to behavioral health, urgent care, cancer care, pharmacy and weight management services, said it purchased Accolade for $7.03 per share in cash. The deal was first announced in January. (Turner, 4/8)

Health insurer stocks soared on Tuesday because the Trump administration said it would substantially increase payment rates for Medicare insurers next year, generating more than $25 billion in additional revenue for the industry and doubling the boost proposed in January. The news led to a rally in the shares of big Medicare insurers such as UnitedHealth Group, Humana and CVS Health, parent of Aetna. Shares in UnitedHealth rose 8% in morning trading, while Humana was up more than 11% and CVS increased 9.5%. (Mathews, 4/8)

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) still recommends primary care behavioral counseling for breastfeeding, mostly in line with its 2016 guidelines. In the updated recommendation statement published in JAMA, USPSTF wrote that "providing interventions or referrals, during pregnancy and after birth, to support breastfeeding" received a B grade, indicating moderate certainty these interventions will have moderate net benefit. (Robertson, 4/8)

Since 2021, when the information blocking rules kicked in, health systems and patients have been reckoning with the impact of electronic medical records that allow instant access to test results — good, bad, and in between — sometimes before a doctor has ever seen them. (Palmer, 4/8)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Rural Hospitals And Patients Are Disconnected From Modern Care

Leroy Walker arrived at the county hospital short of breath. Walker, 65 and with chronic high blood pressure, was brought in by one of rural Greene County’s two working ambulances. Nurses checked his heart activity with a portable electrocardiogram machine, took X-rays, and tucked him into Room 122 with an IV pump pushing magnesium into his arm. “I feel better,” Walker said. Then: Beep. Beep. Beep. (Tribble, Hacker and Jackman, 4/9)

CardioVia announced Tuesday it received Food and Drug Administration clearance for its ViaOne device that can access the heart’s surface to diagnose and treat cardiac conditions without using an exposed needle. ViaOne is designed for treating cardiac arrhythmias. Conventional techniques point a needle toward the heart, which comes with the risk of puncturing it, according to CardioVia. (Dubinsky, 4/8)

“This year is going to be the year AI agents are going to get deployed,” NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang declared at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show. But what are AI agents, and how do they apply to health care? (Trang, 4/9)

Seattle Children’s Hospital has partnered with Google Cloud to bring an AI agent to its providers’ fingertips. The new agent will help physicians and clinicians easily access information from the system’s clinical pathways at the point of care to ensure a high standard of care for all patients, the organizations said. (Beavins, 4/9)

Surgical technology company Proprio announced Tuesday that its Paradigm AI guidance platform has received FDA clearance to take spinal alignment measurements during surgery. This platform, which is already being used by Durham, North Carolina-based Duke Health and Seattle-based UW Medicine, allows surgeons to evaluate their surgical performance in real time. (Dubinsky, 4/8)

The human body constantly generates a variety of signals that can be measured from the outside with wearable devices. These bio-signals — which include heart rate, sleep state and blood oxygen levels — can indicate whether someone is having mood swings or be used to diagnose a variety of bodily and brain disorders. It can be relatively cheap to gather a lot of bio-signal data. To teach a machine-learning algorithm to find a relationship between bio-signals and health outcomes, however, you need to teach the algorithm to recognize those health outcomes. That’s where research scientists like myself come in. (Geenjaar, 4/8)

Alabama lawmakers on Tuesday voted to put new regulations on pharmacy benefit managers in an effort to curb the closure of small pharmacies across the state. The Alabama House of Representatives voted 102-0 for the proposal that will require pharmacy benefit managers to reimburse independent pharmacists at least at the state Medicaid rate for prescription drugs. The bill now goes to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey. (4/9)

Alabama legislators unanimously passed a bill on Tuesday that would expedite access to Medicaid for pregnant women, as more states across the South attempt to stem high maternal and infant mortality rates. The “presumptive eligibility” legislation states that Medicaid will pay for a pregnant woman’s outpatient medical care for up to 60 days while an application for the government-funded insurance program is being considered. The bill will now go to Republican Gov. Kay Ivey’s desk for her signature. (Riddle, 4/8)

US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joined lawmakers in Arizona on Tuesday to celebrate the passage of two bills targeting causes he’s championed in his so-called Make America Healthy Again agenda. Arizona will join a growing list of states seeking to stop low-income residents from using government-issued food benefits to purchase sugary beverages, including those made by Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Keurig Dr. Pepper Inc. Arizona legislators also passed a bill banning ultra-processed food from being purchased in public schools. (Pulley and Muller, 4/8)

A California appeals court judge expressed concern Tuesday that a ruling ordering the Department of Veterans Affairs to build housing for homeless veterans on the grounds of the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center would be reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court. However, during oral arguments, Judge Consuelo Callahan, the presiding judge on a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, said "it's hard to say the VA has done a good job" of meeting the needs of the estimated 3,000 homeless veterans in Los Angeles. (Sisk, 4/8)

Leading Democrats in Congress are turning their attention to service members exposed to toxins at domestic military bases and other environmental disasters who were left out of a sweeping law that extended veterans benefits to millions who were exposed to toxins in combat zones. At a roundtable on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, representatives from more than a dozen military and veterans advocacy groups and researchers detailed health battles that service members have faced after drinking tainted water, working with radiation and hazardous chemicals, living in moldy housing, and breathing toxic fumes. (Kheel and Novelly, 4/8)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: This Bill Aims To Help Firefighters With Cancer. Getting It Passed Is Just The Beginning

As firefighters battled the catastrophic blazes in Los Angeles County in January, California’s U.S. senators, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, signed onto legislation with a simple aim: Provide federal assistance to first responders diagnosed with service-related cancer. The Honoring Our Fallen Heroes Act is considered crucial by its supporters, with climate change fueling an increase in wildfire frequency and firefighting deemed carcinogenic by the World Health Organization. (Kreidler, 4/9)

Laura Putnam never thought her sons would receive melatonin supplements at day care. She enrolled them at Apple Blossom Childcare in Falmouth, Maine, when they were 1 and 2 years old. She said she hasn’t given them melatonin and hasn’t granted anyone else permission to give them the supplement, which mimics a hormone produced in the brain that makes people sleepy. But in August, Putnam said, she learned from a former employee at the day care center that he and others had given melatonin gummies to children, including her older son, who was 4 years old at the time. (Steinberg and Nguyen, 4/8)

Eating combinations of common food additives may be tied to a slightly increased risk of Type 2 diabetes, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine. A growing body of evidence has linked certain food additives to cancer, diabetes, heart disease and changes to the gut microbiome. Many of these studies, however, were focused on single ingredients. (Sullivan, 4/8)

Diabetes is known to cause many medical issues, from heart disease to vision problems — and now a new study suggests it could also impact memory and other cognitive functions. After observing brain activity and behavior in rodent models, researchers at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) determined that type 2 diabetes can "rewire" the brain in ways similar to early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. (Rudy, 4/8)

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) today reported two more H5N1 avian flu detections in dairy herds, one in California and the other in Nevada, raising the nation's total to 1,000 since March 2024. California has been the hardest-hit state, and though detections have dropped sharply, sporadic H5N1 confirmations continue and have now reached 759 in that state. (Schnirring, 4/8)

It has been nearly three years since the launch of the 988 National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, and since then, millions seeking help have used the call center as a life-saving resource. But understaffing and underfunding threaten to upend the hotline's mission. ... One in four adults in the U.S. lives with a diagnosable mental illness, according to the National Institutes of Health. But many more could be struggling without a diagnosis, and the numbers are expected to go up. Meanwhile, public health services nationwide could face further federal cuts. (Preston, 4/8)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Listen To The Latest '�鶹Ů�� Health News Minute'

Katheryn Houghton reads this week’s news: The Trump administration may stop using a “Housing First” approach to ending homelessness, and Medicaid rules can force people with disabilities not to work in order to keep services they need. (4/8)

With the passage of the Food and Drugs Act and the Meat Inspection Act, the United States created the framework for a federal system to test ingredients, inspect food factories and recall unsafe products. This system has been criticized as seriously underfunded and often overcautious. (Deborah Blum, 4/9)

The Trump administration recently nixed a rule proposed by President Joe Biden that would have made it easier for 7.4 million Americans to afford antiobesity medications called GLP-1s. This was a mistake. These drugs, like Ozempic and Wegovy, can be a game changer. I know firsthand. (U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), 4/8)

On March 7, the Trump administration announced that $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University would be canceled, due to “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” The following week was life-changing for researchers across the university. The cuts were sweeping and chaotic — going beyond the administration’s usual targets like diversity, equity, and inclusion programs to include research on everything from vaccines to COVID treatments to autism. (Andrew Geneslaw, 4/9)

While the upheaval at the Department of Health and Human Services is getting more headlines, local public health organizations are also facing a moment of reckoning. Major cuts are leaving public health departments with fewer resources and employees. (Torie Bosch, 4/9)

The advent of electronic health records dramatically improved workflow. Suddenly, what once took multiple steps could be completed with a few clicks. But, as providers, our eyes became glued to the screens that aided us. We juggled typing orders and medical notes while speaking to patients. Physically, we turned our backs to our patients and our faces to the glowing digital workflows in front of us. (Iyesatta Massaquoi Emeli, 4/9)