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A federal judge has ordered federal health agencies to restore websites and datasets that were abruptly pulled down beginning in late January, prompting an outcry from medical and public health communities. The temporary restraining order was granted in response to a lawsuit filed against the federal government by Doctors for America (DFA), a progressive advocacy group representing physicians, and the nonprofit Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group. (Stone, 2/11)

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to hold off on a plan that would cut $4 billion in federal funding for research at the nation’s universities, cancer centers and hospitals. The funds disbursed by the National Institutes of Health cover the administrative and overhead costs for a vast swath of biomedical research, some of which is directed at tackling diseases like cardiovascular conditions, cancer and diabetes. (Jewett and Rosenbluth, 2/11)

For decades, academic scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health conducted research into the function of a lung protein that is genetically altered in people with cystic fibrosis. The foundational scientific discoveries eventually led Vertex Pharmaceuticals to develop and win approval for the first medicines to treat the underlying cause of cystic fibrosis.��Those medicines have transformed the lives of people living with the disease and turned Vertex into one of the world’s largest and most valuable drug companies.��(Feuerstein, 2/11)

Cutting federal grant funding will limit access to care and stymie research, providers warn. Last week, the National Institutes of Health said it will cap the indirect cost payment rate for new and existing grants at 15%. Academic medical centers use that funding to cover the cost of administrative and infrastructure expenses tied to research. (Kacik, 2/11)

During his confirmation hearing Jan. 21, Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins pledged to preserve veterans benefits and not "balance the budgets on the backs of veterans." But the confirmation of Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, who contributed to two conservative playbooks that support significant changes to VA disability benefits, has put veterans service organizations on guard against any potential shifts in VA compensation. (Kime, 2/11)

President Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated Terry Cole to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration, elevating a longtime law enforcement official who spent more than two decades at the agency and now serves as Virginia’s top public safety official. The nomination came more than two months after Trump’s first selection, Florida sheriff Chad Chronister, announced his withdrawal amid withering criticism from conservative figures. (Ovalle and Vazquez, 2/11)

A new journal purports to improve the publishing process through open access and public peer review, but it was co-founded by researchers who challenged the U.S. response to COVID-19 -- including President Trump's pick to lead the NIH, Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD. Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, PhD, have founded the Journal of the Academy of Public Health, where "good scientists can publish whatever their studies conclude," Kulldorff said in a post on X. (Fiore, 2/11)

Almost $500 million in food aid is at risk of spoilage as it sits in ports, ships and warehouses after funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, was paused by the Trump administration, according to a Feb. 10 report from a government watchdog.��The report from USAID's inspector general highlighted the risks of "safeguarding and distribution" of $8.2 billion in unspent humanitarian aid after the Trump administration ordered almost all staff to be placed on leave and ordered a review of U.S. foreign assistance programs.��(Picchi, 2/11)

The Trump administration fired the inspector general of the U.S. Agency for International Development on Tuesday — a day after he put out a report criticizing the foreign aid freeze, a USAID official and a former State Department official said. Paul Martin is the latest of some 20 inspectors general that President Donald Trump has ousted, despite objections from lawmakers and the watchdogs themselves that his methods of removing them violate statutes. (Toosi, 2/11)

One of the first efforts to restore a program run by the U.S. Agency for International Development has begun—and it is coming from Republicans.��Congressional Republicans from farm states are trying to save a $1.8 billion U.S. food-aid program that purchases U.S.-grown food and is administered by USAID, which has been largely closed by the Trump administration in recent weeks.��(Peterson, 2/11)

A group of nongovernmental organizations, contractors and small businesses that rely on American foreign aid to carry out humanitarian and development programs abroad filed a lawsuit in federal court on Tuesday against the Trump administration and its efforts to phase out the U.S. Agency for International Development. (Demirjian, 2/11)

Uganda’s flagship agencies for its HIV/AIDS initiatives need 300 billion shillings ($82 million) in extra funding to narrow a gap created after the US froze foreign assistance. Uganda AIDS Commission and AHF Uganda Cares require the funds to ensure uninterrupted access to treatment, laboratory monitoring and essential services in managing the virus, the Kampala-based parliament said, citing UAC Planning Director Vincent Bagambe. (Ojambo, 2/12)

President Trump’s order that the United States exit the World Health Organization could undo programs meant to ensure the safety, security and study of a deadly virus that once took half a billion lives, experts warn. His retreat, they add, could end decades in which the agency directed the management of smallpox virus remnants in an American-held cache. Health experts say discontinuation of the W.H.O.’s oversight threatens to damage precautions against the virus leaking into the world, and to disrupt research on countermeasures against the lethal disease. (Broad, 2/12)

House Republican leaders on Tuesday downplayed the possibility of cuts to Medicaid benefits as they seek a reconciliation bill with up to $2 trillion in savings. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) sought to reassure the public — and potential jittery members of their own caucus — that the Medicaid changes under discussion include work requirements and fraud reduction, not drastic cuts like lowering the federal match for Medicaid expansion states or instituting a per capita cap.��(Weixel, 2/11)

Lawmakers say they are confident Congress will extend expanded telehealth authorities past a looming deadline next month��— but they have no idea how and could not rule out a lapse. In 2020, Congress and President Donald Trump temporarily expanded Medicare reimbursement for services clinicians provide remotely as part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Lawmakers have hailed extended telehealth rules for providing lifelines to rural and underserved populations in particular, prompting some to propose bills last year to make the changes permanent. (McAuliff, 2/11)

Lawmakers who came within days of passing new restrictions on pharmacy benefit managers are trying to revive those measures as part of major funding bills Congress is rushing to complete. It was unclear if the specific provisions from December's package would be the same, but lawmakers said it was vital to move PBM legislation after the last Congress advanced numerous bipartisan measures, but failed at the last minute to include them in the year-end government funding bill. (McAuliff, 2/11)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: �鶹Ů�� Health News’ ‘An Arm And A Leg’: How Do You Deal With Wild Drug Prices?

Prices for brand-name drugs in the U.S. are three times what the same drugs cost in other countries. And in a recent �鶹Ů�� survey, 3 in 10 adults reported not taking their medicine as prescribed at some point in the past year because of costs. (Weissmann, 2/11)

“Yesterday, at around noon, I experienced a medical incident on the House floor, when my speech momentarily paused,” a statement from Larson posted to X reads. “Following the incident, I saw the House Attending Physician, Dr. Monahan, who referred me for further evaluation.” “After a round of tests, it was determined that the cause of the brief pause in my speech was a complex partial seizure.” (Suter, 2/11)

For the first time since the beginning of the pandemic, more people in the U.S. died of influenza than from COVID-19 in the week ending on Jan. 25, according to weekly figures published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For the week ending on Jan. 25, nearly 1.7% of all deaths nationwide were attributed to the flu, compared to roughly 1.5% being the result of COVID-19, according to CDC data. (Tin, 2/11)

The U.S. confirmed at least a dozen deaths from whooping cough last year, according to preliminary figures released this week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That marks the most fatalities from the bacterial infection since a 2017 surge of the illness, which is also known as pertussis. (Tin, 2/11)

Public health authorities said Tuesday that an outbreak of measles in western Texas has expanded, while a new case was confirmed nearby across state lines in New Mexico. The Texas Department of State Health Services has identified 24 measles cases in connection with the onset of symptoms within the last two weeks. ... In neighboring Lea County, New Mexico, residents were alerted Tuesday to the measles infection of an unvaccinated teenager, as well as the possible exposure of more people in Lovington at a hospital emergency room and sixth grade school gymnasium. (2/12)

The Georgia Department of Agriculture has lifted the suspension of poultry activities in Georgia, one of the country’s top poultry-producing states, after bird flu testing, depopulation, cleaning and disinfecting were done in the area and no new cases were found. (Riess, 2/11)

Tri-Union Seafoods is recalling certain canned tuna products sold at Costco, H-E-B, Kroger, Trader Joe’s, Walmart and other stores. There was a defect in manufacturing the “easy open” pull tab on the lids of the tuna, branded as Genova, Van Camp’s or various store brands. Without proper sealing, the company said, there’s a risk of food leaking or contamination with Clostridium botulinum, or botulism. (Mukherjee, 2/11)

Researchers have long known that people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are more likely to use nicotine and tobacco — putting them at higher risk for a host of diseases and increasing the likelihood that they may become addicted to drugs and alcohol. But early diagnosis and treatment of ADHD could help prevent young people from picking up the habit in the first place, according to a new study. (Todd, 2/11)

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

Katheryn Houghton delivers this week’s news: Pediatricians believe a decline in childhood vaccination rates could drive a return of deadly vaccine-preventable diseases, and addiction experts say legalizing sports betting has downsides for health. (2/11)

The lungs that Dr. Ankit Bharat took out of Tadd Crosslin, a 49-year-old father of twins, were marred with billions of cancer cells. They were “perhaps the most diseased that we’ve ever seen,” said Bharat, a thoracic surgeon and director of Northwestern Medicine’s Canning Thoracic Institute. A technology the institute adopted just months ago was a game changer for Crosslin, whose lungs were fused so tightly to his chest cavity that doctors needed extra time to delicately remove them. (Breen, 2/11)

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new drug to treat a disorder causing the growth of noncancerous tumors on nerves throughout the body.��The federal agency said on Tuesday it greenlighted��SpringWorks Therapeutics’s drug Gomekli for patients dealing with neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) “who have symptomatic plexiform neurofibromas (PN) not amenable to complete resection.”��(Timotija, 2/11)

Until recently, doctors could only hope to intervene by suggesting diet and lifestyle changes, or by helping patients manage related conditions like diabetes or high cholesterol. But those efforts often haven’t been enough. Now a promising new study shows that weight-loss surgery could reduce the chances of severe complications, even in some patients with cirrhosis. (Agrawal, 2/11)

Today the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) announced an award of $5 million funding award to Ethris, a German biotechnology firm working on next-generation RNA vaccines.��The award will help Ethris develop spray-dried RNA vaccines that remain stable at room temperature and are suitable for nasal delivery, CEPI said in a press release. (Soucheray, 2/11)

Humana plans to invest a “few hundred million” dollars in its struggling Medicare Advantage business this year, executives said Tuesday. “We’re focused on stars, of course, we’re investing in clinical excellence and membership strategies,” Chief Financial Officer Celeste Mellet said during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call. (Tepper, 2/11)

UnitedHealth Group said in a court filing Friday its plans to sell at least 128 home health and hospice locations to ease the Justice Department's antitrust concerns around its acquisition of Amedisys. The divestiture plans were part of a filing in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland in a response to the Justice Department’s lawsuit to block the proposed acquisition. The government alleges the deal is unlawful because it would stifle competition in hundreds of markets. However, UnitedHealth Group and Amedisys allege the lawsuit essentially ignores the companies' proposed divestiture package. (Eastabrook, 2/11)

The Queen's Health Systems plans to lay off about 100 employees as the organization��looks to improve efficiency across its six hospitals and more than 70 other care sites. The Honolulu-based system said less than 1% of its estimated 9,500 employees would be impacted. Affected staff members would have the opportunity to apply for other positions within the organization. (DeSilva, 2/11)

The conservative Pacific Legal Foundation has sued UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland over an internship program for minority high school students, alleging the program violates state and federal laws because it bases eligibility on race. The suit, filed Tuesday in federal court in Oakland, also names the UC Board of Regents as a defendant. It was filed on behalf of a 15-year-old Berkeley High School student, identified only as G.H., who applied for the program and was rejected. The student is white. (Ho, 2/11)

Somerville, Mass.-based Mass General Brigham and IBM have teamed up to develop an AI tool for health systems and community health centers. The tool will be designed to predict local heat waves, identify patients at risk and send automatic warnings when extreme heat is expected, according to a Feb. 11 news release. The tool will also alert patients to available resources and help physicians take preventive steps by identifying and addressing health risks. (Diaz, 2/11)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Doctor Wanted: Small Town Offers Big Perks To Attract A Physician

For a rural community, this town of 1,750 people has been more fortunate than most. A family doctor has practiced here for the last 30 years. But that ended in December when Mark Newberry retired. To attract a new doctor, Havana leaders took out want ads in local newspapers, posted notices on social media, and sweetened the pot with a rent-free medical office equipped with an X-ray, an ultrasound machine, and a bone density scanner — all owned by the town. (Chang, 2/12)

Walgreens must pay more than $987 million as part of an arbitration award won by a virtual care company, a federal judge ruled Monday. U.S. District Judge Richard Andrews in Delaware sided with PWNHealth, upholding a previously determined arbitration award related to a contract dispute between the pharmacy retail giant and PWNHealth, which also does business as Everly Health Solutions. (Landi, 2/11)

Kansas’s Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed a��proposal to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth for the third consecutive year, setting up another battle with the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature that has previously failed to overrule her on the issue.��Kansas’s Senate Bill 63 would broadly prevent health care professionals from providing gender-affirming medical care, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery, to minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria — the severe psychological distress that stems from a mismatch between a person’s gender identity and sex at birth.��(Migdon, 2/11)

Georgia’s state Senate on Tuesday passed a bill that would cut off public funding for gender-affirming care for adults, but the future of the legislation remains cloudy in the state House, one illustration of how the Republican-controlled swing state has been slow to join the blizzard of laws targeting transgender people. Senators voted 33-19 to pass Senate Bill 39, which would bar state money for gender-affirming care in state employee and university health insurance plans, Medicaid and the prison system. (Amy, 2/11)

A New York City doctor said he will continue providing gender-affirming treatments to his patients younger than 19 despite President Donald Trump’s executive order aiming to ban such care, because, the doctor said, these patients’ lives depend on it. “Until somebody calls me away, I’m just going to keep doing it,” said Dr. Jeffrey Birnbaum, a pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist. He doesn’t think that will happen, he added, noting that New York Attorney General Letitia James issued a statement Monday telling doctors that state law requires them to continue providing such care. (Yurcaba, Herzberg and Gosk, 2/11)

The Worcester City Council passed a resolution Tuesday night to make New England’s second-largest city a “sanctuary” jurisdiction for the transgender community, a proposal that cites President Trump’s executive order limiting the federal government’s gender recognition to male and female. Over nearly three hours, councilors heard from dozens of residents who overwhelmingly supported declaring Worcester “a sanctuary city for transgender and gender diverse people.” (Andersen and Alanez, 2/12)

First, President Donald Trump issued an executive order prohibiting the use of federal funds for gender-affirming care. Then, in response to a lawsuit from prisoners, a judge temporarily blocked the order. The result, say employees and incarcerated transgender people, has been chaos and uncertainty as policies are adopted and applied unevenly throughout the federal prison system. (Schwartzapfel, 2/11)

With a heartbeat abortion ban solidly in place in South Carolina, lawyers for the state and Planned Parenthood return to the state’s highest court Wednesday to argue how restrictive the ban should be. The law is being enforced in South Carolina as a ban on almost all abortions around six weeks after conception, setting that mark as the time cardiac activity starts. But Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights groups are arguing the 2023 law includes alternative definitions about the timing of a fetal heart forming and a “heartbeat” starting and the true ban should start around nine or 10 weeks. (Collins, 2/12)

The California Attorney General’s Office is challenging��a rural Catholic hospital’s assertion��that emergency abortion requirements violate its religious freedom. In recently filed court documents, the state argues that Providence St. Joseph Hospital in Humboldt County “endangers the safety of its patients” by refusing to provide emergency abortion care. This latest move by the office of Attorney General Rob Bonta stems from a lawsuit filed by the state in September on behalf of a Humboldt County woman who says she was denied a medically necessary abortion by St. Joseph after a pregnancy loss. The denial of care endangered her life, the lawsuit states. (LaFever, 2/11)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom and state legislators in Sacramento seem to agree: Prescription drug prices are too high. But lawmakers and the second-term governor are at odds over what to do about it, and a recent proposal could trigger one of the biggest health care battles in Sacramento this year. A California bill awaiting its first hearing would subject drug industry intermediaries known as pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, to licensing by the state Department of Insurance. (Mai-Duc, 2/11)

It’s been three months since California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 36, a new law that pledged to provide “mass treatment” for those facing certain drug charges. But since the law took effect on Dec. 18, some counties are scrambling to fulfill that promise. Now, prosecutors have the ability to charge people convicted of various third-time drug offenses with a so-called treatment-mandated felony, which would direct them to substance use disorder or mental health treatment in lieu of up to three years in jail or prison. (Mihalovich, 2/11)

Mayor Daniel Lurie named a former Medicaid director as San Francisco’s new public health director, tapping an experienced healthcare administrator to help lead the city’s response to the drug crisis in one of his most consequential appointments since taking office last month. Daniel Tsai, who ran the Medicaid program under former President Joe Biden, will succeed Dr. Grant Colfax, who announced in mid-January that he would resign after almost six years running the city’s Department of Public Health. Tsai is the second new department head that Lurie has named since he became mayor; he previously appointed a new fire chief. (Morris, 2/11)

In a rare case of a parent being charged after a school shooting, a judge on Tuesday granted a $500,000 bond for the father of a 14-year-old boy accused of a deadly attack at a north Georgia high school. Colin Gray has pleaded not guilty to 29 counts, including two counts of second-degree murder and two counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the Sept. 4 mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder. (Martin, 2/12)

As American doctors working in southern Africa for the past two decades, we vividly recall our first days caring for patients dying from AIDS. Though we were working in different countries, our experiences were strikingly similar: patients with withered limbs, emaciated frames and little hope. At the time, new lifesaving antiretroviral medications called ARVs were making HIV a manageable condition in the United States but were priced far beyond reach for most African patients. (Cassidy Claassen and Michael Herce, 2/11)

A medical school scrubs mention of gender and racial health inequalities from its websites. A city health system advises its workers not to use their legal rights to protect patients or co-workers but to instead cooperate with ICE raids on hospitals. A university hospital instructs its physicians to stop providing gender-affirming care to their trans patients. Actions like these have been rapidly multiplying across the United States’ most prestigious hospitals, universities, and research foundations. (Eric Reinhart, 2/11)

In a month of one bombshell after another (and many all at the same time), it can be hard to track the damage that the Trump administration is inflicting. But unlike attacks on predictable issues like D.E.I. and foreign aid, the announcement on Friday that the National Institutes of Health would slash funding for medical research doesn’t make even cynical political sense. (Zeynep Tufekci, 2/11)

On Dec. 19, 2024, we joined other professors of law, medicine, and public health to file an amicus brief in support of the U.S. government in the government’s landmark patent lawsuit against leading HIV drugmaker Gilead Sciences Inc. On Jan. 15, 2025, the U.S. government and Gilead announced a settlement of the suit that — at least based on what’s been made public — allows Gilead to expropriate publicly funded, publicly owned patents essentially without recourse. Unless the Department of Health and Human Services commits to asserting its patent rights vigorously in the future on behalf of the public, this settlement could disturb the model of public-private partnership that sustains many of the United States’ most important medical breakthroughs. (Christopher Morten, Ben Anderson, Charles Duan, Gregg Gonsalves, Cynthia M. Ho, Amy Kapczynski, Jordan Paradise, Reshma Ramachandran, Joseph S. Ross, Michael S. Sinha, Anthony D. So and Liza Vertinsky, 2/12)

I was the “different” kid. I had intense interests that I went on monologues about, I missed social cues, and I checked out of conversations to stare at the wall while my mind wandered. Later, when my kids were small, they used to wonder why I watched the television without turning it on. But it wasn’t until I was 53 that I was officially diagnosed with autism. Increased rates of autism diagnosis — now 1 out of 36 children in the U.S. — are due to a redefinition of the autism spectrum and a welcome recognition that autism has been underdiagnosed and underaccommodated. (Holden Thorp, 2/12)