President Donald Trump this week nominated a former deputy surgeon general who has expressed support for vaccines to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Considered a more traditional fit for the job, Erica Schwartz would be the agency’s fourth leader in roughly a year, should she be confirmed by the Senate.聽

And Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared on Capitol Hill this week in the first of several hearings discussing Trump’s budget request for the department. But the topics up for discussion deviated quite a bit from the subject of federal funding, with lawmakers raising issues of Medicaid fraud, measles outbreaks, the hepatitis B vaccine, peptides, unaccompanied minors, and much, much more.聽

This week’s panelists are Mary Agnes Carey of 麻豆女优 Health News, Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, Emmarie Huetteman of 麻豆女优 Health News, and Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico Magazine.

Panelists

Among the takeaways from this week’s episode:

• Trump on Thursday named four officials to the CDC’s leadership team. Schwartz, whom he picked as director, is a physician and Navy officer who served as a deputy surgeon general during Trump’s first term. She has voiced support for vaccines and played a key role in the covid-19 pandemic response.
• RFK Jr. testified before three committees of the House of Representatives this week on the president’s budget request for HHS. While the hearings touched on a wide variety of topics, notable moments included a slight softening of Kennedy’s stance on the measles vaccine, including the acknowledgment that being immunized is safer than having measles 鈥� although he also stood by the decision to remove the recommendation for the newborn dose of the hepatitis B vaccine.
• New studies on the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy and the effects of water fluoridation on cognitive function refute Trump administration claims. And a White House meeting that brought together Trump, Kennedy, and other leaders of the Make America Healthy Again movement aimed to soothe concerns among supporters 鈥� yet there’s reason to believe the overture won’t completely mend fences between the Trump administration and the MAHA constituency ahead of the midterm elections.

Also this week, 麻豆女优 Health News’ Julie Rovner interviews Michelle Canero, an immigration attorney, about how the Trump administration’s policies affect the medical workforce.

Plus, for “extra credit,” the panelists suggest health policy stories they read (or wrote) this week that they think you should read, too:聽

鈥�Mary Agnes Carey: Politico’s “,” by Alice Miranda Ollstein.

Joanne Kenen: The New York Times’ “,” by Teddy Rosenbluth.

Anna Edney: Bloomberg’s “,” by Anna Edney.

Emmarie Huetteman: 麻豆女优 Health News’ “Your New Therapist: Chatty, Leaky, and Hardly Human,” by Darius Tahir.

Also mentioned in this week’s podcast:

• JAMA Pediatrics’ “,” by Kira Philipsen Prahm, Pingnan Chen, Line Rode, et al.
• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’ “,” by John Robert Warren, Gina Rumore, Kamil Sicinski, and Michal Engelman.
• 麻豆女优 Health News’ “Pennsylvania Town Faces Fallout From Trump’s Environmental Rule Rollback,” by Stephanie Armour and Maia Rosenfeld.
• The New York Times’ “,” by Sheryl Gay Stolberg.
• Wakely Consulting Group’s “,” by Michelle Anderson, Chia Yi Chin, and Michael Cohen.

Credits

Click here to find all our podcasts.

And subscribe to “What the Health? From 麻豆女优 Health News” on , , , , , or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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According to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were 3.6 million births in 2025, a from 2024. The fertility rate dropped to 53.1 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, down 23% since 2007.

The Trump administration has said it wants to reverse this trend. President Donald Trump has called for “a new baby boom,” and aides have solicited proposals from outside advocates and policy groups ranging from baby bonuses to expanded fertility planning. The administration is also the federal government’s only dedicated family planning program: Title X.

For more than five decades, Title X has been geared 鈥� with bipartisan support 鈥� toward giving low-income women access to contraception, screening for sexually transmitted infections, and reproductive health care regardless of ability to pay. At its peak, the served more than 5 million patients a year. Title X clients have reported the program as their sole source of health care in a given year.

In early April, the Department of Health and Human Services for Title X grants for fiscal year 2027, which begins in October. The 67-page Notice of Funding Opportunity included only one mention of contraception 鈥� describing it as overprescribed, associated with negative side effects, and part of a broader “overreliance on pharmaceutical and surgical treatments.”

The grant notification reshapes the program from its traditional public health intervention efforts to focus on fertility, family formation, and reproductive health conditions such as polycystic ovary syndrome, endometriosis, low testosterone, and erectile dysfunction.

While Title X will continue to help women “achieve healthy pregnancies,” the grant document does not explicitly reference preventing unintended pregnancies 鈥� a long-standing goal of the program.

Jessica Marcella, who oversaw the Title X program as a senior official in the Biden administration, said the new funding notice amounts to a wholesale redefinition of family planning.

“What we’re seeing is trying to use our nation’s family planning as a Trojan horse for an entirely different agenda,” Marcella said, noting that Trump eliminating Title X altogether.

Birth Rates and Fertility Trends

The administration is overhauling Title X in the context of declining birth rates. But researchers who study fertility trends say the decline is driven by forces that have little to do with contraception access and that restricting it is unlikely to produce more births.

The most important factors, according to demographer Alison Gemmill of UCLA, are timing-related. “Childbearing is increasingly delayed as part of a broader shift toward later adult milestones, including stable employment, leaving the parental home, and marriage,” she said.

Most American women, she said, still complete their childbearing years with an average of two children, suggesting a shift toward smaller families rather than an increase in childlessness.

“Having children has become more contingent and more planned,” she said.

Much of the decline since 2007 reflects women postponing births rather than forgoing them.

“The average number of babies women are having in their whole lives has not fallen. It’s still more than 2.0 for women aged 45,” said Philip Cohen, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland.

Phillip Levine, an economist at Wellesley College, said the birth rate has declined due to shifts in how women approach work, leisure, and parenting. “Efforts to reverse those patterns would be more successful if they can make childbearing more desirable, not make it harder to prevent a pregnancy,” he said.

Asked about the role of contraception in reducing maternal mortality and how the new funding notice advances that goal, HHS press secretary Emily Hilliard said in a statement: “Applicants for the 2027 Title X funding cycle will be expected to align with the administration’s stated priorities in the released Notice of Funding Opportunity. HHS, under the leadership of Secretary Kennedy and President Trump, will continue to support policies that support life, family well-being, maternal health, and address the chronic disease epidemic. HHS remains focused on improving maternal outcomes and ensuring programs are administered consistent with applicable law.”

Marcella said the new funding notice is the product of two converging forces: the Make America Healthy Again movement, with its skepticism of conventional medicine and emphasis on lifestyle and behavioral interventions, and a pronatalist agenda that seeks to boost birth rates by steering policy toward family formation.

The document’s language reflects both: It repeatedly invokes “optimal health” and “chronic disease” while sidelining the contraceptive services that have defined Title X for .

Clare Coleman, president and CEO of the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, which represents health professionals focused on family planning, said tying Title X to birth-rate goals replaces individual decision-making with a government objective. The program “is designed to facilitate access to family planning services, including services to achieve and prevent pregnancy,” she said.

Title X’s New Focus

The administration’s changes have been welcomed on the right.

Emma Waters, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, who has advocated for what she calls “restorative reproductive medicine,” said the new funding notice reflects overdue attention to neglected aspects of women’s health.

“I was particularly encouraged to see language that spoke to the delays in diagnosis for conditions like endometriosis, the need for women to practically understand how their cycle and fertility works, and to ensure that real root-cause was promoted through Title X,” Waters said.

She described the notice as an expansion, not a narrowing, of the program’s mission: “I see this iteration of Title X as the fulfillment of its purpose. The goal was never just 鈥榤ore contraception’ but a wholesale empowerment of women to govern their own fertility.”

Waters also argued that untreated reproductive health problems may contribute to lower birth rates.

“One of the interesting aspects of this debate, and one that is often overlooked, is the degree to which painful and unaddressed reproductive health problems may suppress or create ambivalence around a woman’s desire to have kids,” she said, pointing to endometriosis.

An estimated of reproductive age have endometriosis, and of those, . Scientifically speaking, the relationship is an association, not a proven cause. Women aren’t screened for endometriosis if they don’t have symptoms, and the condition may be more prevalent than is recognized. Researchers still do not fully understand why some women with endometriosis struggle to conceive while others do not, and treating the disease does not reliably restore fertility.

Infertility rates in the U.S., meanwhile, have not risen. An found them essentially flat between 1995 and 2019, even as the national birth rate fell sharply 鈥� a divergence that points away from untreated reproductive disease as an explanation.

Meanwhile, in February, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists enabling earlier diagnosis of endometriosis without surgery, a step toward addressing the delays Waters described. But the first-line treatment ACOG recommends is hormonal therapy, part of the same category of care the funding notice dismisses as part of an “overreliance on pharmaceutical and surgical treatments.” The effect, reproductive health experts say, is a contradiction: Title X is now prioritizing diagnosis of endometriosis while deemphasizing the drugs clinicians use to treat it.

Treatments that have been shown to improve fertility in women with endometriosis, such as laparoscopic surgery and in vitro fertilization, are . When President Richard Nixon signed Title X into law in 1970, as a way to expand access to family planning services 鈥� helping women determine the number and spacing of their children by making contraception and related preventive care more widely available, particularly for those who could not afford it. , not Title X, is the primary government health insurance program covering health care for low-income women, but, like many commercial insurance plans, it .

Many of the conditions prioritized in the funding notice deserve attention, said Liz Romer, a former chief clinical adviser for the HHS Office of Population Affairs who helped write updated guidelines for the family planning program. But they fall outside the scope of what Title X can realistically provide.

“There’s not even enough funding to support the core premise of contraception,” Romer said. “And so, if you want to expand Title X funding, you can expand the scope, but you can’t move away from the foundation.”

The emergence of an anticontraception ideology within federal health policy is striking, she said, given how broadly the public supports access to birth control. Eight in 10 women of childbearing age surveyed by 麻豆女优 in 2024 reported having in the previous 12 months.

Laura Lindberg, director of the Concentration in Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice at Rutgers School of Public Health, said, “If contraception is sidelined in Title X, it won’t just change language on paper but will show up as fewer options and more barriers for patients.” Funding could move away from providers who offer a full range of contraceptive care, she added, “toward organizations that are ideologically opposed to contraception and don’t deliver the same standard of health care services.”

The Stakes Are High

The United States already has one of the highest maternal mortality rates among wealthy nations 鈥� as of 2024. According to the CDC, in the U.S. may be preventable. Medical research shows that pregnancy carries substantially higher risks of blood clots, stroke, and cardiovascular complications than hormonal contraception.

And since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in 2022, which overturned the constitutional right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade, access to abortion has been significantly curtailed across much of the country. While national abortion numbers have risen, driven largely by telehealth and interstate access, research shows births have increased in states with bans, with an estimated , disproportionately among young women and women of color.

Dr. Christine Dehlendorf, who directs the Person-Centered Reproductive Health Program at the University of California-San Francisco, said “there is absolutely no evidence for any positive outcome of restricting access to contraception.” Restrictions would instead increase demand for abortion care and make it harder for women to prevent high-risk pregnancies.

Since Trump returned to office, more than a dozen Title X grantees have had their grants frozen, forcing some health centers to stop delivering services, lay off staff, or close. During the first Trump administration, regulatory changes led to a decline in Title X participation from more than . The program grew slowly under the Biden administration, reaching about 3 million clients, before the current round of disruptions began.

The second Trump administration’s overhaul of the program, Marcella said, “directly undermines the public health intent of our nation’s family planning program and will potentially exclude millions of individuals from getting the care they have relied on for decades. It’s bad policy.”

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Mayor Helena Moreno signed an on April 7 that creates a task force to improve the New Orleans Recreation Development Commission. One of the task force’s duties will be to “consider and make recommendations regarding the costs and practicalities of implementing a program to assess and remediate safety and environmental concerns at NORDC facilities and playgrounds, including the existence of lead in soil” and other environmental issues, according to the order.

About a week before Moreno signed that order, Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services Jennifer Avegno announced that city officials were working with the state’s congressional delegation to request $5 million in federal funds for the federal fiscal year that starts in October. That money would go toward testing and the possible cleanup of playgrounds with elevated levels of lead. She said her office is also reviewing past city records, working with the city’s in-house experts in its Planning Commission’s Brownfield Program, and reviewing Verite’s soil test results.

“We’re trying to figure out, with whatever pots of money we can get, how can we make a more sustained and meaningful impact than we have been able to in the past?” Avegno said during an of Verite’s lead contamination investigation.

In the investigation published in February, Verite reporters tested more than 80 playgrounds for lead and documented unsafe levels of the toxic metal at just over half of them. Since then, parents across the city have called the New Orleans Recreation Development Commission, their elected officials, and other city offices seeking action.

But with the city in the midst of a budget crisis, parents and community groups in one neighborhood are taking action themselves. They are trying to raise $8,000 to hire a contractor to do extensive testing in the Bywater neighborhood’s Mickey Markey Playground, where Verite recorded lead samples that exceeded the federal hazard level of 200 parts per million 鈥� one sample registered at 403 parts per million.

“I’m aware of the city budget issues right now, and I’m also aware that fixing one playground in one neighborhood might not be a giant priority,” said Devin DeWulf, a father of two who lives in Bywater and founded the , a community organization helping with the fundraising.

Lead contamination persists in New Orleans soil, older buildings, and drinking water, posing a significant public health threat to children. Children under 6 can absorb the toxic metal more easily than adults, contaminating their blood and harming the long-term development of their brains and nervous systems.

There is no known safe exposure level for children or adults. In children, even trace amounts can result in behavioral problems and lower cognitive abilities. Chronic lead exposure for adults can increase the risk of heart problems and other health issues.

Beyond the effects on a single child or family, Avegno said, lead exposure has long-term implications, including its , which makes the issue even more critical.

“We knew we had to exhaust every avenue,” she said.

Due to low rates of testing, it’s unclear how many children across New Orleans are exposed to lead. In 2023, just 17% of children were tested for lead poisoning in New Orleans, despite a that requires medical providers to test all children by age 1 and again by 2. Currently, the state Department of Health doesn’t have a mechanism for enforcing the law.

Public health researchers recommend parents avoid playgrounds with lead contamination because it can be difficult to prevent young children from placing dirt in their mouths or breathing in dust kicked up during play.

Vann Joines, a Bywater neighborhood resident who often takes his 2-year-old daughter to Mickey Markey Playground, is part of the group raising money to independently test the playground.

“It’s really important for us to be exceedingly mindful at public playgrounds and at public parks,” Joines said.

DeWulf and Joines said they anticipate the work will take a few years and hope to create a playbook that other neighborhoods can follow for their own playgrounds.

“We could create a how-to guide on how we could effectively do this in partnerships in the city,” Joines said.

On top of the $5 million the city is requesting for soil testing and possible remediation, Avegno said the city planned to apply for a grant to help address lead at early childhood education centers.

“Your story was amazing timing,” she told a Verite reporter.

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Researchers say the children at about a mile away pay the price. They discovered the students there and at other elementary schools near major pollution sites in Pennsylvania had than other children in the state.

Residents and environmental advocates saw reason for hope and relief in the form of a designed to tamp down on coke oven plant pollution. But even before it took effect, President Donald Trump granted in the U.S. 鈥� including the one in Clairton 鈥� a from the standards.

Trump and Republicans have sought to align themselves with the Make America Healthy Again movement’s populist ideals, such as improving Americans’ food choices and reducing corporate harm to the environment. But the administration is ratcheting up its attacks on the very environmental protections that MAHA followers hold dear.

Taken together, these anti-environmental initiatives will lead to more pollution-related illnesses and higher health care spending, health researchers say. They could also have political ramifications, eroding MAHA’s support for GOP candidates in the November midterm elections if followers believe the party is more beholden to industry than to the movement’s agenda.

, including about a quarter of Republicans, support rolling back environmental regulations, according to a poll by the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Some MAHA supporters believe voters will support Republicans because the Trump administration is delivering on other goals important to the movement.

“MAHA has a pretty diverse set of policy goals, ranging from medical freedom to food and the environment,” said David Mansdoerfer, who served in Health and Human Services leadership during Trump’s first term. “In totality, the Trump administration has strongly delivered on much of the MAHA agenda.”

While MAHA voters have been upset at some of the administration’s actions that promote industry, it’s hard to know how that may play out in the midterms, said Christopher Bosso, a professor of public policy and politics at Northeastern University. Many were disillusioned by a Trump they viewed as promoting glyphosate, which HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has .

“The glyphosate thing really ticks off a lot of them; they’re really upset,” Bosso said. “Kennedy said it was poison. If it is a poison, why aren’t we regulating it? That’s where the tension plays out.”

The situation with the Clairton coke plant and the others granted exemptions from regulations underscores the potential public health risks. Six of the 11 factories had “high priority” violations of the Clean Air Act as of last May, according to a 麻豆女优 Health News analysis. Five coke oven plants logged major violations every quarter for at least three years straight.

“Poisoning continues to some of the most vulnerable residents of Allegheny County,” , who had lived in nearby Glassport, Pennsylvania, said at a about the coke plant.

Environmental Protection Agency spokesperson Brigit Hirsch said the president gave companies extra time because the technology needed to meet a new standard isn't ready yet.

“Forcing plants to comply before the tools exist doesn't make the air cleaner, it just shuts down facilities and kills jobs with nothing to show for it,” Hirsch said.

But environmental groups disagree that the plants were unable to comply at a reasonable cost, and they say the exemption from the EPA requirements shows the Trump administration is prioritizing the coal industry at the expense of public health.

“The Trump administration’s relentless actions to dismantle lifesaving environmental protections are a gut punch to the administration’s own promise to Make America Healthy Again,” said Cathleen Kelly, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

Hard Times in Clairton

Sprawled across , the Clairton plant operates ovens in which coal is heated to as much as 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit to make up to 4.3 million tons annually of the carbon-rich fuel known as coke. The product is used in blast furnaces to produce iron.

It’s a dirty operation. The process leads to hazardous emissions of that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says can lead to anemia and leukemia, as well as , which can trigger severe asthma.

The Clairton operation has had repeated problems with its emissions and operations, including and of toxic chemicals. The plant has received more than from the Allegheny County Health Department since 2022, stemming largely from a fire in 2018 that led to high emissions, and violated the Clean Air Act in each of the last , with the last compliance monitoring in July 2025, according to the EPA.

Nippon Steel Corp. last year acquired U.S. Steel, which now operates as a subsidiary. The company didn’t respond to an email seeking comment. U.S. Steel said it spends $100 million annually on environmental compliance at Clairton.

“Environmental stewardship is a core value at U. S. Steel, and we remain committed to the safety of our communities,” spokesperson Andrew Fulton said in a written statement.

Clairton was once bustling with movie theaters, a mix of grocery stores, and riverside parks, with a dance pavilion and . But the decline of steel hit hard. The town’s population dwindled from more than in the mid-20th century to as of 2024. until they were razed and replaced with signs saying to keep out. The 1978 movie , which depicts a hardscrabble industrial town, is partly set there. Today, about 33% of residents live in poverty.

While the plant brings jobs and revenue, residents of the town and the surrounding areas have long complained about health problems they attribute to its emissions.

“My parents are gone. My mom had cancer, my dad,” , a Clairton resident, said at a 2025 County Council meeting. “I lost a lot of loved ones and seen other ones pass because of this mill.”

Pediatric allergist looked into asthma rates among 1,200 children who attended school near major pollution sites in the area 鈥� including students at Clairton Elementary School. They had nearly triple the national rate of asthma, with the highest rate among African American youth, according to she led.

“We were shocked,” she said. “It was double or triple what we expected. The people are proud of their industrial background. We need steel, but they’re not running a good enough operation.”

A found children with asthma living near the coke plant had an 80% higher chance of missing school when sulfur dioxide pollution was elevated.

Allegheny County, which includes Clairton and Pittsburgh, is home to a number of industrial plants, and to increased deaths, chronic heart disease, and adverse birth outcomes. It was ranked in the top 1% of counties in the nation for cancer risk from stationary industrial air pollutants in a 2018 .

Clairton has an age-adjusted cancer death rate of 170 per 100,000 people, higher than the broader county’s rate of 150 deaths per 100,000 people, based on a 麻豆女优 Health News analysis of .

The American Lung Association in 2025 gave the county an F rating for its particle pollution levels. PennEnvironment, an environmental group that was party to a settlement with U.S. Steel involving the Clairton plant, says the coke operation caused of toxic releases in 2021, which amounted to 60% of all such releases in the county that year.

From 2020 through 2025, the Clairton plant racked up more in fines from Clean Air Act penalties than any other coke oven facility nationwide, costing U.S. Steel over $10 million, according to EPA facility reports.

“We are deeply concerned with exemptions, which allow air toxics to affect public health,” Allegheny County Health Department spokesperson Ronnie Das said in a statement.

The Clairton plant provides and hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue to the area. The jobs help generate nearly $3 billion in annual economic output, according to estimates from the Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association.

Some community members and advocacy groups hoped air quality would improve after the coke plant was sold. has pledged to upgrade facilities in the Monongahela River Valley.

Politics, Waivers, and Environmental Concerns

Under the Biden-era rule, coke plants were supposed to start meeting from the lids and doors of ovens that heat coal. They would also have had to monitor for benzene at their property lines and take steps to lower emissions of the carcinogen if they exceeded certain levels. Compliance deadlines were set for July 2025.

The Trump administration, which has sought to revive the coal industry, intervened. Last year, it , including coke plants such as Clairton’s, to seek from issued in 2024 by the EPA.

Then Trump in November went further, granting all coke plants a two-year compliance break.

The reprieve was necessary, the EPA spokesperson Hirsch said, because the requirements would have meant extra costs for the industry when standards already in effect work “extremely well” at reducing pollution.

Hirsch also said the agency under Trump is protecting the environment, pointing to action the administration has taken to called PFAS, prevent lead poisoning, strengthen chemical safety, and protect Americans’ food and water supply.

“We are building a future where the next generation of Americans is the healthiest in our nation's history, and they inherit the cleanest air, land and water in the world,” Hirsch said.

However, the administration has taken several steps that environmental advocates say weaken health protections.

The president's executive order on glyphosate, an herbicide the World Health Organization has linked to cancer, which touched off a furor among MAHA enthusiasts who said they felt betrayed. The EPA has decided to stop considering the of reducing pollution when making policy decisions, instead focusing on the cost to industry of complying with rules. The agency also rescinded the legal and scientific basis that had long established as dangerous to public health.

The actions have rankled some MAHA enthusiasts who counted on the administration to tackle chronic disease, especially among children. A petition to Trump on with more than 15,000 signatures called for the removal of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, it said supported corporations over MAHA goals.

Some MAHA enthusiasts have sounded off on social media.

“No one should believe that MAHA is being upheld at the EPA at this point,” , a leader of American Regeneration, which focuses on a conservation approach to farming, said Feb. 8 on X.

, host of a , also aired her concerns on X, saying “there is something really freaking spooky going on at the EPA and I refuse to let the American people be gaslit into thinking they’re upholding the MAHA agenda.”

“A significant number of people who supported Trump are worried these rollbacks are going to hurt their health,” said , a Democratic strategist and the founder of the communications firm Third Degree Strategies. “The MAHA voters, especially women, are very sensitive to this. Republicans have put themselves in a bind.”

MAHA supporters shouldn’t be surprised by a Trump administration that doesn’t prioritize environmental protections over industry, because the president has always championed fossil fuels, said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a nonpartisan election forecasting newsletter published by the University of Virginia Center for Politics.

The coke plant exemptions have disappointed some community members, environmental groups, and regulators concerned about public health and emissions.

Nearly 300,000 people live within 3 miles of the 11 active coke plants across the U.S., according to EPA data compiled by the Environmental Defense Fund.

Weakening environmental rules has helped boost Trump with the U.S. coal industry. In February, mining industry executives and lobbyists gathered at the White House, .

Coal miners, including some in white hard hats bedecked with American flags, with a bronze-colored trophy emblazoned “The Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal.”

At the event, Trump praised their work. “We love clean, beautiful coal,” he said.

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Big swings in federal vaccine policy are creating confusion for some parents and clinicians. A federal judge recently struck down Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new, for all kids. But with the Trump administration likely to appeal, the situation is in flux. Meanwhile, cases of such as measles, mumps, and whooping cough continue to accumulate nationwide and in the Washington, D.C., area.

Julie Rovner, 麻豆女优 Health News chief Washington correspondent and host of the podcast What The Health?, appeared on WAMU’s “Health Hub” on April 1 to break down what’s changed, what hasn’t, and what’s still unclear.

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The CDC withheld the data for months as a team hit hard by mass layoffs and resignations sorted through the information. But now that scientists at the agency have posted their first batch of whole measles genomes 鈥� the genetic blueprint of the viruses 鈥� the rest should “start flowing more smoothly at a more rapid cadence,” said Kristian Andersen, an evolutionary virologist at the Scripps Research Institute who isn’t involved with the CDC’s effort but is following it.

The CDC did not answer queries from 麻豆女优 Health News on its timeline for publishing measles data or analyses. However, once all the data is public, researchers can run that will signal whether outbreaks across the U.S. last year resulted from the continuous spread of the disease between states, rather than separate introductions from abroad. If there was continuous transmission for a year, that means the U.S. has lost its status as a country that has eliminated measles. That status, which the U.S. has held since 2000, reflects a country’s vaccination rates: Two doses of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine prevent most infections and so stop outbreaks from growing.

More careful analyses take weeks.

“We should see a report in April,” Andersen said, “assuming no political interference.”

This is the first time that the U.S. has applied sophisticated genomic techniques to measles, which largely disappeared from the country a quarter-century ago because of broad vaccine uptake.

Declining , misinformation, and the Trump administration’s lagging response to outbreaks have fueled a resurgence of the disease. With at least 2,285 cases in 44 states, 2025 was the worst year for measles in more than three decades. This year is on track to surpass that, with 1,575 cases as of late March.

While welcoming the science, researchers say the government’s top priority should be to stop the virus from spreading.

“I think it’s incredibly important to do whole genome sequencing for outbreaks,” Andersen said, “but we shouldn’t need to do this for measles in the first place, because we have an extremely effective and safe vaccine.”

“That we’re even talking about this is nuts,” he added.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other government officials should sound an alarm about measles’ comeback and launch nationwide vaccine campaigns, said Rekha Lakshmanan, executive director of , a nonprofit in Houston that advocates for vaccine access.

“I applaud the science,” she said, “but the more urgent need is to get measles under control as quickly as possible.”

Top officials have instead downplayed the seriousness of the disease, and false notions about vaccines have been granted new life in Kennedy’s CDC. This includes abrupt changes to vaccine information on CDC websites that medical say aren’t based on evidence and endanger lives.聽

Kennedy continues to promote unproven remedies that could mislead parents into believing that they can avoid vaccines without consequence. On the podcast in late February, Kennedy spoke at length about measures to improve America’s health but didn’t mention vaccines. He said preventive measures could entail “holistic medicine, or take vitamins, or take vitamin D, which is, as you know, it’s kind of miraculous.”

“The risk of measles remains low for most of the United States,” HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard wrote. “CDC has made $8.5 million available to address measles response activities in 7 jurisdictions experiencing outbreaks,” she wrote. “The CDC, HHS principles, and the Secretary have been vocal that the MMR vaccine is the best way to protect yourself against measles.”

1,000 Genomes

In December, the CDC enlisted the help of one of the country’s leading centers for virus sequencing, the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Major outbreaks in Texas, Utah, and South Carolina had been fueled by the same type of measles virus, labeled D8-9171. But since that type also circulates in Canada and Mexico, researchers need more data to discern whether it spread among states or entered the U.S. multiple times.

Whole genome sequencing provides that information because viruses evolve over time. The measles virus acquires a mutation every two to four transmissions between people, said Bronwyn MacInnis, director of pathogen surveillance at the Broad.

“There is enough signal in this data to tease apart questions at hand,” MacInnis said, “the main one being sustained transmission within this country.”

MacInnis’ team worked overtime to sequence the entire genomes of inactivated measles viruses that had been collected from states in 2025 and 2026.

“We’ve done about 1,000 samples and delivered the genome data back to the CDC,” sending it on a rolling basis since December, MacInnis said. “This is the CDC’s data to publish.”

The CDC didn’t post a single one of those genomes until late March, when eight appeared on a public database hosted by the National Center for Biotechnology Information. By April 1, an additional 154 had gone online.

“It should be on NCBI within a couple of weeks of being produced,” Andersen said, “and certainly not take longer than a month when you have an active outbreak.”

Genomic data holds clues about how outbreaks start and spread. It allows researchers to develop tests, treatments, and vaccines 鈥� and detect variants that might evade them.

Such data was critical in the covid pandemic. Chinese and Australian scientists online on Jan. 10, 2020, of sequencing it. “It definitely shouldn’t take the CDC months,” said Eddie Holmes, the Australian virologist who helped publish the first coronavirus sequence.

One reason for the delay is that the CDC’s measles lab has been sorely understaffed amid mass layoffs and other turmoil at the agency over the past year, a CDC scientist told 麻豆女优 Health News. Another reason, the researcher added, is a learning curve: The CDC and health departments haven’t needed to sequence hundreds of whole measles genomes before now. (麻豆女优 Health News agreed not to identify the scientist, who feared retaliation.)

In contrast with the CDC, the Utah Public Health Lab has shared measles genomes rapidly. Most of some 970 measles genomes posted online since Jan. 1, 2025, were sequenced by the state, hailing from Utah, Arizona, South Carolina, and other states willing to share them.

“We’ve only got a handful of samples from Texas that were collected kind of in the middle of their outbreak,” said Kelly Oakeson, a genomics researcher at the Utah Department of Health and Human Services. The genomes of the Texas and Utah measles viruses are similar but distinct, Oakeson said, meaning that intermediate versions of the virus are missing.

If the genetic code of viruses collected late in the Texas outbreak are a closer match to those from Utah’s, that will suggest that spread was continuous and the country has lost its measles-free status. The hundreds of genome sequences still sitting at the CDC probably hold the answer.

Waiting on the CDC

The CDC expected to finish its analysis before April, said Daniel Salas, executive manager of the immunization program at the Pan American Health Organization, which works with the World Health Organization. That’s when PAHO was slated to evaluate the United States’ measles status.

He said PAHO delayed its evaluation until the organization’s annual meeting in November, partly because the CDC needed more time to do the genomic analysis and partly because the measles status of Mexico, Bolivia, and other countries is also under review, and holding staggered meetings for each country is inefficient.

The U.S. is the only country using whole genome sequencing to answer the elimination question, Salas said. Typically, countries classify measles viruses according to a tiny snippet of genes, then assume that large outbreaks caused by the same type are linked. Whole genomes provide a more accurate view.

“If the U.S. can fill in the blanks with genomic data, that’s a sort of breakthrough,” Salas said. “That doesn’t mean other countries are going to be able to pull off this kind of analysis,” he added. “It takes a lot of specialized knowledge and resources.”

Equipment to sequence and analyze genomes costs upward of $100,000, and the cost to process each sample, including paying the researchers involved, typically ranges from $100 to $500 per sequence.

“I’m pro-science, but we shouldn’t have to do this,” said Theresa McCarthy Flynn, president of the North Carolina Pediatrics Society. “We don’t have to have a measles epidemic.”

Flynn said she regularly fields questions from parents concerned by misinformation spread by Kennedy and anti-vaccine groups, including the one he founded before joining the Trump administration. Parents have also pointed to changes in the CDC’s recommendations and to its websites that are at odds with the scientific consensus.

Before Kennedy took the helm, a said “Vaccines do not cause autism” in prominent type, and listed in premier scientific journals that refuted a link between vaccines and developmental disorders.

Last year, shifted to saying, “Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.” The high-quality studies were replaced with a report from a single investigator who has ties to anti-vaccine groups. In an email to 麻豆女优 Health News, HHS spokesperson Hilliard echoed the altered website’s claims about vaccines, disregarding extensive studies on the topic.

Flynn, of the pediatrics association, said, “The CDC itself is spreading misinformation about vaccines. I cannot overstate the seriousness of this.”

Although the acting director of the CDC, Jay Bhattacharya, says vaccines are the best way to prevent measles, he too has undermined vaccine policy. He said the controversial to reduce the number of vaccines recommended to children was based on “gold standard science.” In fact, the new schedule makes the among peer nations. Hilliard wrote that the updated schedule was “aligning U.S. guidance with international norms.”

A federal court temporarily invalidated the change last month in a lawsuit brought by the American Academy of Pediatrics and other groups.

Bhattacharya hasn’t held briefings with the public or the press on the surge of measles this year or activated the CDC’s emergency capabilities.

“Normally, we’d have a big push to get vaccination rates up in areas where it’s low. We’d do a big social media push, put out ads on getting vaccinated,” said another CDC scientist whom 麻豆女优 Health News agreed not to identify, because of fears of retaliation. “People at the CDC want to do this, but political leadership at the agency has not allowed the CDC to do it.”

Further, the Trump administration’s cuts and delays to public health funds have made it hard for local health officials to protect communities. Philip Huang, director at Dallas County Health and Human Services in Texas, said the department lost over $4 million when the administration clawed back about $11 billion from health departments early last year as a measles outbreak surged in the state.

“We lost 27 staff and had to cancel over 20 of our community vaccination efforts, including to schools identified as having low vaccination rates,” he said. “There are simultaneous attacks on immunizations that are making our jobs harder.”

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According to a recording obtained by 麻豆女优 Health News, Bhattacharya at one point suggested to CDC staff that Trump could name a new leader for the agency as soon as Thursday. “But if not, I don’t think much will change,” he said.

Though his official position as acting director was set to expire Wednesday, Bhattacharya will continue to lead the agency until the top spot is filled. Meanwhile, news outlets including and reported that the administration was postponing filling the permanent director job amid the challenges of gaining Senate confirmation and other political pressures.

Bhattacharya opened the meeting by acknowledging the struggles the beleaguered agency has gone through over the past year. Workers faced waves of job losses, and a gunman attacked the CDC’s Atlanta campus in August, killing a police officer and causing significant property damage. “I want to acknowledge very honestly that I know that it has been such a difficult year for the CDC and for every single one of you here,” Bhattacharya said.

He said the agency has begun to fill its leadership gaps. During his first meeting with the agency’s top leaders, he said, “I noticed almost every single one of them is acting.”

“We’ve made progress in filling key roles across the agency,” he said. “Leadership stability is essential to delivering our mission.”

The aim, he said, is to leave the agency in “a solid, secure place” so it can do its work “without so much of the turmoil that we’ve seen the last year.”

Bhattacharya invited questions from the CDC staffers, who repeatedly asked about staffing losses, morale, and their job security, as well as Trump’s decision to withdraw from the World Health Organization.

“The politics of WHO withdrawal are above my pay grade,” Bhattacharya said. “What I do know is that without the CDC, the world will be in much worse health.”

Workforce Concerns

One employee told Bhattacharya the agency had lost a “huge amount” of “internal capacity and expertise in the past year” and it “continues to be very challenging for staff to do their jobs,” adding that “certain conditions are a bit demoralizing.”

The CDC can “function without leaders,” another speaker said. “We function without directors. And this entire team will make CDC run without you if you’re not here.”

Schedule F, an effort to reclassify certain federal employees in policy-related roles and reduce their civil service protections, drew some of the strongest statements from the staff. While it’s not fully implemented, the policy could make it easier for Trump to fire thousands of federal workers.

“What’s scaring the hell out of us right now is Schedule F,” an employee said. “We are terrified that 鈥榓t will’ means you’re gone, you’re not here, you’re fired.”

“The Schedule F fight’s above my level,” Bhattacharya replied. He said his focus is on making sure the “work is supported.”

He said the agency should seek to “depoliticize what we do fundamentally” so that “every American sees us as working for their benefit.”

“When I say 鈥榙epoliticize,’ I don’t mean you can’t say the hard or talk about the hard things,” he added. “I mean that you’re free to talk about the hard things without fear that you’re gonna be retaliated against.”

On hiring and operations, he pointed to ongoing efforts but acknowledged delays. The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, is “moving at the speed of bureaucracy,” he said, adding that he’s trying his best. “We have to move past the last year, and I think we now have an opportunity really to do that.”

Vaccine Policy

On vaccines, Bhattacharya said one of the first things he did in his role as acting CDC director was to record a video “strongly encouraging parents to vaccinate their kids from measles.”

He said rebuilding trust requires engagement. That means working with communities without denigrating them, and respecting how “they think and their values,” he said.

Bhattacharya said he would like the NIH and CDC to coordinate more, particularly on HIV prevention. He described his approach as “an implementation science strategy so that we can use these two pieces of the HIV tool kit to actually end the HIV pandemic.”

The search for a permanent CDC director is being led by HHS officials on behalf of the White House and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Bhattacharya said he’s friends with Kennedy and called “the caricature of him that I’ve seen in the press” unfair. Kennedy “really does have a deep desire to make America healthy,” he said.

For now, Bhattacharya said, he expects to stay in place at the CDC, as “either acting director or acting in the capacity of the director, whatever the heck that means.”

He joked about the ambiguity: “It’s like an Office episode, you know?”

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Boim lost her job in the first big wave of CDC firings 鈥� more than 1,000 people were last February.

“This is the termination letter. I also printed off my performance review from 2024,” she said. “I knew I wouldn’t have access to it, and everything was so chaotic that I needed proof of what was happening.”

Boim worked in the , handling communications about radon, substances known as forever chemicals, lead poisoning, and other health threats.

Rereading her termination letter, she still can’t believe what it says.

“The agency finds you are not fit for continued employment because your ability, knowledge, and skills do not fit the agency’s current needs, and your performance has not been adequate to justify further employment at the agency,” the emailed letter reads.

“And that floored me,” Boim said, “because my performance was rated outstanding, and I even got a raise. It was just deeply insulting. So I was more upset than I think I was prepared to be.”

The Trump administration later brought back some of the workers who were fired in the first round, but it has also cut more staff and funding.

The CDC has been without a permanent director for more than six months. Recently the Trump administration made Jay Bhattacharya the CDC’s , while he also runs the National Institutes of Health.

The leadership uncertainty comes amid a year of disruption and dismissals at the Atlanta-based institution, from which more than 3,000 public health workers are now gone. That includes staffers the Trump administration terminated and workers who accepted early retirement.

Ripple effects of the turmoil are still hitting the Atlanta region.

By the end of 2025, the CDC had lost roughly a quarter of its workforce.

Boim now works as a contractor in the health field, while also working a non-health-related freelance job. But she mourns the cuts at the CDC, and how the loss of expertise and resources will trickle down to communities. A goes directly to .

“It will cause generational harm, which always makes me tear up,” Boim said. “The harm that’s going to come to people that don’t even know what CDC was protecting them from.”

“But for Atlanta, there’s a lot of us; there are thousands of CDC employees that live here,” she added. “We are your friends, your neighbors, your family, and 鈥� with the lost income 鈥� it has an impact on local businesses also.”

At the SriThai restaurant across the street from the main CDC campus, more than a third of the customers are CDC employees, said manager Nathan Chanthavong.

The restaurant saw a “small dip” in business in 2025 after the mass firings, and also during the government shutdown, he said.

“Typically, we would get a catering order for the CDC. We saw it less, less, and less. It’s not a really big impact, but catering is a big order; it is a lot of money,” he said. “So it does affect us.”

The CDC falls under the purview of the .

“HHS under the Biden administration became a bloated bureaucracy, growing its budget by 38% and its workforce by 17%,” HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said of the cuts and attrition. “The Department continues to close wasteful and duplicative entities, including those that are at odds with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again agenda.”

Since the mass firings began, former CDC workers and their supporters have protested outside the agency’s main entrance during the afternoon rush hour.

On a recent Tuesday, a bigger crowd than usual 鈥� about 75 people 鈥� lined up along the sidewalk. It had been a year since the first massive cuts, which occurred in mid-February 2025. CDC workers dubbed it the “Valentine’s Day massacre.”

Protesters waved handmade signs with slogans such as “We love CDC workers” and “Save Public Health.” Passing drivers honked in solidarity.

Among the protesters was Ben McKenzie, who is still employed as a CDC researcher.

“It’s been heartbreaking to see so many talented, able colleagues be forced out or leave,” he said.

Current employees also need support, he said, especially after a man opened fire on CDC buildings last summer. The DeKalb County police officer David Rose before killing himself.

“I think we’ve all felt the emotional impact of being targets,” McKenzie said. “Right now, to work at CDC is in a lot of ways to be a target.”

Multiple CDC employees told 麻豆女优 Health News and NPR the federal government has yet to fully fix the damage to the windows and buildings hit in last year’s shooting.

McKenzie helps run a , one of several that have sprung up in Atlanta. He said the group has distributed more than $200,000 to help former CDC workers with rent and other needs.

This article is from a partnership with and .

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Mientras revisaba su historial y signos vitales, Supiano, geriatra en la Universidad de Utah, observó una señal preocupante: su presión arterial era de 148/86, por encima de lo normal a pesar de que tomaba dos medicamentos para bajarla. “Claramente era demasiado alta”, dijo recientemente.

Varios factores podrían haber contribuido a ese número, incluidos el medicamento antiinflamatorio que la mujer de 78 años tomaba para el dolor de artritis, una dieta alta en sodio y la falta de ejercicio regular. También le dijo a Supiano que solía beber un par de copas de vino cada noche.

Después de que Supiano hablara con ella sobre formas de reducir su riesgo, la mujer y su esposo se inscribieron en un gimnasio. Dejó el antiinflamatorio y redujo la sal y el alcohol, lo que llevó su presión sistólica a un rango de 130 a 140 鈥攖odavía hipertensión, según las publicadas por la Asociación Americana del Corazón (AHA) y el Colegio Americano de Cardiología (ACC) a finales de ese año, pero más aceptable. (La sistólica es el número superior en la medición de la presión arterial y el más importante desde el punto de vista clínico).

Sin embargo, para 2019, la paciente tenía un diagnóstico de deterioro cognitivo leve y comenzaban a surgir evidencias médicas sobre la relación entre la hipertensión (el término médico para presión arterial alta) y la demencia. “No fui tan agresivo como debí haber sido”, recordó Supiano. Agregó un tercer medicamento para la hipertensión y sus cifras bajaron a 120 o menos.

Las guías cambiantes para el control de la presión arterial pueden recordar a las personas de mayor edad un baile de moda en su juventud: el limbo. Como decía Chubby Checker: “驴Qué tan bajo puedes llegar?”

Durante más de 25 años, una lectura de 140/90 o menos se consideró normal, según las guías de la AHA/ACC. Pero la actualización de 2017 introdujo cambios importantes, respaldados por los resultados del , que incluyó a adultos mayores de 50 años con alto riesgo cardiovascular.

El ensayo SPRINT encontró que un tratamiento intensivo dirigido a reducir la presión sistólica por debajo de 120 disminuía el riesgo de ataques cardíacos, accidentes cerebrovasculares, otras enfermedades cardiovasculares y la mortalidad general de manera tan significativa que los investigadores para ofrecer recomendaciones.

Consideraron que no era ético negar a la mitad de los participantes los beneficios del tratamiento intensivo. Por eso, las guías de 2017 recomendaron medicación para quienes tenían una presión sistólica superior a 130.

Las , publicadas a finales del año pasado, promueven un control aún más estricto. Recomiendan que los pacientes con riesgo cardiovascular busquen cifras sistólicas por debajo de 120 y también consideran ese objetivo “razonable” incluso para quienes no tienen alto riesgo.

Lecturas que no hace mucho se consideraban normales; ahora se definen como hipertensión.

La presión arterial normalmente aumenta con la edad porque “con el endurecimiento de las arterias, el corazón tiene que bombear con más fuerza”, dijo Erica Spatz, directora del programa de salud cardiovascular preventiva de la Facultad de Medicina de Yale. Entre 2021 y 2023, de los adultos mayores de 65 años tenían hipertensión, según la definición vigente en ese momento.

Pero las revisiones recientes podrían “definir a muchas más personas como hipertensas”, señaló Rita Redberg, cardióloga de la Universidad de California en San Francisco (UCSF).

Para Supiano, y que muestran beneficios cognitivos con cifras más bajas “han inclinado la balanza” para los adultos mayores. “Lo que es bueno para el corazón es bueno para el cerebro”, dijo, calificando esos hallazgos como “una forma de lograr que las personas presten más atención a su presión arterial. Puede que no quieran vivir más tiempo, pero sí quieren mantener su capacidad cognitiva por más tiempo”.

Casi todas las principales asociaciones médicas, incluida la Sociedad Americana de Geriatría (AGS), de cuya junta Supiano es presidente, han respaldado las nuevas guías.

“Antes era más flexible con muchos de mis pacientes mayores”, dijo John Dodson, cardiólogo e investigador en NYU Langone Health. “Si trataba en exceso la presión arterial alta, podían ocurrir cosas malas”.

Una presión arterial demasiado baja 鈥攈ipotensión鈥� puede causar mareos, desmayos o lesiones por caídas.

Ahora, dijo Dodson, “trato a mis pacientes mayores de manera más agresiva”.

Los estudios han demostrado que tratar la hipertensión . Y aunque los adultos mayores en el ensayo SPRINT tuvieron más lesiones por caídas, que en quienes tuvieron el tratamiento estándar. Entre los mayores de 75 años, fue de en ambos grupos.

Otro cambio importante: las nuevas guías recomiendan el monitoreo en casa.

“La presión arterial es complicada”, señaló Spatz. “Varía a lo largo del día, dependiendo de si una persona acaba de despertarse, de comer o si hace calor”. Las cifras sistólicas pueden variar 30 puntos o más en un solo día.

Y casi siempre son más altas en el consultorio. “No quiero basarme demasiado en una sola medición”, dijo Spatz.

“Tal vez el paciente tiene síndrome de bata blanca”, explicó, refiriéndose a la ansiedad ante médicos y exámenes, “o tuvo una discusión con el encargado del estacionamiento” antes de llegar.

Spatz pide a los pacientes que registren su presión arterial dos veces al día durante una o dos semanas antes de sus citas. Algunos doctores recetan monitores de 24 horas para el hogar.

驴Adoptarán los pacientes el monitoreo en casa y un tratamiento más agresivo? Los cardiólogos señalan que la hipertensión, casi siempre sin síntomas, sigue siendo tratada de forma insuficiente a pesar de las nuevas guías.

Es poco probable que el costo sea un obstáculo. La mayoría de los pacientes necesita dos o tres medicamentos para bajar la presión arterial, pero como son genéricos, “son muy baratos, alrededor de $5 al mes”, y rara vez interactúan con otros medicamentos que suelen tomar los adultos mayores, dijo Supiano. Un monitor de presión arterial para uso en casa o un poco más si transmite datos digitalmente.

Aunque algunos efectos secundarios son graves 鈥攗na caída puede cambiar la vida鈥�, la mayoría de las complicaciones “afortunadamente son transitorias, reversibles y bastante leves”, dijo.

Sin embargo, las guías también tienen críticos. Redberg, por ejemplo, aconseja a sus pacientes mayores sobre dieta, ejercicio y pérdida de peso, pero no les recomienda iniciar medicamentos para reducir una presión sistólica de 135 a menos de 120.

Ya parecen demasiado preocupados por su presión arterial, dijo, y agregó: “Los animo a salir y disfrutar”.

“隆Tomen una clase! 隆Vayan a un museo!”, dijo. “No pueden hacer eso si están en casa midiéndose la presión cinco veces al día”.

Aunque los ensayos y las guías abordan beneficios para la población en general 鈥攊ncluso pequeñas reducciones en la demencia tendrían un gran impacto鈥� no sirven para predecir resultados individuales.

La , usada para estimar si una persona obtendría beneficios cardiovasculares del tratamiento de la hipertensión, no ha sido validada en personas mayores de 79 años y no considera los beneficios cognitivos, indicó Supiano.

Para personas con otras enfermedades graves 鈥攑acientes con cáncer o residentes de hogares de cuidado con demencia, por ejemplo鈥� controlar la presión arterial puede no ser una prioridad.

El tiempo también es un factor al evaluar riesgos y beneficios. Un metaanálisis de pacientes mayores realizado por Sei Lee, geriatra en UCSF, y sus colegas encontró que, por cada 200 pacientes en tratamiento intensivo para la hipertensión, se necesitarían

Reducir una presión arterial muy alta es más sencillo y más importante que intentar bajar una cifra de 130 a menos de 120, explicó Lee. “Habría que esforzarse mucho más, agregar un tercer o cuarto medicamento y el riesgo de efectos secundarios es mayor”.

La paciente de 78 años de Supiano sí alcanzó ese objetivo y se mantuvo bien durante seis o siete años. Luego, como ocurre con muchos pacientes con deterioro cognitivo leve, comenzó a empeorar y finalmente recibió un diagnóstico de Alzheimer.

Dado lo que informan los investigadores sobre los beneficios cognitivos de tratar la hipertensión, “tal vez le dio un par de años más de buena calidad”, reflexionó. “Tal vez retrasó la progresión”. O tal vez, dijo, debería haber iniciado el tratamiento intensivo antes.

The New Old Age se produce en colaboración con .

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• (starts at 21:03).
• Read Rayasam’s “When Health Insurance Costs More Than the Mortgage.”

麻豆女优 Health News rural health reporter Andrew Jones discussed the spread of measles across the Carolinas on WUNC’s Due South on March 17.

• Read Jones’ “Hospitals Fighting Measles Confront a Challenge: Few Doctors Have Seen It Before.”

Céline Gounder, 麻豆女优 Health News’ editor-at-large for public health, discussed on CBS News 24/7’s The Daily Report on March 16 how U.S. hospitals and insurers are turning to AI to settle disputes over medical claims and payments. On March 17, she outlined the court ruling blocking the Trump administration’s vaccine policy changes for children on CBS News’ CBS Mornings. Gounder also discussed Susie Wiles’ decision to stay on as White House chief of staff amid breast cancer treatment on CBS News 24/7’s The Takeout on March 16.

麻豆女优 Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at 麻豆女优鈥攁n independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about .

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