Author: admin
The ‘Kick Big Soda Out’ movement wants FIFA to drop Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of the Football World Cup. Ahead of the kick-off of the World Cup football tournament on Thursday, global health advocates are demanding that FIFA, the international football federation, ends its partnership with Coca-Cola by 2030. Coca-Cola has sponsored the FIFA World Cup, the world’s most-watched sporting tournament, since 1978. Its sponsorship agreement, which makes up about 2% of FIFA’s income, is up for review in 2030. The “Kick Big Soda Out” movement has written to FIFA president Giovanni Infantino, demanding that the federation publicly commits to ending its sponsorship agreement…
DNDi, GARDP and MMV have signed a cooperation agreement to maximise efforts to develop low-cost medicines for neglected diseases. Three non-profit organisations involved in the research and development (R&D) of “effective, affordable, and life-saving medicines” are pooling resources to address the growing unmet needs of the world’s most vulnerable patients. The Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi), GARDP Foundation, and Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) announced a cooperation agreement on Monday to “explore how they can further pool their expertise and resources to strengthen the efficiency and coordination of their activities”. The cooperation focuses particularly on R&D, as well as…
Editorial Note: This brief expands and updates a prior KFF analysis on the impact of Title X and Medicaid funding on Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood clinics comprise a substantial portion of the nation’s reproductive health safety net. In recent years, actions across multiple branches of government—including federal agencies, Congress, the courts, and state governments—have placed considerable financial pressure on the organization, with implications for patient access to care. This pressure has primarily focused on the two main sources of public funding for these clinics: the federal Title X family planning program and Medicaid. This brief focuses on the status of these efforts as they…
Elizabeth Bonker is a silent woman with a loud mission. She wants government agencies to cover the costs of training people with autism in a form of communication called assisted spelling. One problem: Leading professional organizations don’t believe it works. “All nonspeakers above the age of 5 should be given the opportunity,” typed Bonker, who is 28 and cannot talk. Her mother, Virginia Breen, held a wireless keyboard for her. They sat on a hotel patio before an April 27 meeting with a senior aide to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “We are misunderstood and underestimated,”…
Jules Netherland traveled from her home in the Bronx to the New York state Capitol in Albany several times in the past few years, hoping to persuade the legislature to pass a medical aid in dying bill, allowing terminally ill patients to end their lives with a lethal prescription. She spoke at rallies. With other members of the advocacy organization Compassion & Choices, she visited legislators’ offices. In 2024, as the state Assembly was debating the aid in dying bill, she helped unfurl a banner in the chamber gallery that read, “Stop the Suffering.” Her activism was becoming difficult. Netherland,…
More than half a million NHS staff are being given access to new artificial intelligence (AI) tools that could free up an average of 2 days every month from admin duties, freeing up more time for the duties that matter most for patients and staff. NHS England announced today that it is significantly accelerating AI adoption across healthcare services by providing 505,000 clinicians and support staff with access to Microsoft 365 Copilot. The AI personal assistant helps clinicians to draft documents and analyse data more efficiently to focus more time on patient care. The agreement follows the largest AI trial…
New malaria medicines are on the way. But drug resistance is spreading across Africa, funding is collapsing, and the parasite that causes malaria is once again outrunning the tools built to kill it. GENEVA – Malaria has adapted and evolved for at least 30 million years. The oldest identified samples of the parasite were found in mosquitoes preserved in amber, from a family of insects ancient enough to have shared the planet with the dinosaurs. How many millions of people it has killed across the roughly 300,000 years our species has existed is uncountable. What we do know is how…
Céline Gounder, KFF Health News’ editor-at-large for public health, discussed a recent study that suggests ultraprocessed foods are linked to increased dementia risk on CBS News 24/7’s The Daily Report on June 3. Gounder also discussed the Ebola outbreak in central Africa and the impact of U.S. health funding cuts on CBS News’ CBS Mornings on June 3. On June 2, Gounder joined CBS News’ CBS Mornings to discuss a study that found women taking GLP-1 drugs had a lower rate of breast cancer diagnoses. She also discussed President Donald Trump’s new medical report and creatine supplements on CBS News…
As the current federal administration rounded up an increasing number of immigrants, with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding more than 75,000 in mid-January alone, we heard scattered, localized complaints from detainees alleging medical neglect. We wondered about the extent of the problems and whether the agency and its contractors were keeping pace with detainees’ medical needs nationwide. But no central repository exists, so we had to get creative — and dive into a trove of court records. Detainees are filing record numbers of habeas corpus petitions in federal court, arguing they’re being held illegally. Sometimes those cases mention medical…
Africa CDC Director General Dr Jean Kaseya and WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus addressing a joint media briefing on Friday. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention launched a joint continental preparedness response plan to address the current Ebola outbreak on Friday, based on 11 pillars and a $518 million budget. Earlier this week, the two groups reduced their Ebola case projections substantially after testing the backlog of suspected cases in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Ituri province, the epicentre of the outbreak, explained Dr Jean Kaseya, Africa CDC Director…
People with Medicare have the option of receiving their Medicare benefits through the traditional Medicare program administered by the federal government or through a private Medicare Advantage plan, such as an HMO or PPO. In Medicare Advantage, the federal government contracts with private insurers to provide Medicare benefits to enrollees. Medicare pays insurers a set amount per enrollee per month, which varies depending on the county in which the plan is located, the health status of the plan’s enrollees, the plan’s quality star rating, and the plan’s estimated costs of covering Medicare Part A and Part B services. The plans…
Enrollment in Medicare Advantage, the private plan alternative to traditional Medicare, has increased steadily over the past two decades, with more than half of eligible beneficiaries enrolled in Medicare Advantage since 2023. The growth in enrollment has implications for federal spending, because according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), Medicare payments to private plans are higher than spending for similar beneficiaries in traditional Medicare. In 2026, payments are 14% more per person, which translates into an additional $76 billion in federal spending this year. While payments per person relative to traditional Medicare are similar to a decade ago (15%…
More than 1 million children have lost insurance since President Donald Trump took office in 2025. Another million could lose it amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown and new Medicaid eligibility rules. On WAMU’s Health Hub on June 3, KFF Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner explained how fear and confusion complicate access to health coverage. (Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images) Last year’s big cuts to federal healthcare programs in the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act created an affordability crunch for many Americans. They’ve ushered in higher health insurance premiums and confusion about who’s covered under new Medicaid…
Having a baby in the United States is about to get more complicated. Under new billing codes that take effect in January, doctors who manage maternity care will start charging à la carte for visits and services related to pregnancy, childbirth, and postpartum care. It’s an about-face from recent years, when doctors have often received a single “bundled” payment for maternity care they provided. Although OB-GYNs strongly back the change and have pushed for it for years, some patient advocates and employers say it’s an open question whether the new system will result in better care or increased patient costs.…
Harrowing scenes are unfolding at health facilities at the epicenter of an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A 25-year-old midwife and a doctor in his early 30s are sick with Ebola symptoms, including fevers and severe joint pain, said their colleague Elisabeth Furaha, the medical director at SOFEPADI’s Karibuni Wa Mama Medical Center in the northeastern province of Ituri. They had cared for patients with similar symptoms in early May, before the outbreak was detected. One of the patients is now dead, Furaha said, and none of them has been tested for Ebola, even though samples were…
The WHO has called for countries to address unsafe food through a One Health approach, integrating human, animal and environmental health. Unsafe food causes 1.5 million deaths and 866 million illnesses each year – a burden similar to tuberculosis, according to World Health Organization (WHO) research published in The Lancet this week. The research assessed 42 major foodborne hazards – including bacteria, viruses, parasites and chemicals – from 194 countries between 2000 and 2021. Foodborne diseases are caused by eating food contaminated with biological or chemical hazards. Diarrhoeal diseases cause the most illnesses, but chemical hazards cause the most deaths.…