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It has now been over a year since President Trump signed executive orders eliminating federal diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) programs and related initiatives, reshaping policies and priorities across federal agencies, research, and education. Additionally, the Trump administration’s workforce reshaping initiatives, including reductions in force, the Deferred Resignation Program, early retirement incentives and a hiring freeze have led to major declines in the federal workforce which have reduced resources available to support efforts to address disparities. While some efforts have been halted or modified by court rulings, the Trump administration has continued to take steps to remove staff, programs,…
Yolibeth’s 4-year-old daughter scrambled headfirst onto a cushy leather love seat at their home near New Orleans and pushed a hairbrush into the hands of Miriam Romero, a health coordinator who works with the family. Romero placed the girl in her lap and started brushing her dark hair. Yolibeth, a 38-year-old single mother who moved to South Louisiana from Honduras 15 years ago, watched them, smiling. The daughter is the youngest of five children living in this mixed-status household. Yolibeth and her two oldest kids don’t have legal immigration status, but the other three — ages 4, 9, and 13…
U.S. health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pursuing federal government access to most Americans’ medical records, in a quest to research a link between vaccines and autism — a connection the medical establishment studied for decades and flatly rejects. The Department of Health and Human Services is seeking data from little-known state systems that allow hospitals and clinics to exchange detailed, identifiable patient information, KFF Health News has learned. In private meetings, some public health leaders have objected to giving Kennedy’s team access to such data, raising doubts that it’s legal or that the information would even be useful.…
Hundreds of women with hard-to-treat ovarian cancer could benefit from a new, life-extending drug on the NHS from today – the first new addition to NHS treatment in over 20 years. The new targeted therapy – mirvetuximab soravtansine – will be offered to patients living with ovarian cancer whose disease has stopped responding to standard (platinum-based) chemotherapy, providing new hope of extra time to live. The drug combines a ‘homing’ antibody with a cancer-killing medicine – often described by scientists as a ‘biological missile’ or ‘trojan horse’ therapy. It works by attaching to ovarian cancer cells that have a protein…
The Trump administration’s rollout of a federal mandate that millions of Americans on Medicaid must work or risk losing health benefits will force states to scrap months of preparation, according to advocates for Medicaid enrollees and consultants advising states. And they say an overhaul — less than seven months before states must start enforcing the requirement — will be costly. Regulations issued June 1 by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services dictate many granular details about how the new work requirements will play out. They cover how states should check whether Medicaid enrollees are following the rules, and how…
W|HO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus speaking at Wednesday’s press briefing. The World Health Organization’s estimate of the number of suspected, but as yet unconfirmed, cases of the deadly Ebola Bundibugyo virus has sharply declined from over 1000 a week ago to just 116 today, WHO on Wednesday. That doesn’t mean that the tide has yet turned on the outbreak. But WHO officials sounded notes of cautious optimism about the surge response to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s isolated eastern region at a press briefing in Geneva. This, after a delayed start in a region besieged by conflict, displacement,…
The chair of the NHS’s groundbreaking new online hospital trust has been named as business leader and former supermarket chief executive John Browett. NHS Online, which will provide virtual specialist care for patients through the NHS App and video consultations, has now been formally established as the Online NHS Trust. John is a former chief executive of Tesco.com and has also held senior leadership roles at Dixons, Apple and Dunelm. He is currently chair of the Institute of Directors and is the former chair of Octopus Group and former non-executive director at EasyJet. John Browett said: “I’m delighted to take…
PORT HURON, Mich. — State health officials urged parents in several counties to vaccinate babies against measles ahead of schedule this spring as cases multiplied in Michigan. The outbreaks of the highly contagious virus — which can lead to brain swelling, deafness, and death — came as parents are opting school-age kids out of vaccinations at a record-high rate. It’s a situation state officials have spent more than a decade trying to avoid. For years, they’ve been trying to make it harder for parents to send their kids to school unvaccinated. But those efforts have backfired in places like St.…
Researchers found that tobacco companies expanded into the food industry, applying their knowledge about flavours, design and strategy to develop addictive food products. Tobacco companies have helped to engineer and scale up the ultra-processed food (UPF) industry, developing addictive products that are driving obesity, cancer, dementia and chronic diseases like diabetes. This is according to one of the most comprehensive reviews of the drivers and impact of UFP, published in the American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) on Wednesday. The researchers define UPF as products that people can’t make in their own kitchens – primarily because they contain additives such…
About a year ago at Erlanger Baroness, the largest hospital in Chattanooga, anesthesia staff noticed that a nurse was slurring his words and struggling to stay awake while on duty in the surgery center, according to a Tennessee Board of Nursing consent order. In the days that followed, the nurse failed a drug test and was fired, the order states. The nurse later admitted that for months he had pilfered and abused fentanyl left over after surgeries, sometimes daily, according to the order. Under most circumstances, this would be a routine case of what is known as “drug diversion,” the…
Un hombre albanés dijo que el dolor se volvió tan insoportable que se arrancó él mismo un diente mientras languidecía durante meses en un centro de detención de inmigrantes en Nuevo México. Una hondureña, madre de dos hijos, contó que fue internada por un problema cardíaco después de que le negaran medicamentos para la presión arterial mientras estaba detenida en Florida. Un venezolano dijo que la pierna se le hinchó y se le puso morada por una bacteria come carne porque el personal de un centro en Vermont no lo llevó a su cita médica programada. Cientos de detenidos en…
Unusually warm ocean waters in the tropical Pacific Ocean is linked to the development of El Niño conditions. Global leaders and policymakers must prepare for above-average temperatures until at least August due to El Niño conditions, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned. In a new update, the WMO indicated an 80% likelihood of an El Niño event during June–August, with a 90% probability that this could continue until at least November. Rainfall and hurricane patterns will shift globally, with dry regions in Amazon and more wildfires in Australia, while heatwaves and droughts will intensify in other areas – all affecting…
STATUTORYHelms Amendment (1973)Prohibits the use of foreign assistance to pay for the performance of abortion as a method of family planning or to motivate or coerce any person to practice abortion. Note: meaning of “motivate” clarified by Leahy Amendment (1994); see below.AbortionAll foreign assistance authorized under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961(FAA); all funds under State-Foreign Operations Appropriations (State-Foreign Ops.)Yes, in effect.Permanent law, amendment to the FAA.Also included in annual State-Foreign Ops.Involuntary Sterilization Amendment (1978)Prohibits the use of funds to pay for involuntary sterilizations as a method of family planning or to coerce or provide a financial incentive to anyone…
An Albanian man’s pain grew so unbearable, he said, he pulled out his own tooth as he languished for months in a New Mexico immigration detention center. A Honduran mother of two said she was hospitalized for a heart problem after she was denied blood pressure medications while held in Florida. A Venezuelan man said his leg grew purple and swollen from flesh-eating bacteria when staffers at a Vermont facility did not bring him to a scheduled doctor appointment. Hundreds of detainees across at least 33 states allege in federal suits that immigration detention facilities are failing to provide adequate…
Transcript AI Usage Disclosure: This transcript was created with assistance from AI tools. It was reviewed and edited by KFF Staff. Chip Kahn: Now we move from the health system actually deploying AI inside its hospitals to the health care company doing it across the full stack. One organization bearing the financial risk for care, delivering that care, building the AI that informs coverage decisions, and running the analytics that tie it all together. My guest today is Dr. Patrick Conway, CEO of Optum. No one else in American health care has occupied all four of Patrick’s positions. Regulator at CMS; payer at Blue…
(Candice Evers for WPLN and KFF Health News) Jill Woodrow reached a tipping point as a caregiver when her mom began struggling to communicate information about her latest doctor appointments. Woodrow’s mother, a uterine cancer survivor, was seeing specialists to get to the bottom of several new, concerning symptoms. “When she would try to tell us about what happened or what the conversation was, she couldn’t remember,” Woodrow said. So Woodrow, a school therapist, started taking her mom to medical appointments. Woodrow was able to ask doctors questions and explain their answers. But it was difficult to juggle her mom’s…