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The Trump administration has changed the way it counts measles deaths amid an outbreak in Pennsylvania, which on Sunday saw the third apparent measles-related death in the state reported by a local coroner. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now using data from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), which is a way to track mortality trends over time, according to a note published to the agency’s website on Sept. 4. It’s a “puzzling” move, said Debra Houry, a former CDC chief medical officer. “The change doesn’t make any sense,” she added. (Schreiber, 9/14)

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is scheduled to give a keynote address this week at a conference for Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine advocacy organization he co-founded and led prior to becoming head of the nation’s health agency. For the past year Kennedy has worked to distance himself from the efforts of Children’s Health Defense, a group that questions the safety and efficacy of childhood vaccines and is a leading force of the anti-vaccination movement. (Weixel, 9/14)

As the FDA marches toward the likely first approval of a psychedelic medicine, the agency today convened a hearing seeking public input on how these drugs should be used, monitored and continuously studied in the real world. The biggest question swirling around the hearing was one of access. Should a psychedelic medicine be approved, who would the FDA allow to administer it? And how would that decision impact patients' ability to actually receive the treatment? (Incorvaia, 9/14)

The FDA approved aminolevulinic acid hydrochloride 10% (Ameluz) in combination with photodynamic therapy for treating adults with superficial basal cell carcinoma, maker Biofrontera announced on Monday. The approval represents a non-surgical option for the most common type of skin cancer. The photosensitizing gel must be applied by a healthcare provider and is meant to be used with the company's BF-RhodoLED lamp. The same topical gel/red-light device combination was previously approved for actinic keratoses of the face and scalp in adults. (Ingram, 9/14)

The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services has provided the greatest detail to date about how states can determine who is exempt from Medicaid work requirements for “medical frailty.” The guidance, issued in the form of a slide presentation last Tuesday, offers a blueprint for states as they hustle to figure out how to implement the “medical frailty” exemption, which has been a sticking point. Yet it leaves many questions for states, providers and insurers to sort out. (Early, 9/14)

New research from the Urban Institute finds that millions of young adults could lose Medicaid coverage when work requirements are implemented next year. The report, released Monday by the left-leaning think tank, found that as many as 2.3 million people between the ages of 19 and 24 could drop out of Medicaid due to the work requirements, particularly as the need for more frequent check-ins ramps up. (Minemyer, 9/14)

�Թϲ�����: A Cancer Survivor Hoped To Work — Then She Lost Her Medicaid Disability Coverage

Taya Hailstone has been in remission from childhood Hodgkin lymphoma for five years. But the cancer’s lasting damage to her organs and nerves can make basic tasks, like loading a dishwasher, hard. Still, Montana’s health department decided last year that Hailstone is no longer eligible for low-cost disability health coverage through Medicaid. The department switched her coverage to the state’s Children’s Health Insurance Program, another Medicaid program — three months before she aged out. (Houghton, 9/15)

At the heart of the dispute is the interpretation of “disability” under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which defines a person with a disability as someone who “has a mental or physical impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.” According to court documents, the worker in Butler v. FedEx Supply Chain Inc. had a hemorrhoids condition that, when he experienced a flareup, caused pain and bleeding during bowel movements, as well as pain when sitting, walking and standing. The pain “was far from trivial,” EEOC noted, requiring him to use a special pillow to sit and sometimes even be on bed rest. (9/11)

Down a short gravel track in a largely nondescript corner of Louisiana sits a gas processing facility, operated by a company whose chief executive is a major donor to Donald Trump. It may be the largest emitter of methane in the US. The Energy Transfer site, located near the city of Shreveport, is named as the biggest single “super emitter” in new rankings of US oil and gas operations for the largest releases of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that is rapidly overheating our planet, according to a new UCLA study, which is based on satellite data. (Milman, 9/14)

Immigrants at the Florida detention center known as Alligator Alcatraz were kept in “small metal enclosures” for up to nearly two hours in what the Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog is calling a highly unusual and inhumane detention practice. The DHS Office of Inspector General report says the enclosures were 4 feet 3 inches wide and 7 feet 9 inches tall. The facility’s staff referred to them as “calming areas.” Investigators said they learned of at least one instance where the cage may have been used to discipline a detainee. Investigators described the use of cages as “a practice unlike any” they had observed at Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities. (Foster-Frau, 9/14)

As a transgender woman, Channel Ferro Badell has spent her life fleeing discrimination, trafficking and abuse — first in Uruguay, where she was born, then in Argentina, where she is a citizen. But few experiences compare to what she suffered during her time in ICE custody, she told me. “In six months I was taken to six facilities,” she wrote in Spanish in messages to The Marshall Project. “In every one, the situation is the same: Violence is tolerated within ICE.” (Schwartzapfel, 9/12)

A federal judge on Monday issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from upending a long-standing policy that allows foreign students and scholars to stay in the U.S. for the duration of their training, a decision that suggests that plaintiffs opposed to the policy change are likely to ultimately succeed. (Wosen and Oza, 9/14)

Democratic-led states and cities filed lawsuits Monday challenging a federal rule set to begin Friday that they say gives President Donald Trump’s administration broad discretion to deny green cards to immigrants who rely on public assistance for food, healthcare, housing and other basic needs. (Marcelo, 9/14)

Herlain, a registered nurse who was born in Haiti, barely leaves her house these days. The few times she has, she was terrified. She instructed her family members about how to record on their phones in case she gets detained by federal immigration authorities. "You would think I was on the run," she told NPR. "Who am I on the run from? This is crazy!" Even at home she fears strangers and refused to open the door to a salesman who requested water on a humid Florida day during a recent heatwave. "That's not me. I'm a nurse, I help people," she recounted through tears. Herlain, along with nearly 350,000 other Haitian migrants, lost her temporary protected status, or TPS, in July. She asked NPR to only use her first name because of her immigration status. (Martínez-Beltrán, 9/15)

The rollout of a Medicare program that uses artificial intelligence to approve or deny care was hasty and error-ridden, according to more than a thousand pages of recently released documents and data. (Trang, 9/15)

The Trump administration is accelerating efforts to make artificial intelligence an integral part of medical care in the United States, throwing the resources and support of the federal government into projects that deploy A.I. agents to diagnose and prescribe treatments to patients. The multifront effort at the Department of Health and Human Services has raised concerns among some officials over the past few months that change is moving too quickly, with inadequate evidence of the technology’s safety and effectiveness, according to people who have been involved the discussions. They also worry about outsized influence of Silicon Valley investors that have previously played little role in federal health policy. (Jewett, 9/14)

The Department of Veterans Affairs is planning to expand the use of an artificial intelligence tool that records veteran-doctor conversations with patient consent after a series of rollouts it says have been successful. The VA first deployed the technology — known as ambient AI scribes — in October 2025 at 10 medical centers across the nation. After a series of pilots over the past year, the tools are now available to all VA Patient Aligned Care Teams’ primary care providers, behavioral health interdisciplinary program practitioners, physical medicine rehabilitation practitioners and medical and surgical specialists.  (Robles, 9/14)

Federal contracts, Medicare pilots and new state laws have pushed artificial intelligence from the edges of clinical practice into the middle of it. (Littrell, 9/14)

As artificial intelligence begins to transform the workforce and reshape industries, one Bay Area healthcare system is using the technology to support doctors and streamline care. Sutter Health, a not-for-profit healthcare system based in Sacramento, serves more than 3.5 million patients throughout Northern and Central California and has significantly expanded its use of artificial intelligence in clinical care in recent years. (Gibbs, 9/14)

Machine learning enables computers to learn from data and use that knowledge to make predictions or decisions. In health care, machine learning supports tasks such as disease diagnosis, predicting disease progression, treatment planning and patient monitoring. (Skeidsvoll, 9/14)

Pfas companies are launching a “tidal wave” of forever chemicals production to meet demand from the AI industry, a campaign organisation has warned. Despite alarm over the chemicals, which have been linked to cancer, a survey of the 10 biggest manufacturers found most had plans to increase production. Many frame their investments around the “AI revolution”, because of the role Pfas play in semiconductor production and next-generation datacentre cooling systems. (Gayle, 9/14)

Bill Gates is warning technology companies and world leaders that they must act now to ensure artificial intelligence combats social inequities rather than deepening disparities — and his foundation is pledging $1 billion to improve access. (Pollard, 9/15)

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on Monday announced a record-high $1.17 billion in grants to continue to fight veteran homelessness. Grants were awarded to 680 organizations across the nation to help veterans who are either homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. The grants will be distributed in Fiscal Year 2027 and come after the agency touted housing 51,936 homeless veterans in FY25—a seven-year high. (Mordowanec, 9/14)

A federal judge has temporarily blocked enforcement of Illinois’ new medical aid-in-dying law against Catholic healthcare providers, siding with a lawsuit from Cardinal Blase Cupich a day after a different judge refused to block the law entirely in a separate case. (Gorner, 9/14)

Starting this week, Minnesota will no longer allow the use of hotel rooms to provide what’s called “crisis respite.” It’s a Medicaid-funded program aimed at providing care and supervision to people experiencing mental health crises. (Moini and Elder, 9/14)

Tiffinne Perkins, a nurse practitioner who ran an Ohio-based weight-loss clinic called Enbody, appeared on the local news and lifestyle morning show “New Day Cleveland.” “How many people got skinny thanks to you lately?” asked the host, in a segment sponsored by Enbody. (Janin, 9/14)

Connecticut insurance officials have signed off on an average rate hike of 11.3% for 2027 state-regulated, individual health plans. They also approved an average increase of 15.1% for small group policies. (Carlesso, 9/14)

�Թϲ�����: Rising Healthcare Costs Have Hit Georgia’s Most Conservative District. But Its Politics Are Unlikely To Change

Amber Bates of Cohutta, Georgia, is one of thousands of people without health insurance in the 14th Congressional District, home to about 765,000 people in the northwestern corner of the state. She and her husband have not had health coverage for the past two years, Bates said, because their employment is unsteady and they earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, the public health insurance for those with disabilities or low incomes. (Lumpkins, 9/15)

Florida is among the states receiving new federal funding to strengthen behavioral health services, including more than $8 million for the state's 988 suicide and crisis helplines. (Mayer, 9/15)

The administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis is still not giving firm answers on when — or whether — it intends to expand a safety-net healthcare program for low-income children that the Florida Legislature has approved. (Sexton, 9/14)

Close to 25,000 Californians could see a change in their medication starting as soon as next year if Gov. Gavin Newsom signs legislation now sitting on his desk. (Ibarra, 9/14)

It was a stressful Tuesday morning in San Francisco, and Christina Lacourte went to her son’s bedroom to roust him for school. The door was locked, so she had to wrangle it open with a coat hanger. Inside, she saw her son in his bed, under the neon storefront “Open” sign he had wanted for his birthday in sixth grade. His face was turning blue, and his veins were visible. Black fluid oozed out of his nose and mouth and pooled on his sheets. She raced to retrieve the two doses of Narcan she kept in her kitchen drawer for exactly this moment, the one she had long feared, but they did not revive him. (Knight, 9/14)

It had been four days since Jae Janea had spoken to anyone. The loneliness was setting in. Dark thoughts were becoming overwhelming. So on a summer evening last year she walked into a dollar store and bought a pack of razor blades.  (Durham, 9/14)

In March 2021, Berkeley, Calif., became the first city in the world to ban the display of sugary beverages and snacks in store checkout lanes, where candy, chocolate and soda are commonly placed to encourage impulse buying while shoppers are in line. A new study led by researchers at Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) and the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) examined the effects of this healthy checkout ordinance (HCO) on shoppers' purchasing decisions and found that the policy was linked to a decrease in soda sales and small-package candy sales in supermarkets, but not total candy sales. (9/11)

Employers across Southwest and Southside Virginia are seeking to hire more than 5,000 registered nurses and thousands of other healthcare professionals, according to a new report. (Schabacker, 9/15)

About 150 doctors at Allina Health’s Mercy Hospital in Coon Rapids and its Unity campus in Fridley began a four-day strike Monday after three years of failed contract negotiations. Dozens of doctors and nurses rallied outside Mercy Hospital in a demonstration held by Doctors Council-SEIU, the union that represents the physicians. (Zurek, 9/14)

GoHealth is winding down its Chicago headquarters just months after attempting a reorganization in bankruptcy court. The online health insurance exchange operator says in a filing with the state of Illinois it will lay off 103 of 111 employees at the Merchandise Mart, ranging from the C-suite to the call center. (Pletz, 9/14)

In 2022, North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services approved new hospital beds to be built in Western North Carolina for the first time in more than a decade. According to the formula the state uses annually to determine which areas require expanded medical services, Buncombe and its neighboring counties were due for 67 more acute care beds. (Thomae, 9/15)

Health systems are spending big on talent, technology and infrastructure to move increasingly complex procedures outside the hospital and into lower-cost outpatient facilities. Payers offering value-based care arrangements and higher reimbursements for outpatient care, plus a need for greater inpatient capacity for the sickest patients, are compelling system leaders to rethink where higher-acuity care is delivered. The transition to outpatient facilities for specialties such as orthopedics, cardiology and oncology requires steep investments upfront that systems hope will pay off in long-term cost savings and stronger margins. (Hudson, 9/14)

GE HealthCare may be talking with cancer scan chemicals company Sofie Biosciences for a billion-dollar acquisition, the Financial Times reports. GEHC, the Chicago-based medical imaging giant, could take over the private equity-backed Sofie, which produces radioactive chemicals used in PET scans for cancer. The deal could tie into GEHC’s theranostics specialty, a burgeoning nuclear medicine strategy for the company. (Asplund, 9/14)

A coalition of 67 health care industry and advocacy groups is urging Congress to revisit a surprise medical billing law to address an unforeseen problem from its enactment: the ballooning costs of settling disputes when services are performed out of network. (Cohen, 9/14)

Few patients appeal when insurers decline to pay for their care. Many don’t even know they can. But new data show that when they do, they frequently win — in some plans, nine out of 10 times. That dynamic means many Americans can’t get the care their doctors have prescribed without first wading through a bureaucratic process known as prior authorization. Insurers use the practice to decide whether they’ll cover a procedure or drug, and to help avert what they deem unnecessary care. But the high rate at which some companies overturn their own decisions raises questions about why they’re denying so many doctors’ orders in the first place. (Tozzi, Meghjani and Swetlitz, 9/14)

Life expectancy for people diagnosed as having autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is 14 years less than for people without the condition, with influenza- and pneumonia-related death contributing to the gap, researchers from Columbia University and University of Colorado Anschutz report in JAMA Network Open. For the study, published last week, the study team analyzed enhanced Medicaid data and linked National Death Index data for all US Medicaid beneficiaries from 2000 to 2020. (Van Beusekom, 9/14)

Abbott Laboratories will pay $385 million to resolve claims tied to an investigation of contamination at a baby formula factory in Sturgis, Michigan, the largest in the country, which led to the supply shortages in 2022. Problems at the facility prompted a lawsuit by the Justice Department and recall of powdered infant formula at the facility. The recall covered several infant formula brands, including Similac, and squeezed inventory that had already been strained by supply chain disruptions and stockpiling during COVID-19 shutdowns. (Chapman, 9/14)

Here’s an unwelcome bit of news as Fido or Socks cuddles up to you for attention — they could be carrying antibiotic-resistant strains of a bacterium known to cause serious infections. Nearly half of samples collected from dogs and cats across dozens of countries contained strains of Klebsiella pneumoniae with high levels of antibiotic resistance, researchers reported recently in the journal Transboundary and Emerging Diseases. Klebsiella — a bacteria found in human feces — can cause pneumonia, sepsis and urinary tract infections, researchers said in background notes. (Thompson, 9/15)

A natural compound found in blueberries, grapes and other berries could help muscles burn excess fat instead of storing it. Researchers in Japan identified the compound, called pterostilbene, and found that it reduced fat buildup by increasing the breakdown of stored fat in laboratory tests using mouse muscle cells. Pterostilbene works by protecting PPARδ, or PPAR-delta, a protein that helps cells burn fatty acids for energy. By preventing PPARδ from breaking down, the compound boosts the activity of genes involved in converting fat into energy. (Sitz, 9/14)

About eight-in-ten U.S. adults say they are currently taking at least one supplement for their health, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. And most people who do this say supplements are at least somewhat important to their health. Vitamins and minerals (such as iron, calcium or multivitamins) are by far the most common supplement. Two-thirds of Americans say they are currently taking vitamin or mineral supplements for their health. (Kikuchi and Kennedy, 9/10)

Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have announced that the Ebola outbreak ravaging parts of the country has reached its peak. For the first time since the epidemic was declared in May, the numbers of people becoming infected is slowing down, according to officials. (Ngorora, 9/15)

GSK is consolidating two of its influenza vaccine manufacturing sites into one, leaving hundreds of jobs at risk. GSK currently manufactures egg-based flu vaccines in Dresden, Germany, and Ste-Foy, Canada. But citing shrinking demand for traditional egg-based flu vaccines, the U.K. Big Pharma said it will be focusing on its Canadian site, at the expense of Dresden. (Adams, 9/14)

Chile has become the first country in South America to eliminate dog-transmitted rabies to humans, following more than five decades of public health “prevention and surveillance,” the World Health Organization said Monday. The WHO said the last reported case of dog-to-human rabies occurred in 1972. “This validation reflects decades of commitment to protecting communities from rabies and demonstrates the impact of sustained investment in public health,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement. (Batschke, 9/14)

Any parent of a young child has likely spent time supervising ricocheting kids in an inflatable bouncy castle. But an outbreak report last week in Eurosurveillance might give them some second thoughts. (Dall, 9/14)

When I was a child, a speck of lead escaped the tailpipe of a passing car, drifted through the air and lodged deep in my lungs. There it dissolved across a tissue-thin membrane into my bloodstream. Then the toxic metal atoms became microscopic wrecking balls in my body. (Michael J. Coren and Aaron Steckelberg, 9/15)

We can build a healthcare economy where efficiency is profitable, and health keeps the engine running. (Joshua Resnikoff, 9/14)

An opinion piece arguing that autism awareness alone is not enough, calling for better support systems, more precise diagnoses, and genuine inclusion in education, healthcare and employment. (Cristina Busu, 9/14)

When I became the first executive director of the country’s oldest statewide tobacco control coalition in 1999, conversations were already underway about how Colorado should spend its share of funds distributed to states from the landmark tobacco settlement. (Susan Morrisey, 9/15)

There is no effective screening for ovarian cancer, but this procedure can help prevent it. (Leana S. Wen, 9/15)