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The Trump administration permanently filled four key leadership roles at the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday, after it nominated Heidi Overton to lead the agency late last month. (Manto, 9/8)

The Trump administration is cracking down further on durable medical equipment (DME) suppliers as part of its broader push to root out fraud. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said Monday that it has identified 11 medical supply companies that it will block from receiving payments under Medicare Advantage or Medicare Part D. The agency said it suspects these firms were involved in more than $3.4 billion in fraudulent billing practices in 2025 and 2026. (Minemyer, 9/8)

The American Bar Association, the lawyers group that sets standards for the legal profession, eliminated on Tuesday a diversity requirement for law schools after facing pressure from the Trump administration. The bar association said that the diversity requirement could jeopardize its role as an accreditor that oversees nearly 200 juris doctorate programs. (Patel, 9/8)

The Trump administration’s mounting investigations and attacks on diversity initiatives have left medical schools facing a tough choice as they consider how to select incoming classes: stick with policies they see as core to their mission or risk critical federal funding. The legal landscape is unresolved, leaving some schools to weigh potential consequences in a high-profile, high-stakes fight. (Meckler and Svrluga, 9/9)

�Թϲ�����: Democrats Demand Trump Administration Halt Collection Of Patients' ER Records

A group of Democratic lawmakers is calling for the Trump administration to suspend a new surveillance program it quietly launched to collect the personal and identifiable health data of Americans who visit emergency rooms. �Թϲ����� first reported that the Consumer Product Safety Commission — a federal agency tasked with monitoring injuries from household items — was pressuring hospitals to provide a private company with personally identifiable health information for analysis. The rollout of the program has inspired broad pushback from hospitals and privacy advocates. (Seitz, Rosenfeld, and Tahir, 9/8)

Two days after a catastrophic earthquake shook Nepal in April 2015, the United States Agency for International Development deployed a 128-member disaster response team to assess how it could help and pledged $10 million in humanitarian aid. The agency later provided miles of tarp for shelters, helped build temporary schools out of bamboo and used mapping technology to help people find clean water. But two weeks after the country’s worst natural disaster since then — the flash floods triggered by a glacial fall that left more than 5,000 dead or missing — the United States has dialed back, sending $3.6 million to provide food for 10,000 households. (Das, Pradhan and Ghimire, 9/9)

An additional three dozen health facilities serving more than 400,000 people in Sudan are closing this year due to global aid cuts, worsening a dire humanitarian situation in a country torn by more than three years of war, aid groups said Tuesday. The cuts come to a health care system that once numbered 6,500 primary healthcare facilities and 300 public hospitals, but that already was decimated in the first year and a half of war. By September 2024, the World Health Organization said that up to 70-80% of facilities in the worst-hit areas were either closed or barely functioning. (Khaled, 9/9)

Democratic lawmakers in Congress are speaking out about an agreement that would allow the Department of Defense (DoD) to tap into billions of dollars in funding designated for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). (Dall, 9/8)

A House Democrat seeking reelection is selling Zyn-inspired campaign merchandise, leaning into an association with the explosively popular nicotine pouches that have devotees among the Trump administration. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) is selling a $50 “GLUE-ZYN-KAMP” storage tin on her office campaign website, mimicking the Zyn pouches’ ubiquitous circular container. The Democrat is among the party’s most vulnerable incumbents, running in a district President Trump carried three times. (Weixel, 9/8)

Republican Rick Jackson is pledging to close Georgia’s health insurance coverage gap by embracing what he calls an “intelligent Medicaid expansion” to address one of the state’s most politically contentious fights. (Bluestein, 9/8)

Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday accused previous New York City leaders of lying about air quality safety after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, resulting in residents and workers developing serious illnesses years later. “People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air,” he said at a news conference at City Hall, surrounded by politicians, relatives of those who died on Sept. 11 and advocates for the health of those now suffering from illnesses that surfaced years after the attacks. (Goldenberg, Agrawal and Goldstein, 9/8)

New York City released about 170,000 pages of documents related to post-9/11 air quality and health risks on Tuesday — a trove of paperwork within which some notes suggest city officials knew of the potential environmental dangers and legal exposure in the early aftermath of the terror attacks. One undated internal document — a letter to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s deputy mayor, Robert Harding — listed various potential grounds for lawsuits against the city, including health advisories that caused people to return to the area too soon, causing toxic exposure, rescue workers being provided with faulty equipment, and police failing to secure businesses from looters. (Russo, 9/9)

An Indiana prosecutor has declined to file criminal charges against the woman who made a false child welfare complaint against former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, which led investigators to the door of one of the country’s most prominent Democrats, resulting in his brief separation from his children. The caller has a long history of alcohol abuse and mental illness, E. Nelson Chipman Jr., a prosecutor in Indiana’s Marshall County, where investigators determined the call had originated, wrote to state police in a July 29 email outlining his decision. Her history includes “hallucinations and delusional thinking which includes frequently responding to voices only she hears,” he added. (George, 9/8)

Two-year-old Ta’Naja Barnes’ 2019 death was so horrific that legislators passed a law in her honor to ensure the Department of Children and Family Services would provide abused and neglected kids with continued support services once they’re returned to their parents. When she died, Ta’Naja was filthy and had a body temperature too low to measure. Just months before her death, DCFS returned Ta’Naja’s care to her mother and her mother’s boyfriend, who pleaded guilty to criminal charges related to the toddler’s death. (Hundsdorfer, 9/8)

Across several states, a quiet chemical industry campaign is making it harder to hold polluters accountable. (Alexander and Racino, 9/9)

Dr. Henry Heimlich devised a new technique more than 50 years ago to stop people from choking. Simplicity, studies, shrewd promotion by its inventor—and a demonstration on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson—made the Heimlich maneuver a go-to method. Now, it is fighting for the stage. (McKay, 9/9)

From a distance, the white van parked outside Duluth’s Damiano Center looks like a food truck. For the people lining up on this day, though, it’s there to meet a different kind of need. (Bari, 9/8)

A group of conservative investors is pressing companies to stop covering gender-transition surgery for minors in employee health plans, and Nike Inc. is their latest target. Inspire Investing, which oversees $5.4 billion, is leading an investor campaign that includes the Southern Baptists and the state of Nebraska against 242 large employers, saying that offering insurance coverage for gender-related surgery for minors may expose companies to legal trouble and reputational damage. (Green, 9/8)

Twenty female veterans will gather Oct. 11 in Tampa, Fla., for the 15th Ms. Veteran America competition, raising money to help other women who served find housing for themselves and their children. The competition at the Renaissance Tampa International Plaza Hotel supports Final Salute Inc., the nonprofit founded by Ret. Army Maj. Jaspen “Jas” Boothe after cancer and Hurricane Katrina left her struggling to find a place to live with her young son. (Thomas LaBee, 9/8)

�Թϲ�����: Nonprofits Are Helping Musicians Pay For Insurance In Austin, Texas, And Beyond

Musician Zack Morgan jokes that when he lost his corporate job in 2015, it was like being pushed off a cliff. For years, he said, he’d been playing both sides of the Austin coin: tech worker by day, funk keyboardist by night. “Maybe this is my sign to try the full-time music thing,” Morgan recalled thinking. “Step one in that was: Get health insurance again.” (Aldridge, 9/9)

The Supreme Court on Tuesday denied a New York woman’s bid to send her son to kindergarten without receiving state-required vaccines, in a case that highlights the limits of the court’s push to expand religious rights. In a one-line order, the high court effectively sided with state and local officials, who argued that a religious exemption would undermine their attempts to prevent the spread of disease among children and the general public. (Mark, 9/8)

All summer, Dr. Marvia Jones worried over the data. Jones, director of the Kansas City Health Department in Missouri, read reports showing that not enough public school students were up-to-date with their vaccinations in time for back to school. She knew kids risked being sent home when classes resumed in late August — a scenario that would disrupt not just their learning but create a logistical nightmare for working families. (Rodriguez, 9/8)

Babies grow at the same rate regardless of whether their pregnant or breastfeeding mom gets the tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis (Tdap) vaccine, according to new research published this week in the journal Vaccine. The findings, which analyzed 42,758 electronic health records, are reassuring, write the authors, as they provide real-world evidence that maternal Tdap vaccination is safe for babies. The authors say the results can help parents decide whether to get a vaccine that protects against three potentially deadly bacterial infections. (Boden, 9/8)

About seven years ago, Paul Schultz, MD, a professor and neurologist at UTHealth Houston, met with the biomedical informatics team he regularly collaborates with as they investigate risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease. Someone made a comment that piqued his interest. “My colleagues who were looking through the databases said, ‘Hey, we found a signal that the influenza vaccine seems to be associated with less Alzheimer’s. Is that something you know already?’” Schultz told CIDRAP News. “I was like, ‘Oh my God; that’s totally unexpected.’” (Holohan, 9/8)

For many people who contract COVID-19, the initial infection comes with a set of worrisome symptoms, from muscle aches and fatigue to trouble breathing—and for a subset of those people, symptoms persist beyond the acute infection phase. Long COVID has become a well-known post-viral condition that can take a significant toll on health and quality of life. But SARS-CoV-2 isn’t the only virus that can have lingering aftereffects. Other respiratory viral infections (RVIs), which affect millions of people every year, can trigger persistent physical, cognitive, and psychiatric symptoms. (Bergeson, 9/8)

Personal protective equipment is no longer in short supply. Humanitarian funding has poured in. New health centers are up and running, and vaccine trials are underway. Yet in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ebola continues to outpace all efforts to contain it, and the deaths keep mounting. (Bendix and Williams, 9/8)

The International Monetary Fund is considering making pandemic preparedness reforms part of its financing program for the Democratic Republic of Congo, as the country’s worsening Ebola epidemic exposes weaknesses in how it funds and responds to health emergencies. Congo is working with the World Health Organization and World Bank on measures that could be incorporated into the IMF’s Resilience and Sustainability Facility at a future review, according to a report it released Tuesday. Discussions have focused on developing a strategy for financing pandemic prevention and response. (Gale, 9/9)

A new study underscores the importance of indoor air quality at schools, with the suggestion that children exposed to classroom dust with higher levels of two common bacterial pathogens have slightly impaired lung function. (Van Beusekom, 9/8)

A skin fungus that causes ringworm and does not respond to standard treatment is spreading to more countries each year, according to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Ringworm is a common fungal infection that causes an itchy, scaly, circular rash on the skin. The fungi that cause ringworm can also lead to infections such as athlete’s foot. It spreads through skin-to-skin contact and through contaminated items such as towels, clothing, bedding and hairbrushes. (Fischels, 9/8)

The number of women who died after an ectopic pregnancy has spiked in recent years, a ProPublica analysis found. The mounting deaths in Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data have drawn little scrutiny or response. Such deaths typically occur in the first trimester, after a pregnancy fails to properly implant in the uterus and begins to develop elsewhere, most commonly inside a fallopian tube. The embryo grows until it causes the organ to rupture, triggering catastrophic bleeding. (Suozzo and Philip, 9/9)

A federal appeals court in Louisiana is set to hear oral arguments Wednesday in a high-profile case that could limit access to a drug used in nearly two-thirds of abortions in the United States. The court action over whether the abortion and miscarriage drug mifepristone can continue to be distributed through the mail and telemedicine appointments, coming weeks before the midterms, is legally and politically thorny for the Trump administration. (Hawkins and Winfield Cunningham, 9/8)

A new study found that some girls born to mothers who took acetaminophen during pregnancy developed reproductive organ changes that could affect fertility later in life. It’s a finding the study authors say should drive future research but shouldn’t yet change how certain symptoms are treated during pregnancy. (Christensen, 9/8)

Eleven Baltimore infants have died in sleep-related incidents so far this year, already matching the city’s total for all of 2025 and prompting health officials to renew warnings about unsafe sleeping practices. (Pryce, 9/8)

Cecil County leaders and community members are scrambling to piece together solutions to the loss this summer of the county’s only birthing center, after the closure of the unit at ChristianaCare Union Hospital in Elkton. (Brown, 9/8)

�Թϲ�����: A NY Hospital Tried To Close Its Birthing Center. This City United To Fight Back

Like many residents of this aging industrial city on the Hudson River, Starletta Washington was stunned when she heard Troy’s last remaining hospital planned to close its birthing center. “It was devastating,” said Washington, who heads the local YWCA. Washington was born at the hospital and had her children there. She couldn’t believe families would now have to get to a hospital half an hour away or face the prospect of an emergency delivery. (Levey, 9/9)

Menopausal hormone therapy (MHT) may have heart benefits for some women with vasomotor symptoms, though effects vary by timing of initiation and race, a target trial emulation of observational data suggested. (Robertson, 9/8)

A gender gap long seen in the suicide rates of 10- to 14-year-olds in the U.S. has tightened, new research indicated. In 2017, the suicide rate of boys was twice that of girls (3.28 vs 1.66 per 100,000 population), but by 2024, it was only 4% higher (2.38 vs 2.28), reported Jean Twenge, PhD, of San Diego State University. (Henderson, 9/8)

As many Wyomingites continue to struggle with mental health and thoughts of self-harm, a new agreement allows counselors from out of state to practice in person or via telehealth here. (Ouellet, 9/8)

In 2014, Angela Diaz was 24 years old and believed she was receiving secret messages from the world around her. She describes being paranoid that her coworkers were watching her and could hear her thoughts. She believed one was sending her secret messages through small things he would do, such as changing the photo on his computer screensaver. (Knopf, 9/9)

Drinking very hot tea and coffee triples the risk of developing cancer of the gullet, the world’s largest study of the link between them has found. The findings show that people should let very hot cups of tea and coffee cool down until they are comfortable to drink, in order to reduce their risk of the disease, cancer experts said. (Campbell, 9/9)

Cancer cases are set to soar globally over the coming decades as the world's population grows and people live longer. A major new analysis led by researchers at the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the cancer agency of the World Health Organization, estimates that annual global cancer cases could climb from almost 21 million in 2024 to about 34 million by 2050. That would represent a 67 percent increase. (Gray, 9/8)

The emergence of the synthetic opioid cychlorphine (N-propionitrile chlorphine) in recent years has physicians and public health experts worried. The street drug has been linked to at least 55 deaths nationally from 2025 to 2026, according to a "drug threat notice" issued by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) in April. Prevalence of the drug is highest in Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas. (Firth, 9/8)

A study has found 31 rugby league players in Australia have been diagnosed with the degenerative brain disease chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported. The ABC reported Australian Sports Brain Bank findings that showed players in their 20s, 30s and 40s had the degenerative brain disease, which can only be diagnosed after death. Of the 51 rugby league players’ brains donated, 31 were found to have CTE. The donors had played at various levels of the sport, from amateur to professional. (9/9)

The FDA on Friday granted accelerated approval to camizestrant (Etcamah) for treating hormone receptor-positive/HER2-negative breast cancer at the first sign of ESR1 resistance mutations during first-line treatment. (Bassett, 9/8)

Inhibrx said Tuesday that its experimental immunotherapy targeting a protein called OX40 showed responses in patients with head and neck cancer. But the most striking results were in a small subset of patients with HPV-positive tumors, which could significantly limit the drug’s use. (Mast, 9/8)

A drug being developed to treat a serious lung disease may also help to slow the aging process, researchers say. In a small clinical study, patients who took rentosertib – developed by Insilico Medicine in Massachusetts – showed changes in blood proteins that made them appear biologically younger. Several tests estimated that after treatment, the patients were biologically about three to four years younger. (Rudy, 9/8)

A new drug appeared to show promise in reducing rates of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) symptoms in former and current smokers, according to results from late-stage clinical trials. The medication, called tozorakimab and developed by AstraZeneca, is the first biologic drug to show efficacy in treating COPD symptoms in a broad population of patients with varying ranges of blood eosinophil counts, according to Dr. Frank Sciurba, professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, in an AstraZeneca press release. (Miao, 9/8)

Roivant said Tuesday an experimental drug for a type of pulmonary hypertension achieved the goals of a mid-stage study — positive results that could open up a new way to treat the serious lung disease and bolster the biotech company’s financial health with a second blockbuster medicine. (Feuerstein, 9/8)

Last year, a clinical trial conducted by Insilico Medicine, a company that aims to accelerate drug discovery using artificial intelligence, indicated that one of its drug candidates could help treat patients suffering from a chronic lung disease. Now, the company says that data from the same clinical trial shows a more intriguing possibility: that the drug could also slow the aging process. (Metz, 9/7)

It is one of biology’s most ingenious rhythms: Every baby is born young. No matter how much wear and tear their parents’ DNA accumulated over their lifetimes, reproduction erases the molecular scars, handing a clean slate to the next generation. Now, a new frontier in biotechnology aims to harness this natural mechanism to do something once thought impossible: scrub away the biological detritus of our own past. By mimicking Mother Nature’s magic eraser, geneticists are working to open a new avenue for treating or preventing disease later in life — not by editing genes themselves, but by altering when, where and how genes are expressed. (Baumgaertner Nunn, 9/8)

Residue and stains plastered on production walls, floors, and manufacturing equipment. Corrosion on a product line. An employee wearing open-toed sandals. These were among the unsanitary conditions found last April by a Food and Drug Administration inspector during a visit to Shoolin Pharma in Gujarat, India, where the company makes active pharmaceutical ingredients for more than a dozen medicines, including erectile dysfunction and anti-convulsant pills, that are sold to compounding pharmacies in the U.S., according to the agency. (Silverman, 8/8)

Over the last seven years, GLP-1 medication use in children age 8 to 11 has increased by nearly 31,000 percent, according to a new NYU Langone Health study. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved any GLP-1 medication for children under 12, but in drastic circumstances, doctors have prescribed it off-label. (Sokol, 9/8)

Growing evidence linked GLP-1 drugs to a reduced risk of exacerbations of two types of chronic airways disease: asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). (Lou, 9/8)

Firms are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to convince doctors to prescribe GLP-1 drugs. (Rowland, Sidhom and Cha, 9/9)

According to Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families, enrollment in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program has declined by 2.4 million since January 2025. This suggests that the number of uninsured children is on the rise, Joan Alker, the executive director of the center, noted on X. (Jessica Grose, 9/9)

Too often, disabled Americans like me are dismissed before entering the room or, in my case, the pool. I have muscular dystrophy — and I have represented the United States in sports and later in federal civil service. I am disabled, but I am not incapable of serving my country. (Kristin Duquette, 9/7)

There is a weird correlation between anti-LGBTQ+ ideas and anti-science movements around the world. (Ayman Eckford, 9/8)

Would you want artificial intelligence to tell you that you have cancer? Not help a physician identify the cancer. Not analyze the scan, synthesize your medical history, or recommend the treatment most likely to work. Would you want AI, on its own, to tell you that you have cancer? Or guide you through what comes next? (John Whyte, 9/9)

In 1867, Joseph Lister published his research on carbolic acid and antiseptic surgical technique. In September 1871, he was summoned to Queen Victoria, who had a rapidly growing abscess in her left armpit. Using his antiseptic surgical technique, Joseph Lister successfully drained the pus. Queen Victoria recovered without fever or other complications. The antiseptic technique quickly gained approval in the U.K. and Europe, but not among American physicians. (Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Abe Baker-Butler, 9/9)

It is well documented that medical doctors hold strong weight biases, both implicit and explicit, and I suspect there is some degree of discrimination against fat applicants to medical schools. (Jessica Rosenblum, 9/8)