First Edition: Monday, Aug. 18, 2025

KFF HEALTH NEWS ORIGINAL STORIES

KFF Health News: It’s Almost Flu Season. Should You Still Get A Shot, And Will Insurance Cover It?
For parents of school-aged children, the fall to-do list can seem ever-growing. Buy school supplies. Fill out endless school forms. Block off parent-teacher nights. Do the kids’ tennis shoes still fit? Somewhere, at some point, you might remember flu shots. Get your flu shot. Get their flu shots. Or should you? Can you? Is that still a thing? Amid political chatter about vaccines and the government entities that oversee them, it’s understandable to wonder where all this leaves the 2025-26 flu vaccine. (Czopek, 8/18)

KFF Health News: Health Care Groups Aim To Counter Growing ‘National Scandal’ Of Elder Homelessness
At age 82, Roberta Rabinovitz realized she had no place to go. A widow, she had lost both her daughters to cancer, after living with one and then the other, nursing them until their deaths. Then she moved in with her brother in Florida, until he also died. And so last fall, while recovering from lung cancer, Rabinovitz ended up at her grandson’s home in Burrillville, Rhode Island, where she slept on the couch and struggled to navigate the steep staircase to the shower. (Freyer, 8/18)

KFF Health News: CDC Staff Tell Journalist They Felt Targeted Even Before Atlanta Campus Shooting
Céline Gounder, KFF Health News’ editor-at-large for public health, discussed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees’ reaction to a deadly shooting at the agency’s Atlanta office on CBS News 24/7’s “The Daily Report” on Aug. 11. KFF Health News Southern correspondent Sam Whitehead discussed how President Donald Trump’s recent megabill is unlikely to insulate Medicaid expansion holdout states from health cuts on WUGA’s “The Georgia Health Report” on Aug. 8. (8/16)

'MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN'

Stat: Draft MAHA Report: RFK Jr. Tiptoes Around Pesticides, Food Lobby 
A much-awaited game plan for how the Trump administration will make Americans healthier largely steers clear of policy recommendations, instead calling for more research on nutrition, agricultural chemicals, and “potential benefits of select high-quality supplements,” among other topics. (Cueto, Todd, Cooney, Broderick and Oza, 8/15)

MORE FROM HHS AND RFK JR.

The Hill: HHS Secretary Kennedy Rules Out 2028 Presidential Bid
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Friday he is not running for president in 2028, denying speculation amid attacks from right-wing activist Laura Loomer. “Let me be clear: I am not running for president in 2028. My loyalty is to President Trump and the mission we’ve started,” Kennedy said in a post on the social platform X. (Weixel, 8/15)

CRISIS IN WASHINGTON, DC

The New York Times: For D.C.’s Homeless, Strained Lives Become More Unstable
For some 15 years, David Brown had made a home in Washington Circle, living in a tent with a handful of others in an encampment. On Friday, that home was destroyed — his tent, clothing and other possessions were tossed into a dumpster by police officers carrying out President Trump’s crackdown on some of the city’s most powerless residents. Left with a fraction of his things, Mr. Brown and his 6-month-old puppy, Molly, moved a block away and slept outside the Foggy Bottom subway station. Sitting in a wheelchair outside the station on Saturday, he was still baffled at what was happening. “Why is he doing this, for no reason?” he asked of Mr. Trump. (Patil and Kavi, 8/18)

IMMIGRATION CRISIS

AP: Judge Denies Trump Administration Request To End A Policy Protecting Immigrant Children In Custody
A federal judge ruled Friday to deny the Trump administration’s request to end a policy in place for nearly three decades that is meant to protect immigrant children in federal custody. U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles issued her ruling a week after holding a hearing with the federal government and legal advocates representing immigrant children in custody. (Gonzalez, 8/16)

Chicago Tribune: As One Boy Heals In Chicago, US Halts Medical Care Visas For Gazans
At a farm in the south suburbs, upbeat Arabic music swept across the land as more than a dozen Palestinian children — many with prosthetic limbs or in wheelchairs — and their families danced and moved to the music in the center of a raised platform. One of the children, Khalil Abu Shaban, traveled in a circle using his wheelchair and periodically sang into a microphone as the dozens who attended the Saturday celebration at Arab Chicago Farm in Frankfort excitedly clapped for him. (Johnson, 8/17)

Chicago Tribune: Migrant Given Humanitarian Parole Donates Kidney To Brother
The minutes dragged into hours on Wednesday night as Jose Gregorio Gonzalez tossed and turned through the night. At 5 a.m. the next day, he was scheduled to donate his kidney to his younger brother, Alfredo Pacheco, who was also restless. By 2 a.m. the two couldn’t stay in bed any longer and began to get ready for a day that they thought would never come. (Presa, 8/17)

FUNDING AND RESEARCH CUTS

Bloomberg: Foreign Aid Groups Challenge Loss In Trump Funding Freeze
Nonprofits and businesses that carry out foreign aid programs contested a recent court ruling that empowers the Trump administration to unilaterally refuse to spend billions of dollars in funding approved by Congress. The challengers on Friday asked the full US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit to reconsider a panel’s 2-1 decision earlier this week that tossed out a pair of lawsuits over the funding block. (Tillman, 8/15)

The New York Times: A $45 Treatment Can Save A Starving Child. US Aid Cuts Have Frozen The Supply
The women walked miles through the dusty streets of Maiduguri, in the northeastern corner of Nigeria, carrying their emaciated children. At 7 a.m., they began lining up to wait, for hours, to be handed a small, red packet containing a special paste that could bring their children back from the brink of starvation. The children were eerily listless; they did not run, shout or even swat the flies off their faces. Their tiny, frail frames made many appear years younger than they were. (Mandavilli, 8/15)

REPRODUCTIVE AND MATERNAL HEALTH

Axios: VA Curbs Maternity Leave After White House Cancels Union Contract
New and expecting parents who work at Veterans Affairs are getting approved maternity and paternity leave canceled after their union contract was terminated by the White House, according to two internal memos viewed by Axios. (Peck, 8/15)

The Hill: Patty Murray Rips Costco Over Mifepristone Decision
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) hammered Costco on Friday for appeasing “far-right extremists,” after the retailer said earlier this week that its pharmacies would not dispense the abortion medication mifepristone. “I am deeply alarmed by news reports that Costco is refusing to sell safe, effective, and legal medication for no other reason than to appease the politics of anti-abortion fanatics,” Murray said in a statement following the news. “I refuse to stand by and allow far-right extremists to bully major corporations and dictate what medicine women can or cannot get access to.” (Thomas, 8/16)

The Hill: US Plan To Destroy $10M Contraceptives Sparks Fierce Pushback
Lawmakers and activists in Europe and the United States are scrambling to stop the State Department from destroying nearly $10 million worth of contraceptives funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contraceptives have been sitting in a warehouse in Belgium for months after President Trump froze all U.S foreign aid and shuttered USAID earlier this year. (O’Connell-Domenech, 8/16)

HEALTH CARE COSTS

The Washington Post: Fed Up With U.S. Health Care Costs, These Americans Moved Abroad
Jennifer Sontag cracked her skull and couldn’t afford emergency brain surgery. Her doctors suggested she start a GoFundMe. “Their advice was, ‘You’ve got to get the surgery. You’ll work it out later,’” she said. “And I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? Your advice to someone in a medical crisis is to beg for money?’” Sontag, 52, was teaching business management in China in 2019 when she fell while exiting a bus and hit her head so hard that it caused a leak of cerebral fluid in her brain. She spent five days in a hospital in Shanghai before her worried family persuaded her to get the necessary surgery close to them in St. Louis. (Kasulis Cho, 8/17)

AP: CBO: Trump's Tax Law Could Lead To $491B In Medicare Cuts
The federal budget deficits caused by President Donald Trump’s tax and spending law could trigger automatic cuts to Medicare if Congress does not act, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported Friday. The CBO estimates that Medicare, the federal health insurance program for Americans over age 65, could potentially see as much as $491 billion in cuts from 2027 to 2034 if Congress does not act to mitigate a 2010 law that forces across-the-board cuts to many federal programs once legislation increases the federal deficit. (Groves, 8/16)

The Washington Post: North Carolinians Just Got Medicaid Expansion. Now It’s Jeopardized
Roughly 650,000 people here have signed up for Medicaid since the legislature expanded it 18 months ago — the culmination of a years-long effort in this politically split state. But now they are in danger of losing it under provisions in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. In signing that law, Trump approved more than $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade. Those cuts are colliding with state budget challenges, imperiling the future of Medicaid in states such as North Carolina. (Winfield Cunningham, 8/17)

COVID AND FLU

Bloomberg: AstraZeneca Launches At-Home FluMist As Vaccination Rate Drops
AstraZeneca PLC released its flu vaccine nasal spray for at-home use on Friday, an option that comes at a contentious time for vaccine access in the US. FluMist Home is the same product as the pharmaceutical company’s seasonal influenza vaccine spray, which has been offered by clinicians for the past two decades. FluMist Home received approval for patients ages 2 and up from the US Food and Drug Administration last fall. (Nix, 8/15)

Los Angeles Times: COVID-19 Surges Nationwide — And The Highest Rates Are In California
COVID-19 rates in the Southwestern United States reached 12.5% — the highest in the nation — according to new data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released this week. Meanwhile, Los Angeles County recorded the highest COVID levels in its wastewater since February. The spike, thanks to the new highly contagious “Stratus” variant, comes as students across California return to the classroom, now without a CDC recommendation that they receive updated COVID shots. That change in policy, pushed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been criticized by many public health experts. (Haggerty, 8/16)

The Washington Post: Covid Is Rising. New Vaccines May Not Be Ready Until Mid-September.
The federal committee that would recommend the updated coronavirus vaccine is not expected to meet until at least mid-September, according to industry employees and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive information. By that point, the summer covid wave could be over, but Americans could still get a boost of immunity ahead of an expected winter wave. (Malhi, 8/16)

HEALTH INDUSTRY AND PHARMACEUTICALS

Asheville Watchdog: Patient Called For Help From Mission Bathroom 29 Minutes Before Someone Found Him. By Then, His Heart Stopped, New Report Shows.
A patient who died in February after calling for help in a Mission Hospital emergency department bathroom went 29 minutes with no response as multiple staff members passed by the door with a call light flashing above, according to documents obtained by Asheville Watchdog. By the time an employee entered the bathroom, the 54-year-old patient was slumped in a wheelchair, unresponsive, his heart no longer beating. (Jones, 8/17)

North Carolina Health News: State Finds Repeated Failures After Violent Patient Uprising At Holly Hill 
Just days before Christmas 2024, a group of female teen patients broke into the nurse’s station and medication room at a psychiatric hospital in Raleigh, where they tore down parts of the ceiling, hurled objects at staff, damaged equipment and used syringes as weapons. Several police officers responded to the disturbance at Holly Hill Hospital, and emergency responders took seven patients to the emergency room for monitoring due to possible medication ingestion. (Knopf, 8/18)

MedPage Today: Bias In The Chart? Black Patients More Likely To Be Doubted By Doctors 
Black patients were more likely than white patients to have notes from their clinicians questioning their sincerity or competence, a study found. In a cross-sectional analysis of more than 13 million notes in electronic health records, Black patients had higher odds of having credibility-undermining terms in their documentation compared with white patients (adjusted OR 1.29, 95% CI 1.27-1.32), as well as lower odds of credibility-supporting language (aOR 0.82, 95% CI 0.79-0.85), reported Mary Catherine Beach, MD, MPH, of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, and colleagues in PLoS One. (McCreary, 8/15)

OPIOID CRISIS

Bloomberg: Cencora Directors Reach $111 Million Deal On Opioid Claims
Cencora Inc. directors have agreed to a settlement of more than $111 million to resolve claims by pension funds that they ignored years of red flags about the drug distributor’s handling of opioid painkillers and failed to set up required systems to monitor sales of the drugs. The deal would end litigation accusing directors of turning a blind eye to suspiciously large opioid shipments to reap billions for the firm, which was known until 2023 as AmerisourceBergen Corp. before it changed its name. (Feeley, 8/15)

Minnesota Public Radio: Fentanyl, Synthetic Opioids Have Accelerated Overdose Deaths Among Older Black Men 
Four years ago, JR Graham, 55, had a job he loved in security at Ecolab in St. Paul. Then, he relapsed. “My father passed away and then that led me back into being involved in drugs,” he said. “I gave up on myself.” It’s been more than 30 years since Graham first started using drugs. And as he continues to work toward recovery, he said the drugs of today are unlike anything he’s come across before. (Bui, 8/18)

STATE WATCH

Wyoming Public Radio: Wyoming Law Enforcement Gains Virtual Crisis Care Program To Support Rural Mental Health 
Wyoming law enforcement agencies will be better able to respond to mental health crises in their communities thanks to a $2.4 million grant from the Helmsley Charitable Trust. The funding supports the Virtual Crisis Care program, which connects officers in the field with licensed mental health professionals for immediate help for people in crisis. (Schlump, 8/15)

AP: Health Officials Warn Of Rabies Threat From Bat-Infested Cabins In Wyoming
Health officials are working to alert hundreds of people in dozens of states and several countries who may have been exposed to rabies in bat-infested cabins in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park over the past few months. As of Friday, none of the bats found in some of the eight linked cabins at Jackson Lake Lodge had tested positive for rabies. But the handful of dead bats found and sent to the Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory in Laramie for testing were probably only a small sample of the likely dozens that colonized the attic above the row of cabins, Wyoming State Health Officer Dr. Alexia Harrist said. (Govindarao and Gruver, 8/15)

PUBLIC HEALTH

The New York Times: Wildfire Fighters, Unmasked In Toxic Smoke, Are Getting Sick And Dying 
The smoke from the wildfires that burned through Los Angeles in January smelled like plastic and was so thick that it hid the ocean. Firefighters who responded developed instant migraines, coughed up black goo and dropped to their knees, vomiting and dizzy. Seven months later, some are still jolted awake by wheezing fits in the middle of the night. One damaged his vocal cords so badly that his young son says he sounds like a supervillain. Another used to run a six-minute mile and now struggles to run at all. (Dreier, 8/17)

Bloomberg: Electric Vehicle Fast Chargers Have A Surprising Health Downside
Hundreds of public fast chargers are popping up across the US to serve electric vehicle drivers seeking a cleaner alternative to gas-powered cars. But they come with a surprising risk: Charging stations create air pollution. While EVs contribute vastly less to air pollution than combustion-powered vehicles, fast-charging stations are what a recent study called an “overlooked source of air pollution.” (Alake and Court, 8/15)

The Washington Post: Is Human Hair The New Answer To Better Dental Care?
The next major innovation in dental care just might be a new ingredient added to our toothpaste and mouthwash from an unlikely source: sheep’s wool or human hair. Both contain the fibrous protein keratin, which can repair damaged tooth enamel, according to an international study led by researchers at King’s College London. (Johnson, 8/15)