Immunization Experts Issue New Recommendations That Will Have Big Impact On Vaccine Makers

Stat: Two Winners And One Loser In Influential Vaccine Reviews
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is meeting here this week. The committee is composed of experts who guide policy on how vaccines should be used in the United States. The group’s votes have real-world implications on the vaccines that are available to Americans. They also have implications for the companies that make the vaccines ACIP reviews. On Wednesday, the committee voted to update its recommendations on influenza vaccines to be used in the upcoming 2017-18 season. There were winners and losers. (Branswell, 6/21)

Boston Globe: Problem-Solving Education May Help Stave Off Maternal Depression
The US Department of Health and Human Services found that depression affects almost half of all mothers with kids in Head Start, which provides low-income children early-education and other social services. Silverstein, who serves as associate chief medical officer for research and population health at BMC, is part of a research team that partnered with Action for Boston Community Development’s Head Start program to develop a model to prevent maternal depression. (Guerra, 6/21)

Stat: Robert Califf: 'The Clinical Trials Enterprise Has Gone Awry'
Dr. Robert Califf,  former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, said Wednesday the current clinical trial system isn’t working and outlined his vision for a future system based on high-quality evidence and widespread data sharing. “Beyond early phase intensive mechanistic exploratory trials, I think the clinical trials enterprise has gone awry,” he said, speaking at a conference on clinical trials hosted by the New York Academy of Sciences, “It’s become unnecessarily expensive, cumbersome, arcane, and it’s causing, I think, a search for alternatives partly out of desperation, because the way it’s being done now isn’t answering the questions people are most concerned about.” (Caruso, 6/21)

The Washington Post: Family Of Teen Who Died Of A ‘Brain-Eating Amoeba’ Suing For $1 Million
Soon after graduating high school in 2016, Lauren Seitz joined her Westerville, Ohio, youth music ministry group to sing at churches and nursing homes in Ohio, West Virginia and North Carolina. The eight-day trip included a white-water rafting experience in North Carolina that would prove deadly. Colin Evans told WBNS-TV he shared a raft with Seitz that day at the U.S. National Whitewater Center, an outdoor recreational park in Charlotte that features a man-made white-water river ride. (Wong, 6/21)

The New York Times: Creating A Stylish World For Children With Autism
The idea for Wolf & Friends started with a feeling familiar to all mothers: Uh-oh. In 2014, Carissa Tozzi had been told her son, Wolf, who was 4 at the time, might have “sensory issues,” a catchall term that could mean anything from not liking the feeling of clothing tags to being capable of a full-on freakout when the lights are too bright. Mrs. Tozzi, a brand consultant and Pinterest enthusiast, eagerly dived into the world of therapy websites to find products that might help her boy. It didn’t go well. (Newman, 6/21)