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A funding notice for Title X shifts the program’s emphasis from contraception to fertility, family formation, and addressing conditions that could cause infertility, including endometriosis. Experts say these priorities overlook key demographic trends, epidemiology, prevention of unwanted pregnancies, and the nation's high maternal mortality.
Jay Bhattacharya, head of the National Institutes of Health and interim leader of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the CDC staff, “I know that it has been such a difficult year.”
Patchwork state policies and limited federal oversight have led to a fragmented system for tracking when potential organ donors provide consent or change their minds.
Crystalline silica, which is released into the air when workers cut and polish engineered stone, can scar human lungs beyond repair. Kitchen countertops made with this stone have triggered an increased rate of this fatal illness, doctors say.
An internal email claiming covid vaccines killed children triggered a formal response from a dozen past FDA commissioners. The email, sent by the head of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, outlines a framework that could have significant impact on the nation’s vaccine policies.
Clinicians and epidemiologists warn the decision to no longer recommend the birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine could unravel decades of progress and expose newborns to a deadly, preventable disease.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claims that the aluminum ingredients in vaccines cause a variety of harmful reactions, from allergies to autism. Scientists say that’s wrong and warn of risks if they’re removed. Here are some of the basics.
New details from health officials suggest the whooping-cough surge may be part of a national pattern driven by slipping vaccine coverage and waning immunity, with infants bearing the brunt of the consequences.
The study sought to answer questions about how breast cancer risk differs by type of hormonal contraceptive. Doctors say the results won’t change how they counsel patients.
Massachusetts researchers examine how growth and learning are subtly shaped among children whose mothers had covid while pregnant.
The HHS office that administers the Title X family planning program has been effectively shut down. And with cuts to federal funding for other family health programs, expected Medicaid cuts, and the potential lapse of ACA subsidies, health leaders fear they are seeing the biggest setback to U.S. reproductive care in half a century.
The evidence is unequivocal: Vaccines do not cause autism. Yet adding autism to the list of conditions covered by a federal payout program, as health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seems inclined to do, could threaten its financial viability. Such a move also would suggest that the science is unsettled, that vaccines may be riskier than diseases, which is a fallacy.
This week, the FDA began the process of approving leucovorin, an inexpensive, generic drug derived from folic acid, to help children diagnosed with autism.
The decisions by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices matter, because insurers and federal programs rely on them, but they are not binding. States can follow the recommendations, or not.
Céline Gounder, KFF Health News’ editor-at-large for public health, discusses leadership changes at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and concerns over vaccine policy.
Four senior officials with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced their resignations in recent days, citing what they described as growing political interference in the agency's scientific work, particularly regarding vaccines.
The cuts will shutter two major HIV vaccine research efforts, and a National Institutes of Health senior official said the agency has been instructed not to issue any more HIV vaccine research funding in the next fiscal year, with few exceptions.
KFF Health News' Céline Gounder shares advice on how to prepare before a hurricane.
Vaccine scare tactics haven’t shifted, but more parents are falling for them. Here’s what the rhetoric gets wrong and how it endangers children.
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