Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
CDC's Second-In-Command Resigns After Less Than 2 Months On The Job
Stat: Ralph Abraham, No. 2 Official At CDC, Abruptly Steps Down
The drama and chaos surrounding the leadership of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have taken another twist, with the announcement Monday that the agency’s No. 2 official, Ralph Abraham, has resigned. (Branswell, 2/23)
MedPage Today: RFK Jr. May Eliminate The USPSTF, Original Task Force Members Warn
HHS could completely eliminate the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) or delegitimize the independent body like it did with CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), two original USPSTF members warned. "The USPSTF, the entity established by the Reagan administration to bring scientific rigor to prevention policy, is now under threat by the Trump administration, particularly Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.," argued Robert Lawrence, MD, the first chair of the task force when it started over four decades ago, and Steven Woolf, MD, MPH, its first scientific advisor, in an Annals of Internal Medicine commentary. (Frieden, 2/23)
Keep scrolling to our Editorials and Opinions section to read the commentary.
Related news on measles, flu, covid, and the pandemic —
The Washington Post: Measles Is Back. Nine Other Vaccine-Preventable Diseases May Be Next.
There are more than 900 confirmed measles cases in the United States, as of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent weekly count. It’s less than two months into the year, “and we already have over a quarter of [the measles cases] we had all of 2025, so things are not great,” said Katrine Wallace, an epidemiologist and adjunct assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health. (Felton, 2/24)
KFF Health News: Hospitals Fighting Measles Confront A Challenge: Few Doctors Have Seen It Before
At around 2 a.m., 7-year-old twin brothers arrived at Mission Hospital in Asheville. Both had a fever, a cough, a rash, pink eye, and cold symptoms. The boys sat in one waiting room and then another. Two hours and 20 minutes passed before the two were isolated, according to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services records obtained by KFF Health News. Then two more hours ticked by. (Jones, 2/24)
CIDRAP: Moderna’s 2-In-1 Flu And COVID Vaccine Shows Encouraging Results In Small Trial
Moderna announced late last week that its mRNA combined seasonal flu and COVID-19 vaccine proved robust and produced a durable immune response in a small, mid-stage trial. There were also no serious safety concerns. According to Reuters, the study involved 550 healthy US adults ages 18 to 75 who received either the experimental combo vaccine (mRNA-1073) and a placebo, or two separate shots of Moderna’s commercially available mRNA flu and COVID vaccines. (Soucheray, 2/23)
CIDRAP: College Students Bounced Back After Pandemic, Long-Term Study Suggests
A long-term study from Michigan State University (MSU) finds that most college students bounced back emotionally after the COVID-19 pandemic, with improved psychological functioning, less loneliness, and more satisfaction with their lives. (Szabo, 2/23)
In other public health news —
Newsweek: Getting Sick During Pregnancy Increases Child’s Suicide Risk Later In Life
Getting sick during pregnancy may have lasting consequences for a child’s mental health, according to a new study. The research, published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, analyzed national health data from Denmark, following more than two million people from childhood into adulthood. (Gray, 2/23)
MedPage Today: Youth Alcohol Cravings May Rise While Scrolling Social Media, Study Suggests
For young adults, seeing alcohol-related social media content translated to greater desire to drink alcohol, especially when coming from lifestyle influencers whom they saw as highly credible, found a randomized trial. (Firth, 2/23)
