First Edition: Monday, Feb. 10, 2025

KFF Health News: House Cats With Bird Flu Could Pose A Risk To Public Health
More than 80 domestic cats, among many other types of mammals, have been confirmed to have had bird flu since 2022 — generally barn cats that lived on dairy farms, as well as feral cats and pets that spend time outdoors and likely caught it by hunting diseased rodents or wild birds. Now, a small but growing number of house cats have gotten sick from H5N1, the bird flu strain driving the current U.S. outbreak, after eating raw food or drinking unpasteurized milk. Some of those cats died. (Boden, 2/10)

KFF Health News: Blood Transfusions At The Scene Save Lives. But Ambulances Are Rarely Equipped To Do Them
One August afternoon in 2023, Angela Martin’s cousin called with alarming news. Martin’s 74-year-old aunt had been mauled by four dogs while out for a walk near her home in rural Purlear, North Carolina. She was bleeding heavily from bites on both legs and her right arm, where she’d tried to protect her face and neck. An ambulance was on its way. “Tell them she’s on Eliquis!” said Martin, a nurse who lived an hour’s drive away in Winston-Salem. She knew the blood thinner could lead to life-threatening blood loss. (Andrews, 2/10)

NPR: NIH Announces New Funding Policy That Rattles Medical Researchers
The National Institutes of Health is capping an important kind of funding for medical research at universities, medical schools, research hospitals and other scientific institutions. In the latest step by the Trump administration affecting scientific research, the NIH says the agency is limiting funding for "indirect costs" to 15% of grants. That's far below what many institutions have been getting to maintain buildings and equipment and pay support staff and other overhead expenses. For example, Harvard receives 68% and Yale gets 67%, according to the NIH. (Stein, 2/8)

The Boston Globe: Trump Administration Single Outs Harvard And MIT In Announcement About NIH Cuts
Biomedical researchers in Massachusetts braced this weekend for drastic and sudden federal funding cuts, which local officials say will upend scientific endeavors at universities and medical centers synonymous with the state’s reputation and economy. The change — announced by Republican President Trump’s administration on Friday and set to take effect Monday — caps reimbursement rates from the National Institutes of Health at 15 percent for expenses that support research operations but aren’t directly tied to performing science. (Crimaldi, 2/9)

Stat: NIH Indirect Costs: Accounting Behind Research Cuts Explained
Science is complicated, and so are the rules that govern how it’s paid for by the federal government. An abrupt Friday afternoon announcement from the National Institutes of Health that it would slash support for indirect research costs paid to universities, medical centers, and other grant recipients left academics bewildered and deeply concerned that the policy change would grind scientific progress to a halt. Many universities get an extra 50% or more on each grant to cover overhead; starting Monday, that rate will drop to 15% for new and existing grants across all institutions. (Wosen and Chen, 2/8)

Modern Healthcare: HHS, CMS Improper Payments: $88.5B In 2024 
Improper payments made through programs of the Health and Human Services Department, which ballooned during the COVID-19 pandemic, are on the decline but still amounted to more than 5% of outlays by the agency last year — or about $88.5 billion. Elon Musk's team at the Department of Government Efficiency has reportedly been combing through systems at federal agencies, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, looking for fraud. (Broderick, 2/7)

Fierce Healthcare: Democrats Pounce On Elon Musk’s Role In HHS, Treasury
A new lawsuit is yielding quicker success in challenging the legality of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) takeover of the Treasury payment systems, which has opened up new, wide-reaching privacy concerns not limited to Americans’ healthcare records. (Tong, 2/8)

ProPublica: Trump Administration’s USAID Takeover May Have Broken The Law
It was the week President Donald Trump had signed a sweeping executive order shutting off the funding for foreign aid programs. Inside the U.S. Agency for International Development, his political appointees gathered shell-shocked senior staffers for private meetings to discuss the storied agency’s new reality. Those staffers immediately raised objections. USAID’s programs were funded by Congress, and there were rules to follow before halting the payments, they said. Instead of reassuring them, the agency’s then-chief of staff, Matt Hopson, told staff that the White House did not plan on restarting most of the aid projects, according to two officials familiar with his comments. (Barry-Jester and Murphy, 2/9)

AP: Veterans Affairs Deems More Than 130 Occupations Ineligible For Trump's Deferred Resignation Plan
Most nurses, doctors and other staff caring for military veterans through the Department of Veterans Affairs are not eligible for the Trump administration’s deferred resignation offer, according to an email sent Friday by VA leadership to staff. ... The new email, which was reviewed by The Associated Press, included an attached letter from VA’s human resources department and a spreadsheet with a list of more than 130 occupations labeled “VA EXEMPTION REQUESTS.” (Johnson, 2/8)

ABC News: Cancer Research Group Calls On Trump Administration To Restore Data Access
The American Cancer Society, a non-profit organization dedicated to eliminating the disease, called on the administration to "restore access to comprehensive data, refrain from changes that would lead to incomplete future data collection and commit to ensure evidence-based science can proceed without additional bureaucracy or red tape" in a statement published on its website on Thursday. (Alfonseca, 2/8)

Stat: Scientists Express Growing Alarm Over Integrity Of Key NIH Genetic Databases
As the Trump administration exercises its influence on the U.S. scientific landscape, revising language on government websites for ideological reasons and disappearing agency databases, at least temporarily, some scientists are expressing increasing concerns about the safety and integrity of resources scientists around the world use daily: genetic sequence information. (Branswell, 2/10)

The Hill: Scientists, Researchers Work To Archive Federal Health Data Purged By Trump Administration
Scientists, researchers and private health organizations scrambled to preserve as much federal public health data and guidelines as possible last week after news reached them that the Trump administration planned to pull down federal agency websites. Many have taken that data and moved it to personal websites or Substack accounts, while others are still figuring out what to do with what they have gathered. (O’Connell-Domenech, 2/8)

The New York Times: A Sweeping Ban On D.E.I. Language Roils The Sciences
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine is an independent, 162-year-old nongovernmental agency tasked with investigating and reporting on a wide range of subjects. In recent years, diversity, equity and inclusion — collectively known as D.E.I. — have been central to its agenda. ... Now the website highlights the Academies’ interest in artificial intelligence and “our work to build a robust economy.” The quick about-face reflects the widespread impact that President Trump’s executive order on D.E.I. is having on scientific institutions across the nation, both governmental and private. (Miller and Caryn Rabin, 2/9)

The Hill: The US Relies On China For Key Medicines. They Won't Be Spared From Donald Trump's Tariffs
President Trump’s tariffs in China are in place and hitting all products imported from the country — including a number of pharmaceutical drugs that Americans rely upon. Chinese imports account for a significant proportion of U.S. prescriptions and over the counter drugs. Many of the Chinese-produced drugs are generics, which account for 91 percent of prescriptions dispensed in the U.S. (Choi, 2/8)

The Hill: Trump's DOJ Changes Stance On Transgender Rights Case
President Trump’s Justice Department on Friday abandoned the Biden administration’s Supreme Court challenge to gender-affirming care bans for minors, but the new administration urged the justices to still resolve the issue this term. The Supreme Court has not yet issued a decision after hearing arguments late last year in the challenge against Tennessee’s ban, SB1. The Biden administration claimed the legislation amounts to unconstitutional sex discrimination. (Schonfeld, 2/7)

The Hill: New York Live Bird Markets Ordered Closed Due To Bird Flu
All live bird markets in New York City and several neighboring counties were ordered to be closed on Friday after inspectors found seven cases of bird flu.  New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D) issued the closure order for live bird markets in New York City, Westchester, Suffolk and Nassau counties. (O’Connell-Domenech, 2/7)

Concord Monitor: NH Resident Contracts Mpox, Health Officials Say Risk To Public Remains Low
A New Hampshire resident who traveled to east Africa returned to the state carrying a disease called clade I mpox. The person is self-isolating and “poses no current risk to the public,” according to the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services. (2/9)

The Baltimore Sun: Documents: Baltimore Legionella Samples Sent Late To Lab 
A public health expert said the city of Baltimore should commit to additional Legionella testing after documents obtained by The Baltimore Sun showed that Legionella retest results from several city buildings, including City Hall, may be less reliable than previously thought. Legionella is a naturally occurring bacteria found in water that causes Legionnaires’ disease, a severe form of pneumonia that can be fatal. The city closed the buildings it found, or suspected, had Legionella contamination for treatment, but quickly reopened them during a burst of testing late last year. (Bazos, 2/10)

CIDRAP: US Sees No Let-Up In Rising Flu Activity
Flu activity in the United States climbed higher last week, putting healthcare visits for respiratory virus symptoms at the very high level, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today in its weekly update. Test positivity for flu rose to an eye-popping 31.6%, and outpatient visits for flulike illness rose to 7.8%, remaining above the national baseline for the tenth straight week. (Schnirring, 2/7)

CIDRAP: COVID Vaccination Saved More Than 5,000 US Lives In 7 Months In 2023-24, CDC Estimates
COVID-19 vaccination averted more than 5,000 US in-hospital deaths, 13,000 intensive care unit (ICU) admissions, and 68,000 hospitalizations in 7 months in 2023-2024, researchers from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated late last week in Vaccine, although with considerable uncertainty. The investigators estimated COVID-related deaths ... using a novel multiplier model that used causal inference, conditional probabilities of hospitalization, and correlations between data elements in simulations. (Van Beusekom, 2/7)

MedPage Today: Doctors, PAs, And Other Clinicians Unionize In Massachusetts
More than 230 clinicians at Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) in Massachusetts won their union election and have received certification through the state Department of Labor Relations. About half of the group's members are physicians, including primary care doctors, psychiatrists, and hospitalists; members also include physician assistants (PAs) and psychologists, according to SHARE CHA/AFSCME, the union representing the group. (Henderson, 2/7)

Modern Healthcare: Medicaid Cuts Will Cause Closures, Layoffs, Rural Providers Say
Potential Medicaid cuts would jeopardize Pender Community Hospital’s maternity ward, which is one of the most active in Nebraska for the community's size. ... The facility operates on narrow margins, and about 40% of its obstetric patients are covered by Medicaid. If the Republican-led Congress follows through with proposals to limit Medicaid funding, Pender Community Hospital may have to consider service cuts — including to around-the-clock anesthesia and its obstetrics unit, CEO Laura Gamble said. (Kacik, 2/7)

Asheville Watchdog: HCA’s Purchase Of Mission Health Did Not Lead To Lasting Improvements, Report Says
The decision to sell nonprofit Mission Health to for-profit HCA Healthcare was made behind closed doors, without public review, and, contrary to promises made by Mission’s leadership at the time of the 2019 sale, did not lead to lasting improvements at Mission Hospital, according to the final two installments of an academic study of the merger. (Jones, 2/8)

Modern Healthcare: Why Private Equity Is Chasing Revenue Cycle Management Companies
Private equity firms have set their sights on investing in revenue cycle management companies due to higher demand from providers for the services. Investment firms have been involved in transactions across the approximate $5 trillion healthcare industry, taking stakes of various sizes in hospitals and health systems, physician groups and post-acute companies. Their interest in the payment technology companies that help providers improve their billing and collection operations appears to be on the upswing. (DeSilva, 2/7)

The New York Times: The Physicians Really Are Healing Themselves, With Ozempic
When Dr. C. Michael Gibson, a cardiologist at Harvard Medical School, goes to heart disease meetings, he can’t help noticing a change. “We will sit around at dinner and halfway through the meal, we will simultaneously push our plates away,” Dr. Gibson said. “We look at each other and laugh and say, ‘You, too?’” They share what is becoming an open secret: They tried for years to control their weight but are now taking the new obesity drugs manufactured by Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk. (Kolata, 2/10)

San Francisco Chronicle: Why Two US Senators Slammed An SF Telehealth Company’s Super Bowl Ad
A San Francisco online health company that recently faced local backlash over its donation to President Donald Trump’s inauguration is now in hot water over a Super Bowl ad. Hims & Hers, a telehealth firm, is promoting the compounded weight loss drug it offers in a provocative 60-second commercial that’s set to air during Sunday’s NFL championship and is already watchable online. The drug is similar to Ozempic, except the medications are custom-prepared by specialized pharmacies before being sent to patients. Compounded drugs are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. (Morris, 2/8)

AP: New Hampshire Man Is 2nd Person Known To Be Living With A Pig Kidney
A New Hampshire man fought for the chance at a pig kidney transplant, spending months getting into good enough shape to be part of a small pilot study of a highly experimental treatment. His effort paid off: Tim Andrews, 66, is only the second person known to be living with a pig kidney. Andrews is free from dialysis, Massachusetts General Hospital announced Friday, and recovering so well from the Jan. 25 transplant that he left the hospital a week later. (Neergaard, 2/7)

MedPage Today: FDA OKs New Antibiotic Combo For Complicated Intra-Abdominal Infections
The FDA has approved aztreonam and avibactam (Emblaveo) in combination with metronidazole for adults who have limited or no alternative options for the treatment of complicated intra-abdominal infections, AbbVie announced Friday. ... According to the company, the product is the first and only fixed-dose, intravenous, monobactam/beta-lactamase inhibitor combination antibiotic to receive FDA approval. (Bassett, 2/7)

MedPage Today: Alteplase Also Shows Its Mettle For Late Strokes In HOPE Trial
The HOPE trial made another case for extending the therapeutic window for IV thrombolysis in acute ischemic stroke, potentially widening the pool of people eligible for therapy. (Lou, 2/8)

Newsweek: Florida Removes 1.3m People From Health Care Plan
Over one million Floridians have had their health insurance revoked as a result of a nationwide disenrollment from coverage that was previously safeguarded as part of the COVID-19 pandemic response. Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) enrolment in Florida has fallen from 5.1 million to 3.8 million between March 2023 and October 2024, according to health care research non-profit the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). (Cameron, 2/9)

The New York Times: A Sick Inmate In New York Is Freed After Suing Over Parole Delay
A sick man was released from a New York prison on Friday after suing the state for keeping him long past his parole date. Steve Coleman, who is 67 and has advanced kidney disease, was granted parole in 2023 after serving 43 years for murder. But he remained incarcerated for 21 more months because the Department of Corrections could not find a nursing home to accommodate his dialysis care. (Kliff, 2/7)

The New York Times: A California Battery Plant Burned. Residents Have Gotten Sick, And Anxious
Last month, a battery-storage plant went up in flames and burned for days, prompting the evacuation of more than 1,000 residents and shutting down local schools. The plant, located in Moss Landing, an unincorporated community in Monterey County, is the largest facility in the world that uses lithium-ion batteries to store energy. Residents have reported feeling ill, and many of them worry that the fire polluted the air, soil and water with toxins. (Mayorquín, 2/10)

The Colorado Sun: Colorado Is Likely To Create "Do Not Sell" Registry To Prevent Suicides By Firearm
A proposal making its way through the state legislature would let Coloradans place a voluntary freeze on gun sales to themselves. The measure, Senate Bill 34, would make Colorado the fifth state to set up a so-called do not sell registry. If approved, Coloradans could add their names to the registry through an online portal. (Sisk, 2/10)

The Texas Tribune: Judge Blocks More Provisions Of Texas Social Media Law 
A federal district court on Friday has issued more temporary blocks on provisions of a Texas law designed to restrict what kinds of materials and advertisements minors can see on social media and age verification requirements. (Runnels, 2/7)

Native News Online: ‘I Came Back To My Culture, And I Healed.’ 
As Maine's tribes confront an addiction crisis, Wabanaki Public Health & Wellness pioneers a treatment model that returns cultural practices to the heart of addiction recovery. (Wild, 2/7)

The New York Times: 2 Million Baked Goods Are Recalled Over Listeria Risk
About two million baked goods, including some doughnuts and coffee rolls sold at Dunkin’, were recalled over concerns of potential contamination with the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes, federal safety regulators said. The manufacturer FGF Brands, which distributes baked goods in the United States and Canada, issued the voluntary recall because of the “potential for contamination with Listeria monocytogenes,” according to a report released on Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration. (Diaz, 2/9)

The Washington Post: Studies Suggest Link Between Sleep Aides And Dementia
Nan Bishko Iwasaki, 81, a retired commercial artist who lives in Redondo Beach, California, has been taking a variety of sleeping pills for 22 years. She worries about their side effects, especially the possibility they might raise her risk of dementia, but “I can’t sleep when I try to stop taking them,” she says. Her concern may be warranted, experts say. A number of studies suggest an association between the risk of dementia and sleep aids, both prescription and over-the-counter, although existing research has not proved a specific cause-and-effect, according to experts. (Cimons, 2/9)

The Washington Post: Study Links ‘Slow-Wave Sleep’ And Executive Functioning Skills
Parents and doctors often think about children’s sleep all wrong, says psychologist Jessica Lunsford-Avery. Instead of focusing on quantity of hours, they should pay more attention to quality of rest. ... Lunsford-Avery’s most recent study links slow-wave differences in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder to daytime “executive functioning,” which includes problem-solving, planning ahead and controlling impulsivity. But her work has ramifications for others battling insomnia, including people struggling with anxiety and depression. (Ellison, 2/7)

NBC News: Woman’s Family Files Lawsuit Seeking To Halt Sales Of Galaxy Gas After Her Death
Nitrous oxide sold in colorful tanks with candy-like flavors that consumers are inhaling to get high must be removed from shelves because it is creating a “veritable national health crisis,” a new lawsuit alleges. (Chuck, 2/7)

The Hill: Juice Cleanse May Harm Your Health, Study Finds
Many people undergo a juice cleanse in an effort to detoxify the body and improve health, but new research suggests they do more harm than good. Researchers from Northwestern and San Raffaele universities found a diet of only vegetable and fruit juice, even for just three days, can lead to shifts in gut and oral bacteria linked to inflammation and cognitive decline. The study, published in the “Nutrients” journal, looked at three groups of healthy adults following different diets. (Delandro, 2/7)