First Edition: Thursday, Aug. 20, 2026

KFF HEALTH NEWS ORIGINAL STORIES

KFF Health News: How Much Of A Cancer Drug Is Too Much? Patients, Researchers Challenge FDA-Approved Dosages

Northwestern University economist Chuck Manski studies decision-making amid uncertainty. That prepared him better than many other cancer patients to decide whether to stay on an immunotherapy treatment that was making him very ill. For six months in 2022, Manski received monthly infusions of nivolumab to fight advanced melanoma. The drug ruined his thyroid gland, he said, requiring him to go on a special medication for the rest of his life, and caused severe dryness in his eyes, lips, and mouth. The FDA’s protocol for the drug called for an entire year of treatment, but Manski said his oncologist couldn’t explain why. It’s FDA-approved, “so that’s what we use,” she said. (Allen, 8/20)

KFF Health News: Violence Against Healthcare Workers And Staffing Shortages Fuel Hospital Strikes

Nurse Crystal Dhooghe is used to dealing with blood and broken bones in the emergency room. But she didn’t expect to witness so much violence against her own colleagues. “I’ve seen nurses get shoved, pushed, scratched. The biggest one is bitten,” said Dhooghe, who works at Henry Ford Genesys Hospital in Grand Blanc, Michigan. The prevalence of workplace violence in healthcare has fueled strikes in states such as Louisiana, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Michigan, where Dhooghe and many of her co-workers have been on the picket line since Labor Day last year. (Arditi, 8/20)

KFF Health News: Listen To The Latest ‘KFF Health News Minute’

Arielle Zionts reads the week’s news: Pediatricians try to persuade more parents to vaccinate their kids amid measles outbreaks. Plus, how hospital monopolies drive up costs for patients and insurers. (8/20)

CDC

NBC News: New CDC Director Pledges To ‘Speak Truth’ About Science

The new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Erica Schwartz, said Wednesday the agency is prepared to handle a variety of disease outbreaks, despite internal concerns about drastic cuts to CDC staffing and programs. Schwartz made the remarks in an internal meeting with CDC staff members. NBC News reviewed a transcript of the agencywide meeting, Schwartz’s first since she took the helm of the agency this month. (Edwards, 8/19)

Bloomberg: CDC Director Schwartz Apologizes To Staff For Lack Of Psychological Safety

The new director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told agency employees that she wants them to feel safe and not fear retributions for honest conversations, according to a recording of the meeting heard by Bloomberg News. “I’m so sorry that you have to live under this extreme psychological unsafety,” Director Erica Schwartz said in her first address to the entire staff since starting as director. (Nix, 8/19)

FDA

Bloomberg: Trump Taps White House Adviser Heidi Overton To Run FDA After Months Of Tumult

President Donald Trump nominated White House policy aide Heidi Overton to lead the Food and Drug Administration after a turbulent year at the agency marked by high-profile staff exits and industry complaints. Trump announced the selection in a social media post, confirming an earlier Bloomberg News report. He said she would work to speed up new treatments, boost US innovation and reform clinical trials. (Zhang and Griffin, 8/18)

The New York Times: Senate Health Panel Chairman Voices Strong Reservations About F.D.A. Nominee

The chairman of the Senate health committee on Wednesday expressed “strong concerns” about President Trump’s nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration, criticizing her support of what he called a “nonsensical vaccine executive order” issued last week. “That alone is almost disqualifying,” the chairman, Senator Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, wrote on social media. (Stolberg, 8/19)

Politico: Trump's Pick To Lead The FDA Faces Uphill Senate Battle

Heidi Overton’s years of loyalty to Donald Trump helped her become his pick to lead the Food and Drug Administration, one of the government’s most powerful regulatory agencies. But that devotion could ruin her chances at Senate confirmation. As Trump’s deputy assistant for domestic policy, Overton, a physician, has helped bring Trump’s health policies to fruition, most recently helping shepherd an executive order last week that spelled out Trump’s plan to reduce the number of recommended vaccines for children. (Gardner, Lim, Ollstein and Haslett, 8/19)

MORE ON THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

The Hill: Judge Blocks Trump Administration's Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program Changes

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s changes to the Teen Pregnancy Prevention (TPP) program that resulted in the abrupt loss of tens of millions of dollars in federal grants. The order from U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper, who was appointed by former President Obama, pauses the administration’s effort to reshape the TPP program into abstinence-only curricula. (Weixel, 8/19)

Fierce Healthcare: HHS Awards $96.7M In Behavioral Health Services Grants

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) awarded $96.7 million in grants and cooperative agreements on Monday to strengthen a range of behavioral health services and initiatives across the nation. The grants were funded through HHS’ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Services provided include support for homeless individuals with serious mental illness, suicide prevention and early intervention, substance use disorder (SUD) treatment, peer support and more. (Gleeson, 8/19)

Military.com: 3.3 Million US Citizens' Data Collected For 'Massive Genetic Database For Policing'

New research by the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law found that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has collected the DNA of more than 3.3 million people, with the program’s “primary purpose” not revolving around immigration enforcement but to “build a national DNA database for solving crimes.” The data collection encompassing both the Biden and Trump administrations is claimed to be a continuation of federal government efforts to build a massive genetic database for policing the general population, with Georgetown researchers citing a March 2025 email scribed by a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attorney purportedly stating such intent. (Mordowanec, 8/19)

The New York Times: Trump Officials Scrap Effort To Recruit Pentagon Lawyers To Represent Migrant Children

The Trump administration on Wednesday abruptly scrapped a plan to recruit retiring Pentagon lawyers to represent unaccompanied minors in immigration court, a move that would have asked attorneys with little relevant legal experience to help migrant children facing deportation. The shift deepened confusion about how the federal government planned to fulfill its legal obligation to protect the rights of the more than 20,000 unaccompanied minors with pending immigration cases, who advocates say are uniquely vulnerable amid the administration’s push for mass expulsions. (Ngo, 8/19)

VETERANS' HEALTH

Newsweek: VA Benefits: Trump Shares Update On Psychedelic Drug Treatment For Veterans

President Donald Trump on Tuesday reaffirmed his administration's push to expand access to psychedelic-assisted treatments for veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI) and depression. In a post on Truth Social, Trump announced a new step involving the hallucinogenic compound ibogaine. (Blake, 8/19)

Military Times: Who Decides What Works? Inside VA’s Mental Health Treatment Playbook

Why can’t veterans always get FDA-approved treatments through VA? VA's Dr Wiecher explains how evidence, safety, guidelines and resources shape VA care. (Oliverio, 8/18)

CAPITOL WATCH

ProPublica: Senators Criticize Trump Administration’s Demands For Foreign Health Data

Citing reporting by ProPublica, eight Democratic U.S. senators have criticized the Trump administration’s demands to access the health data of millions of people as a condition of giving lifesaving aid to other countries. In a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the senators, including minority leader Chuck Schumer, said the U.S. demands were “unprecedented and at odds with U.S. policy concerning the data of American citizens.” The inquiry into the administration’s approach to foreign health data referred to a ProPublica story published in June about agreements the U.S. struck with African countries — and the risks they posed to people there. (Lerner and Barry-Jester, 8/19)

Modern Healthcare: HIPRA Bill Targets Apple Watch, Wearable Health Data Privacy

Dr. Bill Cassidy, who chairs the Senate health committee, has a move he makes when he explains what’s wrong with wearable technology being exempt from health privacy law. The Louisiana Republican and gastroenterologist does a little shuffling stutter step, then suddenly charges halfway across a hallway. It’s a characteristic pattern that Cassidy said a physician might note in a patient with Parkinson’s disease. It’s also a signal an Apple Watch could detect and, unlike for physicians, there is no federal rule stopping the tech company or app developers from selling that information. (McAuliff, 8/19)

OUTBREAKS AND HEALTH THREATS

NBC News: Salmonella Outbreak Linked To Jalapenos Isn’t Over, As CDC Reports More Than 400 Cases

At least 431 people in 32 states have gotten sick from eating fresh jalapeño peppers contaminated with salmonella, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Wednesday. The likeliest source of the illnesses was jalapeños grown in Mexico and distributed by Coast Citrus Distributors, which recalled the peppers. (Edwards, 8/19)

The Hill: As US's Cyclosporiasis Cases Surpass 15,000, These Are The Hardest-Hit States

Since May, there have been more than 15,700 cases of domestically acquired cyclosporiasis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed in a Tuesday update. Another 11,800 may need further investigation. However, only about 9,500 of those cases in the 17 states connected to the cyclospora outbreak traced back to iceberg lettuce, according to the FDA and the CDC. There are “multiple clusters” of cyclospora that remain under investigation and do not have identified sources so far. (Bink, 8/19)

Bloomberg: Congo Ebola Outbreak Spreads Beyond Ituri As Cases Rise In North Kivu

Ebola is spreading rapidly beyond the main epicenter of Democratic Republic of Congo’s outbreak, overwhelming treatment capacity in some areas and putting mounting pressure on efforts to trace and contain infections. (Gale, 8/20)

AP: Screwworm Hampers Shelters' Efforts To Save Rescued Dogs And Cats

Adoptions are on hold for thousands of dogs and cats in Texas, potentially putting the animals at risk of being euthanized, because of efforts to stop the spread of the New World screwworm, an insect that has crossed the border from Mexico into the United States for the first time in 60 years. The flesh-eating parasite threatens the nation’s $113 billion beef industry, prompting federal officials to close the border to cattle movements. (Hanna, 8/19)

CIDRAP: Want To Predict Lyme Disease Risk? Count The Acorns, Not The Deer

If you want to know how bad a future tick season will be, it may be more useful to count the number of acorns on the ground than the number of deer in the forest. That’s one of several surprising findings to emerge from more than 30 years of tracking ticks, mice, deer, and weather in a Lyme disease hot spot. The findings, published this week in PNAS, challenge long-held ideas about what drives Lyme disease risk. (Bergeson, 8/19)

HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY

Healthcare Dive: Providence Health Plan To Close Completely After Medicare Advantage Deal Falls Through

Providence Health Plan is completely shutting down, after a deal with a national insurer to keep its Medicare Advantage business running fell through. The insurance division of the Renton, Washington-based nonprofit hospital operator announced in May that it would wind down its commercial and Medicaid businesses in 2027, but that it was working with an unnamed carrier to continue its MA plans. But Providence and the third party were unable to reach an agreement, “despite significant effort on all sides,” a Providence spokesperson confirmed. The closure will affect more than 64,000 MA seniors covered by Providence. (Parduhn, 8/19)

Becker's Hospital Review: Mount Sinai Quietly Stops Accepting Some New Patients With Government-Backed Plans

New York City-based Mount Sinai Health System is no longer accepting some new patients with government-backed health coverage, according to since-removed notices on its website. An archived webpage shows how Mount Sinai stopped accepting new patients with Centene’s Fidelis Care Medicaid, exchange and Medicare Advantage coverage, as well as Wellcare Medicare Advantage coverage, as of Aug. 1. The same applied to new patients with EmblemHealth Medicaid. (Casolo, 8/19)

Modern Healthcare: St. Jude Taps Charles Roberts As CEO, President

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital has named Dr. Charles Roberts as its next president and CEO, effective Jan. 1. Roberts is executive vice president and director of the St. Jude Comprehensive Cancer Center. He will succeed Dr. James Downing, who in February announced plans to step down by the end of the year. (DeSilva, 8/19)

Verite News: University Medical Center Firing Violated City ‘Ban The Box’ Law, Attorneys Say

A group of civil rights attorneys is accusing University Medical Center New Orleans (UMC) of violating the city of New Orleans’ “ban the box” law — which prohibits public employers from discriminating against job applicants and current employees because of past arrests or convictions — when it fired employee Devon Jones in April, allegedly due to his criminal background. The attorneys also requested that the city conduct a full investigation of the employee’s termination. (Stewart, 8/19)

Stat: American Cancer Society Cancels Annual Alcohol Industry Fundraiser

The American Cancer Society quietly canceled its upcoming Wine and Spirits Industry’s Gala, a spokesperson confirmed to STAT. The event, which has for decades raised money from members of the alcohol industry at a boozy Manhattan gathering, was set to take place in October at the iconic Rainbow Room. The society “decided to sunset the Wine & Spirits Industry Gala, and the October event will not take place,” spokesperson Michele Money-Carson said in an email. “The decision is part of ACS’s ongoing evaluation of how its events and fundraising activities align with its mission and prevention guidance.” (Cueto, 8/19)

MedPage Today: Here's How One Nephrology Unit Cut Hospital-Acquired C. Diff By 90%

An inpatient nephrology unit reduced hospital-acquired Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) infections by 90% after implementing nurse-driven protocols. (Monaco, 8/19)

PHARMA AND TECH

Becker's Hospital Review: FDA Authorizes 1st-Of-Its-Kind Blood Draw Robot

The FDA has authorized the first standalone robotic device that can draw blood from a patient’s arm without hands-on operator intervention. The device, Vitestro’s Aletta, is authorized for adults in outpatient settings and must operate under the oversight of a supervisor trained in phlebotomy, according to an Aug. 19 news release. One phlebotomist can oversee up to three Aletta devices simultaneously. (Jeffries, 8/19)

STATE WATCH

The New York Times: Man Dies At Newly Opened Medical Unit For Rikers Jail

A man died in custody on Wednesday morning at a medical unit in Manhattan that houses inmates from the Rikers jail complex, the city said in a statement. The man, Christopher Rodriguez, 36, was found “in medical distress in his housing area” at the Outposted Therapeutic Housing Unit at Bellevue Hospital, which is run jointly by the hospital and the New York City Department of Correction. He was pronounced dead at 8:39 a.m., the statement said. He is the sixth person to die in city custody this year and the first at the medical unit. (Fahy and Meko, 8/19)

The New York Times: What Will It Take To Fix New York’s Housing Shortage?

How dire is New York City’s housing shortage? City officials estimate that about 290,000 new homes would be needed right now to provide roofs for everyone, including residents who are homeless or not living on their own. And that number is only going to grow. In the longer term, New York City would need about 700,000 homes built over the next 10 years to solve the problem, a draft report from city officials has concluded. (McGeehan, 8/19)

The Washington Post: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Takes Aim At Muslim Washing Stations In Airports

Legal experts dispute Abbott’s claims that the ritual washing stations are discriminatory, with some saying his attack fits a pattern of anti-Muslim actions and rhetoric. (Hennessy-Fiske and Boorstein, 8/20)

AP: Woman Sought In Massachusetts Officer's Death Co-Founded Mental Health Group

A woman who started a group that advocates for the mental health of police officers was being sought by authorities Wednesday after a Massachusetts cop was found dead at the home they owned together. Police began searching for Karen Solomon, who also wrote two books about the physical and psychological experiences of first responders, after Worcester police officer Kurt Solomon was found dead Tuesday. The two shared a home and had been married, court records indicated, but authorities declined to discuss their current relationship, citing domestic violence privacy rules. (8/19)

NPR: Disabled Americans Fear Return To Segregation, Institutionalization

Cody and Kaleigh Brendle grew up near the Jersey Shore, going out on their grandfather's boat on weekends, learning to swim and riding bikes together. "I was the annoying little sister — like, 'Wait for me, wait for me!'" said Kaleigh. She remembered standing by in awe at summer camp as her fearless older brother scaled rock-climbing walls and went down waterslides. "I was like, 'Wow, he's doing all this — maybe I can try.'" (Mehta, 8/20)

SOCIAL MEDIA AND MENTAL HEALTH

AP: Former Meta Engineer Says Instagram Had 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Approach On Kid Users

The trial that began Tuesday in federal court in Oakland, California, pits Meta against the states of California, Colorado, Kentucky and New Jersey and is expected to last about six weeks. A former engineering director at Meta who has testified before Congress about child safety on Instagram told jurors Wednesday at a landmark trial that the company took a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach on kids under 13 on its platforms. During his second day of testimony, Arturo Béjar said Meta consistently prioritized profits over safety in designing its products, focusing on how often and for how long people used them, even if it was detrimental to their mental well-being. (Ortutay, 8/19)

LIFESTYLE AND HEALTH

Stat: Expert: Better Muscle Dysmorphia Care Starts With Proper Definition

Eating disorder expert Jason Nagata says reclassifying muscle dysmorphia could help men struggling with 'reverse anorexia' get better care. (DeLuca, 8/20)

Fox News: Certain Cancer Risk Spikes With Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Consumption

Consuming a sugary drink a day may significantly raise the risk of developing stomach cancer, according to new research from Mass General Brigham. After accounting for other risk factors, the researchers found that one or more sugary drinks per day was linked to nearly triple the risk of gastric cancer compared with fewer than one serving per month. (Quill, 8/19)

Stat: Reducing Protein To Increase Longevity Is A Bad Idea, Nutrition Experts Say

Protein is on everyone’s mind, and for older adults, it should be. Nutrition experts say that’s worth a reminder after researchers recently suggested there’s evidence that “dietary protein restriction promotes metabolic health, healthspan, and lifespan.” (Chen, 8/20)

MedPage Today: Most Physical Activity Is Tied To Lower Dementia Risk, But This Type May Raise It

The relationship between physical activity and dementia risk may depend on whether the activity is recreational exercise or job-related labor, a study of more than 4.2 million people suggested. (George, 8/19)

The New York Times: D.E.A. Joins Investigation Into Hayden Panettiere’s Death

The D.E.A., a federal agency, enforces the nation’s laws regulating controlled substances. Its work typically includes large-scale investigations into, for example, drug cartels accused of bringing cocaine, fentanyl and methamphetamine into the country. But it does work with local law enforcement. In recent years, it helped the Los Angeles Police Department investigate the drugs involved in the death of the actor Matthew Perry. (Feuer, Bryson Taylor and Stevens, 8/19)

RECALLS

HealthDay: Dreyer’s Recalls Outshine Fruit Bars Nationwide For Glass Risk

The voluntary recall covers Strawberry, Watermelon, Grape, Tangerine and Black Cherry 6-count boxes of 2.5-ounce bars. The Outshine 24-count Variety Pack of 2.5-ounce bars is also affected. The bars were shipped to stores across the country. (Vohnoutka, 8/19)

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