First Edition: Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025

KFF Health News: An Ice Rink To Fight Opioid Crisis: Drug-Free Fun Vs. Misuse Of Settlement Cash
A Kentucky county nestled in the heart of Appalachia, where the opioid crisis has wreaked devastation for decades, spent $15,000 of its opioid settlement money on an ice rink. That amount wasn’t enough to solve the county’s troubles, but it could have bought 333 kits of Narcan, a medication that can reverse opioid overdoses. Instead, people are left wondering how a skating rink addresses addiction or fulfills the settlement money’s purpose of remediating the harms of opioids. (Pattani, 2/20)

CNN: HHS Issues New Definitions Of Terms Like ‘Sex,’ ‘Man’ And ‘Woman’ That Critics Say Ignore Science 
In one of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s first moves as secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, the agency released guidance Wednesday for the US government, external partners and the public that offers a narrower definition of sex than the ones used by many scientists and that aligns with a January executive order signed by President Donald Trump. The department also launched a website promoting these definitions and created a video defending a ban on transgender women participating in women’s sports. (Christensen, 2/20)

The New York Times: Nearly One In 10 U.S. Adults Identifies As L.G.B.T.Q.
Nearly one in 10 adults in the United States identifies as L.G.B.T.Q., according to a large analysis from Gallup released Thursday — almost triple the share since Gallup began counting in 2012, and up by two-thirds since 2020. (Cain Miller and Paris, 2/20)

NPR: Trump Administration Terminates CDC Flu Vaccine Campaign
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is stopping a successful flu vaccination campaign that juxtaposed images of wild animals, such as a lion, with cute counterparts, like a kitten, as an analogy for how immunization can help tame the flu. The news was shared with staff during a meeting on Wednesday, according to two CDC staffers who spoke with NPR on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, and a recording reviewed by NPR. (Stone, 2/19)

MedPage Today: Will The Egg Shortage Affect Flu Shots? 
While millions of vaccine doses are made using chicken eggs each year, experts say the current egg shortage won't hamper next year's flu vaccine production cycle. Previous bird flu outbreaks and decades-old public health infrastructure have led industry to protect the hens used for vaccine production, experts told MedPage Today. Moreover, flu vaccines that don't require eggs are available, and mRNA-based flu shots are in development. (Robertson, 2/19)

The New York Times: Trump Administration Has Fired Health Inspectors At Some Border Stations
At the nation’s borders, federal workers keep the country safe in many ways: Some investigate sick passengers. Some examine animals for dangerous pathogens. And some inspect plants for infestations that could spread in this country. Late last week, the Trump administration dispatched hundreds of those federal employees with the same message that colleagues at other agencies received: Their services were no longer needed. (Mandavilli and Anthes, 2/19)

The Guardian: Trump’s Dismantling Of USAid Raises Risk Of Mpox Global Emergency, Experts Warn
As the Trump administration dismantles the US Agency for International Development (USAid) and retreats from funding global public health efforts, mpox – formerly known as monkeypox – is at greater risk of becoming a wider global emergency, according to aid workers and global health experts. “It’s a real mistake not to be doing everything we can to control this while we’re still able to,” said Stephen Morse, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University focusing on risk assessment of infectious diseases. “Taking huge steps backwards is only going to make everything worse.” (Adams, 2/20)

The Washington Post: UC-Davis Lab Workers Key To California’s Bird Flu Response To Go On Strike
Workers at the only lab in California with the authority to confirm high-risk bird flu cases will go on a brief strike next week, claiming that years of understaffing, poor training and burnout have left them struggling to protect the state’s food chain from the rampant virus. ... Limited career advancement and poor management prompted a staff exodus early last year, former lab workers said, and chronic staffing shortages have since increased errors and left remaining workers ill-equipped to handle virus testing. (Ziegler, 2/19)

CBS News: Raw Pet Food Is Recalled And Warnings Issued In Two States After Cats Die Of Bird Flu
Some lots of raw pet food sold in two states are being recalled after two indoor cats became ill with bird flu earlier this month and were euthanized due to the severity of their illnesses. Officials in Oregon and Washington issued public health alerts late last week after tests confirmed highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in the felines, which lived in different households in Multnomah County, Oregon. (Gibson, 2/19)

Stat: AdvaMed Pushes Back Against Trump’s FDA Cuts 
AdvaMed, the medical device lobby, pushed back Wednesday on the Trump administration’s weekend firings of Food and Drug Administration employees. AdvaMed CEO Scott Whitaker sent a letter Tuesday to administrators at the Health and Human Services Department urging them to consider the terminations’ potential ramifications on patient health and medical device innovation. In a call with reporters on Wednesday, he noted that many of the roles were funded, at least in part, by fees paid by device makers to help speed the review of their products. Device companies have already noticed delays, he said. (Lawrence, 2/19)

The Hill: Former CMS Head Warns Elon Musk's DOGE Acting Too Quickly
Former Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said she is concerned about the speed at which Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is scrapping federal programs to cut costs. “I think that certainly looking at payments is absolutely OK, but you need to make sure that you’re doing it with knowledge about what these programs do and a real understanding that if you make a tweak here, you can really have a significant effect on people, because this is real money,” Brooks-LaSure said Wednesday at a health care event hosted by Politico. (Irwin, 2/19)

CBS News: Faculty At Several Chicago Universities Protest Planned Cuts To Federal Research Grants
Professors, researchers, and faculty members from several Chicago colleges rallied at the University of Illinois Chicago on Wednesday to protest the Trump administration's planned funding cuts to research grants. ... Faculty members from UIC, the University of Chicago, DePaul University, Northwestern University, and many more gathered at UIC on Wednesday to talk about their schools' groundbreaking research, medical advancements, and workforce training for students. (Feurer, 2/19)

NPR: Aid Groups Demand Court Find USAID, State Officials In Contempt
Groups that receive foreign aid are asking a federal judge to find the Trump officials now running the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development in contempt of court for not reopening the flow of money to thousands of programs around the globe, as the judge has ordered. In a filing Wednesday afternoon, the plaintiffs said that each day the funding is delayed, millions of people across the world who rely on it suffer. It urged the judge to impose penalties until the U.S. government complies. (Langfitt, 2/19)

MedPage Today: Federal Register Blackout Blocks NIH Funding
Scientists around the country fear that an apparent halt of the Federal Register's publication of meeting schedules for research grant reviews is an attempt to evade a judge's order that was supposed to lift the Trump administration's freeze on federal research funding. Pausing Federal Register notice publication means numerous NIH study sections and advisory councils -- panels of subject experts who evaluate each grant application -- can't meet to make decisions on those proposals. (Clark, 2/19)

Axios: Trump Appeal On Birthright Citizenship Order Rejected By Court
President Trump remains blocked from ending birthright citizenship in the U.S. after a federal appeals court ruling on Wednesday night. The big picture: Trump's executive order to end birthright citizenship is facing multiple lawsuits, including from Democratic attorneys general and civil rights groups who say it violates the Constitution. The case is likely to end up in the U.S. Supreme Court. (Falconer, 2/19)

Politico: Drug Industry: Let Us Make Americans Healthy
Drug company executives on Tuesday touted their industry’s work to keep and make Americans healthy during a Washington event that came on the heels of one of their biggest critics, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., being sworn in to helm federal health agencies. PhRMA CEO Steve Ubl took to the stage at The Anthem to carefully walk the line between supporting the Trump administration and cautioning against policies that could damage the drug industry — obliquely nodding at the tension between the industry’s goal of getting new medicines to market and Kennedy’s desire to address health problems with less pharma influence. (Gardner and Lim, 2/19)

Modern Healthcare: Dr. Oz To Divest Of Healthcare Companies If Confirmed To Lead CMS
Dr. Mehmet Oz has agreed to divest stakes worth millions of dollars in numerous healthcare companies, including UnitedHealth Group and HCA Healthcare, if he is confirmed as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In an ethics agreement posted by the Office of Government Ethics Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead CMS said he would end investments in many companies within 90 days of confirmation. He also said upon confirmation, he would resign from numerous advisory positions he holds. (Early, 2/19)

The New York Times: Missouri Clinics Resume Abortions
Abortion clinics in the staunchly Republican state of Missouri this week resumed procedures for the first time in years, despite a continued push by conservative state leaders to block a constitutional amendment enshrining abortion rights that voters approved in November. It was a remarkable moment after an extended fight. Missouri was the first state to enact an abortion ban after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Then in 2024, it became the first state with a near-total ban to approve a citizen-sponsored abortion rights amendment. (Zernike, 2/19)

ProPublica: Texas Banned Abortion. Then Sepsis Rates Soared.
Pregnancy became far more dangerous in Texas after the state banned abortion in 2021, ProPublica found in a first-of-its-kind data analysis. The rate of sepsis shot up more than 50% for women hospitalized when they lost their pregnancies in the second trimester, ProPublica found. The surge in this life-threatening condition, caused by infection, was most pronounced for patients whose fetus may still have had a heartbeat when they arrived at the hospital. (Presser, Suozzo, Chou, Surana, 2/20)

Newsweek: US Warned Of 2032 Hospital Crisis
U.S. hospitals are on track for a crisis come 2032 that may lead to hundreds of thousands of additional deaths each year. This is the warning of a study by researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who found that hospitals are not only fuller now than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic—but are on track to exceed the critical threshold of 85 percent hospital occupancy within just seven years. (Randall, 2/19)

Modern Healthcare: UnitedHealth Group Buyouts Offered To Some Employees: CNBC
UnitedHealth Group’s insurance business is offering certain employees the option to accept buyouts if they agree to resign in the coming days, CNBC reported Wednesday. The healthcare conglomerate is making a voluntary program available to some full- and part-time employees in UnitedHealthcare’s benefits operations division who submit their resignation by March 3, according to the report. (Berryman, 2/19)

Modern Healthcare: Exchange Claims Denials Face More State Scrutiny
Health insurance customers in more parts of the country have new advocates in their battles against claims denials: state governments. States have long had regulatory authority over the individual and small-group health insurance markets, but a growing number of agencies is taking on a greater role assisting consumers as they transition out of a federal system and take matters into their own hands. (Tepper, 2/19)

Modern Healthcare: CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, OptumRx Lose Bid To Stop FTC Case 
The Federal Trade Commission’s legal action against the three largest pharmacy benefit managers will move forward after a federal judge rejected their bid to halt the case. In a court filing Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Matthew Schelp denied a request by CVS Health’s CVS Caremark, Cigna’s Express Scripts and UnitedHealth Group’s OptumRx for a preliminary injunction in the FTC’s in-house case examining their influence over insulin costs. (Berryman, 2/19)

Fierce Healthcare: Sutter Health Investing $1B To Build Hospital, Expand Services
Sutter Health will invest $1 billion to expand its services across Northern California's East Bay region, including a new flagship campus in Emeryville. The health system announced Wednesday that the campus will feature a new medical center with up to 200 beds as well as a regional destination for ambulatory care. The plans also leave room for future expansion, according to the announcement. (Minemyer, 2/19)

Modern Healthcare: Change Healthcare Data Breach: Industry 'Not Fine' 1 Year Later
It’s been one year since the unprecedented Change Healthcare cyberattack crippled hospitals, medical groups, payers and pharmacies. For some providers, troubles linger. The industry continues to grapple with the aftermath of the breach of UnitedHealth Group's technology subsidiary, which exposed data on 190 million consumers. ... UnitedHealth is still working to bring at least three platforms fully online, according to its Change Healthcare status webpage Tuesday. (Berryman, 2/19)

MedPage Today: Another Expert Group Throws Shade At Spinal Injections For Back Pain
Just a week after an American Academy of Neurology (AAN) committee found "limited efficacy" for epidural steroid injections to treat chronic back pain, an international panel is going much further, calling for an end to these and a host of other common interventions. (Gever, 2/19)

Stat: Years After An Apple Study, An Asthma Management Tool Goes Live
Four years after Apple announced a study to explore how its products could be used to support people with asthma, an application developed from that research is now available to the public. Called Asthma Tool, the free software allows users to track their symptoms and triggers and to use wearable devices to monitor vitals, like resting heart rate, for signs that asthma may be acting up. (Aguilar, 2/20)

The Texas Tribune: Texas Mental Health Licensing Board Gives Initial OK To Remove Training Requirement Associated With DEI
The Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to give preliminary approval to remove language that requires cultural competency as part of continuing education requirements for several licensed mental health professions. This move has prompted support from those who are against diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and opposition from mental health providers who say it will hurt the experience for patients, particularly those of color. However, officials with the state’s mental health licensing authority say people have misunderstood their motives, as political discussions surrounding DEI have turned a simple rule change into something more. (Simpson, 2/19)

CBS News: Heartland Alliance Health Reverses Decision To Close Chicago Clinics, Food Pantries
Heartland Alliance Health announced Wednesday that its clinics and food pantries will remain open, reversing an earlier decision to close at the end of the month. The nonprofit said on its website that all its health clinics, food pantries, and medical case management and outreach services will remain open and active. (Harrington, 2/19)

San Francisco Chronicle: Drug Overdose Deaths Rising Again In S.F. After Months Of Declines
Accidental drug overdose deaths in San Francisco are ticking back up after several months of declines, according to preliminary figures released by the Medical Examiner’s office Wednesday. January marked the third consecutive month that overdose fatalities increased — a reversal of the hopeful downward trend that began last summer and held through most of the fall. (Ho, 2/19)

CNN: An 11-Year-Old Girl In Texas Died By Suicide After She Was Bullied About Her Family’s Immigration Status, Her Mother Says
A young girl’s death by suicide is being investigated by school police after her mother says she was bullied by other students who hurled insults at her, claiming her family was in the US illegally. Eleven-year-old Jocelynn Rojo Carranza died on February 8 – five days after her mother found her unresponsive at their home in Gainesville, Texas, according to an online obituary. Her funeral took place Wednesday morning. (Mascarenhas, Lavandera and Killough, 2/19)