- LGBTQ+ Health
Hospital To Close Health Center For Transgender Youth: Citing “external pressure” — the Trump administration is attempting to block gender-affirming care for youth — Children’s Hospital Los Angeles has announced that it will close its Center for Transyouth Health and Development on July 22. Read more from LAist.
The Bay Area Reporter: More California LGBTQ Bills Advance
A bill addressing LGBTQ teen suicide prevention that Governor Gavin Newsom has pledged to sign into law was among the final batch of LGBTQ-focused legislation moving on this Legislative session. Bills addressing access to HIV prevention medicines and the legal process to change one’s name and gender also survived their latest legislative hurdles. State legislators had to meet a June 6 deadline to pass bills out of their chamber of origin in the Legislature. Of the 20 bills of importance to the LGBTQ community that the Bay Area Reporter has been tracking this year, 18 are advancing and will be taken up for final passage by the Assembly or Senate later this summer. (Bajko, 6/6)
- Vaccines
Bloomberg: RFK Jr.'s Actions Cast Uncertainty On Insurance Coverage For Free Vaccines
Public health experts are taking it upon themselves to counter recent moves by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that could dramatically change US vaccine policy. They have formed a shadow group of specialists who can give recommendations on who should receive which vaccines, and are urging insurers to continue paying for shots. (Cohrs Zhang, Nix, and Smith, 6/12)
CIDRAP: Organizations Urge Ongoing Insurance Coverage For COVID Vaccines During Pregnancy
Dozens of medical and public health organizations have signed a letter urging insurers to continue covering COVID-19 vaccination in pregnant patients. The letter from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is in response to the recent move by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to no longer recommend COVID-19 shots for healthy pregnant women. (Dall, 6/12)
MedPage Today: Former Member Urges Doctors To Disregard ACIP’s Vaccine Guidelines
A recently ousted member of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) said Thursday that she is recommending that physicians go to sources other than ACIP for vaccine scheduling recommendations. "It puts us in a very dangerous place if we can't trust the national recommendations made by ACIP," said Helen Chu, MD, professor of allergy and infectious diseases at the University of Washington, in Seattle. (Frieden, 6/12)
Roll Call: Kennedy's Vaccine Panel Includes Skeptics And Non-Experts
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday announced eight members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, populated mainly by critics of the nation’s COVID-19 vaccine policies or those who don’t specialize in vaccine science. (DeGroot, Raman and Hellmann, 6/11)
- Post Graduate Education
Medpage Today: RFK Jr. Threatens To Cut Funding To Medical Schools That Don’t Teach Nutrition
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in April that he plans to tell medical schools to teach nutrition or risk losing federal funding, ABC News reported last week. "Under Secretary Kennedy's leadership, HHS is committed to ensuring that nutrition is treated as core clinical knowledge -- not a wellness extra -- in building a healthcare system equipped to prevent and manage chronic disease," an HHS spokesperson told MedPage Today in an email. (Nielsen, 6/12)
The New York Times: Trump-Backed Loan Caps For Grad Students May Aggravate Doctor Shortage
President Trump’s policy agenda would make deep cuts in government health plans and medical research, and, critics say, could also make finding a doctor more difficult. The Republicans’ major domestic policy bill restricts loans that students rely on to pursue professional graduate degrees, making the path to becoming a physician harder even as doctor shortages loom and the American population is graying. (Caryn Rabin, 6/9)
- Children’s Health
Newsweek: Surprising Approach May Help Lower Risk Of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
A common household chemical might hold a surprising secret—one that could help prevent sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). In a new paper published in the Journal of Perinatology, researchers at Rutgers Health propose that caffeine—long used as a respiratory stimulant in premature infants—could help protect babies from the low-oxygen episodes that may trigger SIDS and other forms of sudden unexpected infant death (SUID). (Gray, 6/12)
CNN: Prenatal PFAS Exposure May Raise Teen's Risk of High Blood Pressure, Study Finds
Prenatal exposure to a class of dangerous, widely used chemicals could be linked to your child having high blood pressure as a teen, according to a new study. (Holcombe, 6/12)
Modern Healthcare: Providers Report CMS Blocking Pediatric Hospital-At-Home Programs
Standalone children’s hospitals say the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is unfairly preventing them from offering hospital-at-home. The Children’s Hospital Association – which represents approximately 200 children’s hospitals nationwide — wants the agency to allow all children’s hospitals to be able to provide hospital-level services at home through Medicaid. However, the waiver on which hospital-at-home programs are built runs through Medicare, creating roadblocks for standalone hospitals that don't participate in the program. (Eastabrook, 6/6)
Politico: WHO Raises Concern As Measles Cases Increase In The US
Dr. Katherine O’Brien, the WHO’s vaccines director, told POLITICO’s Carmen Paun that U.S. political leaders should clearly endorse and promote measles vaccination to prevent the country from losing its disease-elimination status — and become a location that gives rise to future outbreaks that can easily spread domestically and abroad among travelers. If the disease spreads continuously for a year, it would be considered endemic for the first time in 25 years. “It’s really a sign of a country going backwards in terms of their ability to protect people,” O’Brien said. (Gardner and Hooper, 6/6)
The New York Times: Study Finds Child Gun Deaths Increased In States With Looser Gun Laws
Firearm deaths of children and teenagers rose significantly in states that enacted more permissive gun laws after the Supreme Court in 2010 limited local governments’ ability to restrict gun ownership, a new study has found. In states that maintained stricter laws, firearm deaths were stable after the ruling, the researchers reported, and in some, they even declined. (Caryn Rabin, 6/9)
- Schools
The Washington Post: Supreme Court Eases Path To Sue Schools Over Disability Accommodations The Supreme Court on Thursday made it easier for students to prove their schools are not making proper accommodations for disabilities, ruling for the family of a Minnesota teen with a severe form of epilepsy who claimed her school district did not do enough to meet her instructional needs. An attorney for Ava Tharpe argued that schoolchildren had to meet an unfairly high burden to show schools are falling short under the Americans With Disabilities Act, Rehabilitation Act and other disability statutes. The high court unanimously agreed. (Jouvenal, 6/12)
- Mental Health
Progress Made Toward Improved Staffing In Psychiatric Hospitals: California health officials met Wednesday to weigh competing proposals for new staffing requirements in psychiatric hospitals, which could have a profound impact on the care that tens of thousands of patients admitted to these facilities receive every year. Read more from the San Francisco Chronicle.
CalMatters: How Is California Allocating Proposition 1 Mental Health Funds?
A little more than a year after Californians approved a $6.4 billion mental health bond with a nail-bitingly close vote, we’re getting our first glimpse into how that money will be spent. Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom awarded nearly half of the money to projects that range from a crisis stabilization unit in rural Del Norte County to a residential addiction treatment program for mothers in Los Angeles. The initial $3.3 billion should fund more than 5,000 treatment beds and 21,800 outpatient treatment slots for people struggling with their mental health or addiction, according to his office. (Kendall, Wiener and Yee, 6/12)
- Administration Actions
KFF Health News: Listen: Who Is Affected By Cuts To Vital Health Research? An analysis by KFF Health News found that the Trump administration’s cuts to the National Institutes of Health have been felt in both red and blue states, across political and geographic lines. Scientists warn these cuts will stall progress on urgent health issues and could set back care for vulnerable communities. More reductions in health research spending could be ahead. The Trump administration’s budget proposal for next year calls on Congress to slash the NIH budget more than 40%. (Bichell, 6/12)
Politico: CDC Reverses Layoffs, Reinstates Over 400 Employees
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reinstating more than 400 people who had received layoff notices, according to an email from CDC leadership to employees seen by POLITICO. The rehiring, announced internally Wednesday, marks the largest number of employees that the agency has asked back to date. (Gardner, 6/11)
MedPage Today: Oncology Community Unites in Opposition to 'Draconian' NIH and NCI Budget Cuts The oncology community has sounded the alarm over the Trump administration's 2026 budget proposal, which includes near-40% cuts in funding for the NIH and National Cancer Institute (NCI). Released in early May, the proposal calls for reducing the NIH budget allocation from $46 billion to $28 billion (~39%) and NCI funding from $7.2 billion to $4.45 billion (~38%). The reductions far exceed those for the overall budget, which would trim 22.6% from all non-military spending, as compared with the current funding levels. (Bankhead, 6/11)
Stat: Researchers Express Doubts Over NIH Autism Research Initiative On the surface, the National Institutes of Health’s brand new autism research initiative is alluring: $50 million to study autism’s causes and services for autistic people, and access to data from existing public and private databases. But the opportunity’s nontraditional funding mechanism, accelerated timeline, and lack of transparency around who will review the applications are casting a shadow over the initiative, which many scientists and potential applicants worry could fuel false claims about the condition. (Broderick, 6/12)
CBS News: HHS Budget Plan Cuts CDC’s Chronic Disease and Global Health Centers to Create New "MAHA" Agency The Department of Health and Human Services' budget request for the 2026 fiscal year consolidates the department's 28 divisions to 15 to make way for a new "institution of public health." The new agency, the Administration for a Healthy America, has a $20.6 billion budget designed to support Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s "Make America Healthy Again" agenda. That includes taking over — and significantly reducing — funds for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's chronic disease and global health centers along with some of the institutes that are currently part of the National Institutes of Health. (Gold and Ingram, 6/10)
- Healthcare Workforce
Becker's Hospital Review: Children's Hospital Oakland Staff Approve Open-Ended Strike
UCSF Children’s Hospital Oakland and its satellite clinics are bracing for an open-ended strike set to begin June 18. Representing more than 1,300 employees, the National Union of Healthcare Workers recently approved the action in a bid to halt the University of California’s planned integration of the hospital with San Francisco-based UCSF Health, according to a union news release shared with Becker’s. Union members contend the plan would cancel their union contracts, force workers into UC unions and reduce their take-home pay by about $10,000 annually on average, primarily due to higher health and retirement benefit costs. They also argue the move would leave patients with fewer caregivers. (Gooch, 6/10)
- CA Budget
California Democrats Oppose Newsom’s Significant Budget Reductions: California legislative leaders announced Monday that they reached a budget proposal to address the state’s $12 billion expected deficit, leaning heavily on borrowing from other state funds to continue providing social services rather than making the deep cuts Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed. Read more from CalMatters.