Get your each day dose of well being and medication each weekday with STAT’s free publication Morning Rounds. Join right here.
Good morning. At present’s the three yr anniversary of the Supreme Courtroom resolution that ended the constitutional proper to an abortion. And in New York, it’s election day for the Democratic mayoral main. There’s certain to be a whole lot of information all through the day, however right here’s what we’re beginning with.
What occurs with a ‘choose-your-own-adventure’ method to vaccines
Since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has taken over HHS, he has fired the whole thing of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, changed them with people with far much less notable credentials, and brought the unprecedented step of rewriting Covid-19 vaccination suggestions, with out enter from specialists and with a disregard for current science. Each transfer appears to carry the nation nearer to the balkanization of vaccination coverage, STAT’s Helen Branswell writes.
“What’s going to occur is [people] who don’t belief the brand new ACIP are going to look elsewhere, however the query is, the place’s elsewhere?” mentioned Heidi Larson, who has spent the previous 20 years finding out the decline in vaccine confidence. Skilled organizations just like the American Academy of Pediatrics will doubtless play a extra outstanding function in vaccine suggestions going ahead. However many questions stay, together with whether or not or not insurers will proceed masking vaccines. Learn extra from Helen on the unsure way forward for American vaccine coverage.
(And did you see this? Final evening, Sen. Invoice Cassidy known as to delay the subsequent ACIP assembly in a problem to Kennedy. Learn extra from Chelsea Cirruzzo.)
Abortions are rising post-Dobbs
Regardless of the proliferation of state-level abortion bans after the Supreme Courtroom overturned Roe v. Wade precisely three years in the past right this moment, the whole variety of abortions that occurred within the U.S. was greater in 2024 than it was within the two earlier years. There have been 1.06 million abortions in 2023, and 1.14 million in 2024, in keeping with a brand new report from the Society of Household Planning. Whereas nearly all of abortions nonetheless happen in-person, increasingly have been delivered by means of telehealth, particularly by way of physicians in states with defend legal guidelines. Final yr, 1 / 4 of all abortions had been delivered by means of telehealth.
Consultants knew that telemedicine choices would fill some form of hole within the wake of the Dobbs resolution, however as reproductive rights scholar David Cohen wrote on Bluesky after the most recent report, “virtually no person” anticipated a rise like this. The AP has extra particulars.
Younger queer individuals in rural communities are extra depressed, per report
Final week, the Trump administration introduced that it’ll take away the 988 hotline service particularly tailor-made to LGBTQ+ younger individuals on July 17, virtually three years because it began in September 2022. At present, a brand new report reveals that in rural areas of the nation, these populations are disproportionately battling psychological well being and community-building.
Listed here are a number of of the notable findings from the analysis transient, revealed by Hopelab (a analysis and investing firm centered on psychological well being amongst younger, queer individuals of colour) and Born This Method Basis (based by Woman Gaga and her mom):
- Younger LGBTQ+ individuals in rural areas are considerably extra doubtless than their friends in suburban and concrete areas to satisfy the edge for despair (57% vs. 45% respectively).
- Inside rural communities, younger queer individuals who obtain help from the individuals they dwell with are much less more likely to have despair than those that obtain little to no help (52% vs. 63%).
- Younger queer individuals in rural areas give and obtain extra help to one another on-line than individuals in suburban and concrete areas do. Maybe relatedly, in addition they report extra loneliness than their suburban and concrete friends.
How bitcoin grew to become a greater guess for Semler Scientific
At the newest earnings name for Semler Scientific — an organization that for nearly 20 years has marketed a single medical product to detect artery blockages in older People — chairman Eric Semler declared a shocking pivot: “We’re a bitcoin-first firm.” After a big buy of the cryptocurrency, Semler Scientific now claims to be the fourth-largest bitcoin treasury within the U.S.
The corporate’s adoption of a cryptocurrency technique adopted an escalating collection of threats to its core enterprise, suggesting that its long-running partnership with main well being insurers was pushed not by science or an everlasting dedication to higher well being care, however by a singular need to succeed in right into a multibillion-dollar pot of federal cash.
STAT’s newest investigation relies on greater than two dozen interviews with former staff of Semler Scientific and UnitedHealth, along with conversations with sufferers, monetary analysts, former traders, and extra. Reporters additionally reviewed lots of of pages of company monetary filings and different information. Learn extra from the identical dream staff that introduced you Well being Care’s Colossus.
Former governors warn that Medicaid cuts would have dire penalties
Former governors from each events on Monday mentioned they had been deeply involved with proposed cuts to Medicaid, the joint state-federal program that covers medical prices for individuals with low earnings or disabilities. “I don’t have an issue with modifications,” mentioned former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, a Republican. “The best way they’re doing it’s terrible.”
Sununu was joined by former democratic governors Roy Blunt of North Carolina and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, who ran the federal well being division in the course of the Obama administration. Throughout a panel on the Aspen Concepts: Well being assembly, all three warned that $700 billion in Medicaid cuts handed by the Home of Representatives could be disastrous. Blunt famous that, if enacted, the cuts would pressure states to make painful selections to cowl budgetary shortfalls, corresponding to spending much less on administering Supplemental Diet Help Program advantages, which assist low-income households purchase meals.
Researchers have estimated Medicaid cuts might lead to greater than 16,600 preventable deaths a yr. However in addition they say that’s doubtless an undercount, and, as Daniel Payne studies, Senate Republicans are discussing methods to chop this system even additional by sharply decreasing federal funds for brand new beneficiaries. — Jonathan Wosen
Small examine provides to proof round GLP-1 use for sort 1 diabetes
Weight problems medication had been first accredited to deal with sort 2 diabetes, however there’s a rising motion to check them in sort 1 diabetes, too. Analysis offered Monday at a big diabetes assembly confirmed some promise for this method, STAT’s Liz Cooney studies. Sufferers who took a GLP-1 drug fared higher than these in a management group at maintaining their blood glucose ranges in a wholesome vary whereas additionally dropping extra weight than those that weren’t taking the drug. Learn extra from Liz in regards to the outcomes.
And in case you missed it, one other latest story on the “what can’t GLP-1 medicines do” beat: STAT’s Veronica Paulus wrote her first story for us a few small pilot examine that discovered GLP-1 agonists decreased month-to-month migraine days by virtually half.
What we’re studying
-
‘I really feel like I’ve been lied to’: When a measles outbreak hits dwelling, New York Instances
-
The way forward for federal abortion information assortment is unclear, The nineteenth
- Prime drug regulator is retiring as FDA departures mount, STAT
- From the pandemic to porn, right here’s how norms round intercourse are shifting for Gen Z, NPR
- Novo Nordisk ends take care of Hims resulting from compounding issues with weight problems medication, STAT