Category: Public health

  • When the Food and Drug Administration approved updated COVID-19 vaccines on August 27, 2025, it also imposed new restrictions on who is eligible to get them. The new restrictions have created widespread confusion and concern, as well as a series of shakeups in government and public health institutions. “The [FDA’s] new recommendations are acting as a bureaucratic deterrent against people…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • In 2022, Oregonians narrowly passed Measure 111, amending their constitution and guaranteeing affordable health care as a fundamental right to every resident of the state. Through years of organizing, coalition building and planning, Oregon may enact its Universal Health Plan as early as fall 2027. In the face of extreme Medicaid cuts from the Trump administration, which will leave roughly…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The anti-vaccine policies of Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert Kennedy have rightfully caused great distress among many parents, public health professionals and primary care physicians, given the efficacy of vaccines in preventing measles, mumps, polio, influenza, and COVID-19, among many debilitating infectious diseases. In contrast to these policies, Kennedy’s apparent aim of…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. remained combative during an extraordinary Senate Finance Committee hearing on September 4 as Democrats grilled him about creating “chaos” at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said Kennedy fired career scientists at the CDC and replaced them with “cranks” and “conspiracy…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Trump administration has given notice that political appointees, rather than scientists, will ultimately decide who gets grant money from the world’s largest biomedical research funder — the federal government’s National Institutes of Health. In an Aug. 7 executive order, President Donald Trump announced that political officers would have the power to summarily cancel any federal grant…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • ROSELAND, Louisiana — Tyreik Taylor had barely wiped the oil from his hands when the sky behind him lit up. Fifteen minutes after the 26-year-old drove home, a roar thundered from the plant where he helped mix chemicals for motor oil and had just punched out. Fire consumed the air, the collapsing metal groaning and liquids hissing as they escaped into the surrounding water, soil, and air.

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • As measles surged in Texas early this year, the Trump administration’s actions sowed fear and confusion among CDC scientists that kept them from performing the agency’s most critical function — emergency response — when it mattered most, an investigation from KFF Health News shows. The outbreak soon became the worst the United States has endured in over three decades. In the month after…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Above photo: U.S. Space Force photo by Senior Airman Kadielle Shaw, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. When the Trump administration announced massive cuts to federal health agencies earlier this year, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he was getting rid of excess administrators who were larding the government with bureaucratic bloat. But […]

    The post How Deeply Trump Has Cut Federal Health Agencies appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Wednesday that he is formally rescinding the use of thimerosal in vaccines distributed throughout the United States — despite the fact that there is no evidence of harm from the ingredient. The move was recommended by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) committee last month.

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s decision Friday to eliminate its scientific research arm drew horrified responses from public health experts and climate advocates, who warned that the Trump administration is targeting the foundation of the department’s work to shield Americans from hazardous chemicals, toxic pollution, and drinking water contaminants. “This is grim news…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • From the streets to town halls and the courts, it’s a race now.

    The Trump administration is fighting to remain a step ahead of the growing popular backlash to its draconian cuts to social programs that millions of Americans depend on — at least until the administration operationalizes enough of the police state it’s practicing on immigrants to put down any such objection.

    Budget proposals and “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) cuts switching out the public commons for a police state make the regime’s objectives clear.

    The post Trump Is Trying To Dismantle Public Health appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • From the streets to town halls and the courts, it’s a race now. The Trump administration is fighting to remain a step ahead of the growing popular backlash to its draconian cuts to social programs that millions of Americans depend on — at least until the administration operationalizes enough of the police state it’s practicing on immigrants to put down any such objection.

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Trump Administration is bringing prior authorizations (PAs), the mandatory preapproval before insurance covers health care services, to Traditional Medicare. The government plans on using contracts with perverse incentives for companies that use artificial intelligence (AI) to carry out the work. On June 27, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) Innovation Center announced…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Across most of the South and Midwest, state laws bar local governments from requiring employers to provide paid sick leave, effectively stripping cities of the power to enact their own labor protections. Nearly 73 million workers live in the 18 states that now have such preemptive laws, according to a new report from A Better Balance, a legal advocacy organization focused on workplace rights…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Growing up in Chicago, Chakena D. Perry knew not to trust the water coming out of her tap. “It was just one of these unspoken truths within households like mine — low-income, Black households — that there was some sort of distrust with the water,” said Perry, who later learned that Chicago is the city with the most lead service lines in the country. “No one really talked about it…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Trump administration is intensifying its campaign against vaccinations, with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. withdrawing U.S. funding for the world’s preeminent international vaccine organization. The group — known as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance — is the world’s largest funder of life-saving vaccinations and says it has helped vaccinate more than 1.1…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Greenville, Miss. — Cedric Sturdevant woke up with “a bit of depression” but made it to church, as he does every Sunday. In a few days, he would drive from Mississippi to Washington, D.C., to join HIV advocates at an April rally against the Trump administration’s actions. It had clawed back more than $11 billion in federal public health grants to states and abruptly terminated millions of…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • When it comes to vaccines, there are two kinds of parents coming into Dr. Megan Prior’s office in Washington, D.C., these days. One set are parents who pepper the pediatrician with increasingly panicked questions about the future availability of vaccines and whether their children can get any shots early. Then there are the parents who feel vindicated in their decision not to vaccinate their…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • On a sweltering morning in western India in 2022, three U.S. inspectors showed up unannounced at a massive pharmaceutical plant surrounded by barricades and barbed wire and demanded to be let inside. For two weeks, they scrutinized humming production lines and laboratories spread across the dense industrial campus, peering over the shoulders of workers at the tablet presses…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • A document the Department of Health and Human Services sent to lawmakers to support Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to change U.S. policy on covid vaccines cites scientific studies that are unpublished or under dispute and mischaracterizes others. One health expert called the document “willful medical disinformation” about the safety of covid vaccines for children and pregnant women.

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Hundreds of workers at the National Institutes of Health on Monday openly protested the Trump administration’s cuts to the agency and consequences for human lives, writing in a sharply worded letter that its actions are causing “a dramatic reduction in life-saving research.” In a June 9 letter to NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, NIH workers said they felt “compelled to speak up when our…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • In July 2024, the Biden administration proposed a rule to address heat-related illness that it claimed would protect 36 million workers. The directive would have required companies to monitor workers for heat stress, provide them with cool-down breaks in shaded or air-conditioned areas, and ensure that they were given ample water. “The purpose of this rule is simple…

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  • Disabled people hold immense expertise in navigating both chronic illnesses and moments of crisis. And yet, despite all the public reflections on “lessons learned” at the five-year anniversary of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic — from which hundreds of people in the U.S. are still dying each week — disabled people find themselves under increasing attack by the Trump administration.

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • By Christina Persico, RNZ Pacific bulletin editor

    Fiji’s Minister for Health and Medical Services has revealed the latest HIV numbers in the country to a development partner roundtable discussing the national response.

    The minister reported 490 new HIV cases between October and December last year, bringing the 2024 total to 1583.

    “Included in this number are 32 newborns diagnosed with HIV acquired through mother-to-child transmission,” Dr Atonio Rabici Lalabalavu said.

    Fiji declared an outbreak of the disease in January. The Fiji Sun reported around 115 HIV-related deaths in the January-September 2024 period.

    Fiji’s Central Division reported 1100 new cases in 2024, with 427 in the Western Division and 50 in the Northern Division.

    Of the newly recorded cases, less than half — 770 — have been successfully linked to care, of which 711 have been commenced on antiretroviral therapy (ART).

    Just over half were aged in their twenties, and 70 percent of cases were male.

    Increase in TB, HIV co-infection
    Dr Lalabalavu said the increase in HIV cases was also seeing an increase in tuberculosis and HIV co-infection, with 160 individuals in a year.

    He said the ministry strongly encouraged individuals to get tested, know their status, and if it was positive, seek treatment.

    Dr Atonio Lalabalavu
    Fiji Minister for Health and Medical Services Dr Atonio Lalabalavu . . .  strongly encourages individuals to get tested. Image: Ministry of Health & Medical Services/FB/RNZ Pacific

    And if it is negative, to maintain that negative status.

    “I will reiterate what I have said before to all Fijians – HIV should not be a death sentence in Fiji,” he said.

    In the Western Pacific, the estimated number of people living with HIV (PLHIV) reached 1.9 million in 2020, up from 1.4 million in 2010.

    At the time, the World Health Organisation said that over the previous two decades, HIV prevalence in the Western Pacific had remained low at 0.1 percent.

    However, the low prevalence in the general population masked high levels of HIV infection among key populations.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The Trump White House on Tuesday formally asked Congress to rescind over $9 billion in approved spending, taking aim at lifesaving foreign aid programs as well as funding for U.S. public broadcasting outlets targeted by the president. The $9.4 billion rescission request, expected to be the first of several, is laid out in a memo authored by Office of Management and Budget Director Russell…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Over the last four decades, the United States has built a web of federal policies and funding to address domestic and intimate partner violence, a pervasive health and safety crisis. In just 130 days, the Trump administration has put that safety net in jeopardy. Funding pauses, cuts, firings and information purges have destabilized the infrastructure that helps victims of abuse.

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The White House’s keystone health report outlining its agenda for Americans’ health is riddled with artificial intelligence “hallucinations,” with fabricated citations and broken links reflective of the administration’s embrace of non-scientific approaches to public health. An analysis by The Washington Post uncovered numerous citations in the “Make America Healthy Again” report with the…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • As Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) acolytes readily admit, U.S. public health continues to deteriorate. Five years into the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. life expectancy is at best stalled while those of other industrial countries have rebounded back onto their historical trends upward. The solution Trump administration…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • A new study confirms what locals and environmental activists across the Gulf South and beyond have said for years: Black, Brown and Indigenous workers do not benefit equitably from jobs offered by the petrochemical industry despite their communities often bearing the brunt of its pollution. In Louisiana, for example, residents and activists say jobs promised to Black communities located near…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Last week, environmental groups decried plans from the Environmental Protection Agency to rescind and “reconsider” drinking water limits for four per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, compounds linked to cancer and damage to the immune and endocrine systems, among other health effects. The limits had been finalized by Joe Biden’s administration last April as part of an effort to…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.