​SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom has positioned himself as a national public health leader by staking out science-backed policies in contrast with the Trump administration.. This story also ran on Los Angeles Times. It can be republished for free.. After Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez for refusing what her lawyers called “the dangerous politicization of science,” Newsom hired her to help modernize California’s public health system. He also gave a job to Debra Houry, the agency’s former chief science and medical officer, who had resigned in protest hours after Monarez’s firing.. Newsom also teamed up with fellow Democratic governors Tina Kotek of Oregon, Bob Ferguson of Washington, and Josh Green of Hawaii to form the West Coast Health Alliance, a regional public health agency, whose guidance the governors said would “uphold scientific integrity in public health as Trump destroys” the CDC’s credibility. Newsom argued establishing the independent alliance was vital as Kennedy leads the Trump administration’s rollback of national vaccine recommendations.. More recently, California became the first state to join a global outbreak response network coordinated by the World Health Organization, followed by Illinois and New York. Colorado and Wisconsin signaled they plan to join. They did so after President Donald Trump officially withdrew the United States from the agency on the grounds that it had “strayed from its core mission and has acted contrary to the U.S. interests in protecting the U.S. public on multiple occasions.” Newsom said joining the WHO-led consortium would enable California to respond faster to communicable disease outbreaks and other public health threats.. Email Sign-Up. Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.. Your Email Address Sign Up. Although other Democratic governors and public health leaders have openly criticized the federal government, few have been as outspoken as Newsom, who is considering a run for president in 2028 and is in his second and final term as governor. Members of the scientific community have praised his effort to build a public health bulwark against the Trump administration’s slashing of funding and scaling back of vaccine recommendations.. What Newsom is doing “is a great idea,” said Paul Offit, an outspoken critic of Kennedy and a vaccine expert who formerly served on the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee but was removed under Trump in 2025.. “Public health has been turned on its head,” Offit said. “We have an anti-vaccine activist and science denialist as the head of U.S. Health and Human Services. It’s dangerous.”. The White House did not respond to questions about Newsom’s stance and HHS declined requests to interview Kennedy. Instead, federal health officials criticized Democrats broadly, arguing that blue s  

​The National Institutes of Health has lost thousands of workers since President Donald Trump began his second term.. Among them: scientists who pioneered cancer treatments, researched tick-borne diseases, or worked to prevent tobacco use.. We spoke to a half dozen scientists who said they left the agency because of the tumult of 2025 and talked about the work they left behind. They say the exodus from the world’s largest public funder of biomedical research will harm the nation’s ability to respond to illness.. “People are going to get hurt,” said Sylvia Chou, a scientist who worked at the National Cancer Institute in Rockville, Maryland, for over 15 years before she left in January. “There’s going to be a lot more health challenges and even deaths, because we need science in order to help people get healthy.”. Email Sign-Up. Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free weekly newsletter, “The Week in Brief.”. Your Email Address Sign Up. The NIH consists of 27 institutes and centers, each with a different focus. Major research areas include cancer; infectious diseases; aging-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s; heart, lung, and blood diseases; and general medicine.. Over decades, the value of the NIH may be the one thing everyone in Washington has agreed on. Lawmakers have routinely boosted its funding — even for this fiscal year, in defiance of the White House, which had proposed cutting the agency’s funding by 40%.. Our reporting showed that, nonetheless, the Trump administration’s actions to curb certain research and push out scientists perceived as disloyal are having far-reaching repercussions. The NIH workforce stands at about 17,100 people — its lowest level in at least two decades.. Scientists across specializations outlined challenges that made them decide to leave. They included delays in accessing research equipment and supplies, the termination of funds for topics the Trump administration deemed off-limits, and delayed or denied travel authorizations.. Even research aligned with the Trump administration’s stated priorities has suffered, they said. They questioned whether the NIH could continue to fulfill its mission to “enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness.”. “It’s clear when someone comes out with a drug and now you’ve just cured a disease. But you never know which ones could have been cured,” said Daniel Dulebohn, a researcher who spent nearly two decades at Rocky Mountain Laboratories in Hamilton, Montana. “We don’t know what we’ve lost.”. Dulebohn left the NIH’s infectious disease and allergy institute in September and is considering leaving the scientific field altogether.. Six Federal Scientists Run Out by Trump Talk About the Work Left Undone. Cancer treatments, disease outbreaks, addiction science: Scientists say an exodus from the National Institutes of Health will harm the nation’s ability to respond to illness.. Read More. Rachana Pradhan: rpradhan@kff.org, @rachanadprad  

​BATON ROUGE, La. — The ambitious liver doctor would go just about anywhere in his home state to give people the hepatitis B vaccine.. This story also ran on Verite News. It can be republished for free.. Bill Cassidy offered jabs to thousands of inmates at Louisiana’s maximum-security prison in the early 2000s. A decade before that, he set up vaccine clinics in middle schools, a model hailed nationally as a success.. “He got that whole generation immunized in East Baton Rouge,” said Holley Galland, a retired doctor who worked with Cassidy vaccinating schoolchildren.. About the same time, a lawyer and environmental activist with a famous last name was starting to build the loyal anti-vaccine coalition that, two decades later, would move President Donald Trump to nominate him as the nation’s top health official.. Today, a year after now-Sen. Cassidy warily cast the vote that ensured Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s ascension to that role, the Louisiana Republican’s life’s work — in medicine and in politics — is unraveling.. Newborn hepatitis B vaccination rates in the U.S. had plunged to 73% as of August, down 10 percentage points since a February 2023 high, according to research published in JAMA last month. In December, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices — remade by Kennedy — voted to revoke a two-decade-old recommendation that all newborns get the shot.. The next month, Trump endorsed U.S. Rep. Julia Letlow, a Cassidy challenger in what’s shaping up to be a competitive Republican Senate primary. Letlow’s foray into politics began in 2021 when she took the seat won by her husband, left vacant after he died from covid.. KFF Health News made multiple requests for comment from Cassidy over three months. His staff declined to make him available for an interview or provide comment. Letlow’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.. Email Sign-Up. Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free weekly newsletter, “The Week in Brief.”. Your Email Address Sign Up. Rise of the Skeptics. As the May primary nears, some Louisiana doctors are worried they’ve begun a long trek down a dark road when it comes to vaccine-preventable diseases.. Last year, on the day Kennedy was sworn in a thousand miles away in Washington, Louisiana’s health department stopped promoting vaccines, halting its clinics and advertising. Its communications about an ongoing whooping cough outbreak in the state have nearly ceased. It took months for the state to announce last year that two infants had died from the illness. A Louisiana child’s death from the flu was confirmed this January, and a couple of cases of measles were reported last year.. Spokespeople for the Louisiana Department of Health did not respond to questions.. “It’s so hard to see children get sick from illnesses that they should have never gotten in the first place,” said Mikki Bouquet, a pediatrician in Baton Rouge. “You want  

​The Host. Julie Rovner. KFF Health News. @jrovner. @julierovner.bsky.social. Read Julie’s stories.. Julie Rovner is chief Washington correspondent and host of KFF Health News’ weekly health policy news podcast, “What the Health?” A noted expert on health policy issues, Julie is the author of the critically praised reference book “Health Care Politics and Policy A to Z,” now in its third edition.. This month marks host Julie Rovner’s 40th anniversary reporting on health policy in Washington. Over that time, she’s covered a vast range of topics, from the response to the AIDS epidemic, to Medicare and Medicaid changes, to the fight over the “Patients’ Bill of Rights” — and a half-dozen major reform fights, including the introduction of the Affordable Care Act and the efforts to repeal it.. In honor of the occasion, Rovner invited two of her longtime sources to chat about what has — and has not — changed in health policy over the past four decades.. Email Sign-Up. Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.. Your Email Address Sign Up. Click to open the transcript Transcript: 40 Years of Health Policy. [Editor’s note: This transcript was generated using both transcription software and a human’s light touch. It has been edited for style and clarity.]. Julie Rovner: Hello from KFF Health News and WAMU Public Radio in Washington, D.C. Welcome to What the Health? I’m Julie Rovner, chief Washington correspondent for KFF Health News. Usually we’re joined by some of the best reporters covering Washington, but today we’re bringing you something special. I hope you enjoy it. We’re taping this episode on Friday, Feb. 27, at 4 p.m. As always, news happens fast, and things might have changed by the time you hear this. So here we go.. I have two special guests today, who I will introduce in a moment. But first I’m going to explain why I chose them. I started reporting on health policy in 1986, covering health and welfare on Capitol Hill and at the Department of Health and Human Services for what was then the Congressional Quarterly “Weekly Report.” This month marks my 40th anniversary on the health beat, and as anniversaries so often do, it got me thinking about everything I’ve seen and covered, including a half a dozen major health reform fights, a dozen budget reconciliation bills, years-long fights over everything from the Patients’ Bill of Rights and human cloning to bioterrorism and a pandemic. It also got me thinking about where I thought the U.S. health system would be four decades after I began, and where it actually is. And I thought it might be fun to reminisce with a couple of people who not only were there when I started, but who also taught me a lot of what I know. So without further ado, let me introduce my guests. Chip Kahn just stepped down as president and CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals after 25 years in that post. Chip previously worked in both the House and the Senate for the major h  

​MINNEAPOLIS. — Gabi tiene grandes ojos color café, trenzas y una afección genética que hace que sus huesos sean frágiles. Se fracturan con facilidad, lo que le provoca a la niña de 2 años tanto dolor que su madre dejó su trabajo limpiando oficinas para quedarse en casa y cargarla por el apartamento de una habitación que comparten con seis familiares.. Sobre Noticias En Español. Noticias en español es una sección de KFF Health News que contiene traducciones de artículos de gran interés para la comunidad hispanohablante, y contenido original enfocado en la población hispana que vive en los Estados Unidos.. Use Nuestro Contenido. Este contenido puede usarse de manera gratuita.. Detalles. Hablemos de Salud. Forma parte del grupo de Facebook de KFF Health News en español KFF Health News-Hablemos de Salud”.. KFF Health News – Hablemos de Salud. Cuando agentes federales de inmigración llegaron a su ciudad, deportaron primero al padre de Gabi y luego a su tía.. Gabi nació en Estados Unidos y es ciudadana estadounidense. Su mejor oportunidad de algún día pararse, o incluso caminar, es una cirugía compleja en las piernas y los pies que estaba programada para enero.. Pero su madre, quien está tan asustada que ni siquiera se anima a sacar la basura, y mucho menos a atravesar la ciudad hasta el hospital, canceló el procedimiento. (En este artículo, KFF Health News y NPR acordaron identificar solo parcialmente a los pacientes y a sus familias porque temen convertirse en blanco de la ofensiva migratoria del presidente Donald Trump).. “Quiero más que nada, mi deseo, es que mi bebé empiece a caminar”, dijo su madre, mientras Gabi se movía en sus brazos, con una sonda de alimentación que salía de su estómago conectada a un soporte de suero intravenoso. “Pero con la situación que está pasando, cancelé la cita de cirugía porque le van a hacer cirugía en sus piernas y todas las citas de terapia física; lo cancelé todo. Porque tengo miedo de salir”.. El Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS, por sus siglas en inglés) declaró el fin de lo que llamó Operation Metro Surge (Operación Metro Surge), llevada a cabo por agentes del Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas (ICE, por sus siglas en inglés) y de la Oficina de Aduanas y Protección Fronteriza (CBP, por sus siglas en inglés). Aun así, trabajadores de salud dicen que los agentes de inmigración siguen apostados en los estacionamientos de hospitales. Y drones sobrevuelan zonas agrícolas en las afueras de Minneapolis, donde inmigrantes somalíes y latinos se han establecido en los últimos años.. La ofensiva en Minnesota mostró el alcance del sistema de vigilancia y detención que la administración Trump está utilizando para desarraigar a comunidades inmigrantes del país y su fuerte impacto en el sistema de salud.. Crisis de salud similares surgieron dondequiera que se concentraron oficiales de inmigración en el último año.. En Dallas, clínicas