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President Donald Trump’s acting attorney general on Thursday signed an order reclassifying state-licensed medical marijuana as a less-dangerous drug, a major policy shift long sought by advocates who said cannabis should never have been treated like heroin by the federal government. The order signed by Todd Blanche does not legalize marijuana for medical or recreational use under U.S. law. But it does change the way it’s regulated. (Durkin Richer and Johnson, 4/23)

A former tobacco industry executive has been appointed to senior leadership at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, alarming public health advocates and critics of industry influence on government. (Todd, 4/22)

Spending on new medical research by the National Institutes of Health has fallen roughly $1 billion behind the pace of years past, delaying thousands of scientific projects and raising concerns within the agency that it may struggle to pay out the money it was allotted by Congress. Instead of canceling grants en masse, as the N.I.H. did in the first year of this Trump presidency, it is now vetting them before approval with a “computational text analysis tool” that scans for terms including “racism,” “gender” and “vaccination refusal,” according to documents obtained by The New York Times. (Mueller and Hwang, 4/22)

Washington state hospitals say their Medicare patients are waiting two to four times longer in some cases for procedures that are now subject to prior authorization under a new Medicare program. The report from Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) is among the first to document alleged patient harm stemming from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ new Wasteful and Inappropriate Service Reduction, or WISeR, Model. Cantwell is one of several Democratic members of Congress who have been urging CMS to scrap the program, which launched Jan. 1. (Bannow, 4/22)

The biggest players in the health care industry are pouring record sums into K Street, Washington’s lobbying corridor, as the Trump administration intensifies scrutiny of their business practices ahead of the midterms. Newly filed lobbying disclosures reveal that some of the largest health care trade groups in Washington have continued to budget historic sums for lobbying. AHIP, which represents health insurers, shelled out $5.3 million in the first three months of 2026, its highest tally for any quarter on record. (Chu, 4/22)

The Senate has been deadlocked on President Donald Trump’s priority voting bill, the SAVE America Act, for months. The measure hasn’t seen much floor action; the latest was a March amendment vote stemming from the president’s suggested change to prohibit transgender athletes from participating in girls’ or women’s sports. (Martinez, 4/22)

Frank Hennemann sometimes coughs 400 times a day. His airways are damaged by a lung condition called bronchiectasis, which he describes as feeling like two trucks are parking on his chest. After decades of research, there’s finally a medicine to alleviate his symptoms, but Hennemann lives in Germany. One reason he can’t get it there is Donald Trump. The company behind the new treatment, Insmed Inc., won’t launch in Europe until it can better understand the financial implications of a Trump directive that could upend the math drugmakers rely on to recoup their research investments. (Smith, Furlong, and Kinzelmann, 4/23)

A regulation billed as balancing the scales between the largest pharmacy benefit managers and the rest of the industry could have harmful consequences, smaller PBMs warn. The Labor Department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration proposed new transparency requirements for PBMs and benefits consulting firms in January. If finalized without changes, the rule would take effect in July. (Tong, 4/22)

A novel legal argument could upend the 340B Drug Pricing Program. The drugmaker AbbVie sued the Health Resources and Services Administration this month alleging the agency’s 30-year-old regulatory definition of “patient” has enabled the program to grow beyond its original intent and given too many hospitals and other safety-net providers access to deeply discounted prescription medicines. (Early, 4/22)

The little pink pill recently got a retail boost. Addyi, a drug that treats low libido in premenopausal women, has been on the market for more than a decade after a controversial approval. But in December the Food and Drug Administration expanded its use, approving the daily drug for all women under 65. (Palmer, 4/23)

Over four days and nearly 20 hours of testimony, under harsh questioning from Democrats, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has repeatedly backed away from his longstanding criticism of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. On Wednesday, he made his strongest statement yet — albeit on behalf of his department and not himself. “We promote the M.M.R.,” Mr. Kennedy told the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday morning, referring to the combined vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. “We have advised every child to get the M.M.R. That’s what we do.” (Gay Stolberg, 4/22)

Today Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared before two Senate committees and distanced himself from record-breaking measles outbreaks in the United States, despite his role as overseeing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one of the many agencies in the HHS umbrella. His testimony capped off a busy week on Capitol Hill, where he made seven appearances. (Soucheray, 4/22)

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) fact-checked Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. multiple times Wednesday about his insistence that vaccines have not helped improve mortality. Kennedy cited two studies during his testimony in the Senate health committee to prove that deaths due to some of the most common infectious diseases fell dramatically during the 20th century long before vaccines were widely used. In one instance, Kennedy cited a December 2000 paper published in the journal Pediatrics by a Johns Hopkins researcher that concluded that vaccinations alone don’t account “for impressive declines in mortality seen in the first half of the century.” (Weixel, 4/22)

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended President Trump’s frequent incorrect calculations of percentages when talking about discounts on prescription drug prices, arguing on Wednesday that the president “has a different way of calculating.” “If you have a $600 drug, and you reduce it to $10, that’s a 600 percent reduction,” Mr. Kennedy said during a congressional hearing. Mr. Kennedy is mathematically incorrect. A price reduction from $600 to $10 would be a discount of more than 98 percent. A price discount cannot be more than 100 percent, because that would lower the price to zero — or suggest that the company was giving you money for buying the product. (Cameron, 4/22)

Bill Cassidy, the foremost Republican critic of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the Senate, is broadening his assault. Cassidy, who’s called out Kennedy repeatedly for Kennedy’s efforts to sow doubt about the importance of vaccination, attacked him Wednesday for not doing enough to stop people from taking abortion pills. (Levien, 4/22)

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday said he would support a potential ban on junk food TV advertisements in the U.S. – an effort that would likely draw fierce backlash from major food manufacturers. (Constantino, 4/22)

He was combative, defensive and occasionally contrite. He vehemently denied, then halfheartedly apologized for suggesting in 2024 that Black children would benefit from being “re-parented.” He shouted at Democratic senators, accusing them of “grandstanding” and “selective indignation.” He insisted he had delivered “historic wins” for the health of the American people. In the end, after four days of testimony during seven separate congressional hearings on President Trump’s budget, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. walked a fine line, trying to please both his base and the White House at the same time. (Gay Stolberg and Jewett, 4/22)

A report showing the efficacy of the covid-19 vaccine that was previously delayed by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been blocked from being published in the agency’s flagship scientific journal, according to three people familiar with the decision who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. The report showed that the vaccine reduced emergency department visits and hospitalizations among healthy adults by about half this past winter. (Sun, 4/22)

A comparison of the relative infection frequency across different age groups for currently circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants showed that BA.3.2 infects young children significantly more often than other variants. In Scotland and England, where the variant has spread widely, an increase in COVID-19 cases among children has been observed—while case numbers among older individuals remained stable. The reasons for this unusual preference are not yet known. (Diederich, 4/20)

Oral nirmatrelvir-ritonavir (Paxlovid) failed to spare COVID-19-vaccinated individuals from the worst outcomes if they got sick, though it may have helped speed recovery time and cut viral loads, according to two community-based clinical trials. (Rudd, 4/22)

“Children do get long COVID, but it doesn’t always look the same as it does in adults,” said Melissa Stockwell, a pediatrician at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and a lead researcher with the pediatric cohort of the National Institutes of Health’s RECOVER initiative, a program created to better understand and treat long COVID. Researchers with the program published a study last year that estimated long COVID potentially affects nearly 6 million children in the United States, which would make it more common than asthma. (Datta, 4/23)

Findings indicate long-COVID leads to academic and social difficulties in children, highlighting the importance of addressing their unique educational needs. (Dutta, 4/23)

Exercise has been touted as a tool for managing and treating long covid, but much of the evidence has neglected one of its most debilitating symptoms: post-exertional malaise. (Thompson, 4/22)

Results from a small randomized controlled clinical trial show promising findings about a new type of therapy for patients experiencing brain fog as part of long COVID. Brain fog affects more than 1 in 5 people with long COVID, according to a review of multiple studies published in 2024, while long COVID itself affects 45% of COVID survivors. (4/20)

Georges Benjamin, CEO of the American Public Health Association, told Military.com it is “an irresponsible decision that will undermine the medical readiness of our troops.” He feels strongly about the issue because he is familiar with it. He is a former military physician who trained in the U.S. Army and was ER director for four years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He also served on the public health advisory committee of the Defense Health Board. “If you go back and look at the 1918 influenza, when we didn't know what it was, it had a devastating impact on our troops,” Benjamin said. “We know what flu does to troops who are quartered closely together, who share food, who share rooms, and contagious diseases like influenza can put a whole unit out of service. (Mordowanec, 4/22)

There was a possible measles exposure at Logan Airport in Boston last week, Massachusetts health officials say. The Boston Public Health Commission and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health said Wednesday that a traveler with measles passed through Terminal C shortly after midnight on April 14. (Riley, 4/22)

Travelers at Newark Liberty International Airport may have been exposed to an individual with measles, New Jersey health officials warn. The state Department of Health announced Wednesday that a Hudson County resident was diagnosed with measles after traveling internationally. This is the first confirmed case of measles in the state so far this year. (Houlis, 4/22)

Over the two and a half years following the 2022 rollout of the 988 national suicide prevention hotline, the rate of suicides among young people in the United States dropped 11 percent below projections, decreasing most sharply in states with a higher volume of answered 988 calls, a new study has found. The findings, published today as a research letter in JAMA, compared suicide deaths from July 2022 to December 2024 with sophisticated mathematical projections that were based on historical trends. This yielded good news, with 4,372 fewer suicides of adolescents and young adults, ages 15 to 34, than had been projected. (Barry, 4/22)

Gender-diverse teenagers who are bullied are more likely to suffer escalating psychological distress than other teens, particularly if they live in a state with repressive gender identity laws, a new study says. These teens are more likely to experience psychotic-like episodes – feeling unusually suspicious of others, thinking others are laughing at them, feeling threatened or hearing sounds that others do not, researchers reported April 21 in JAMA Network Open. (Thompson, 4/22)

The investigational benzamide antipsychotic N-methyl amisulpride (LB-102) led to significant symptom improvement among hospitalized adults with acute schizophrenia, a randomized trial showed. (Monaco, 4/22)

Psychologists have long been interested in why some slights refuse to fade, and how those lingering injuries can settle in — reshaping a person’s thoughts, mood and sense of self over time. ... Led by Richard Cowden, a social-personality psychologist at Harvard, researchers found that individuals more inclined to forgive — not just in response to a single event, but as a consistent pattern over time — reported higher levels of well-being across a number of categories. “Going through the process of forgiveness in a habitual sense can be beneficial to different aspects of our lives,” Cowden said. (Cha, 4/23)

Using an in-home HEPA purifier for one month spurs a small but significant improvement in brain function in adults age 40 and older. That's the result of a new study we co-authored in the journal Scientific Reports. (Pellegrino, Brugge and Eliasziw, 4/22)

If you look inside your medicine cabinet, there’s likely some good news and bad news when it comes to brain health. A few common medications, like statins or drugs to treat high blood pressure, appear to help lower the risk for dementia. But others, including some you can buy over the counter, may increase the risk. (Smith, 4/22)

Brain health is of paramount importance to nearly all Americans, yet few are aware of the latest science on how to nurture it. The Alzheimer’s Association released its annual report Tuesday, which included a survey of more than 3,800 adults 40 and older, 99% of whom indicated brain health is at least as important as physical health. (Leake, 4/21)

The budding field is turning dreams into reality for older adults who are eager to age in place, filling caregiving gaps and easing minds as America ages rapidly. (Shain, 4/22)

Outside experts expressed caution about a study suggesting a link between early onset lung cancer and diets rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Survey data on 187 lung cancer patients ages 50 and younger with molecular subtypes of non-small cell lung cancer mostly seen in low-risk groups -- such as women and non-smokers -- revealed that these patients on average had higher-quality diets than the general U.S. population, based on Healthy Eating Index (HEI) scores. (Bassett, 4/22)

Over 62 million Americans — roughly 1 in 5 people — may be exposed to potentially dangerous levels of nitrates in their tap water, a new report has shown. (LaMotte, 4/23)

Deaths from rectal cancer are rising rapidly among younger adults, an alarming trend that is confounding scientists trying to understand why millennials are so hard-hit. “The rate of rectal cancer seems to be increasing more than two to three times compared to colon cancer,” said Mythili Menon Pathiyil, lead author of a new study and a gastroenterology fellow at SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse, New York. (Edwards, 4/23)

Nearly 140,000 people filed claims against the company for the harm they said its drugs caused. Fewer than half of them will get any compensation. (McCoy and Fernandez, 4/23)

Two Long Island school districts violated New York State law in barring transgender students from bathrooms and locker rooms that aligned with their gender identity, the state’s Education Department ruled this week. Board members at both school systems, the Massapequa School District and the Locust Valley Central School District, had approved restrictions weeks apart that required students to use facilities that were gender neutral or corresponded with their sex assigned at birth. (Haag, 4/22)

The owner of West Suburban Medical Center’s property is ramping up efforts to remove his business partner from the hospital, as more details emerge about the depths of the facility’s financial woes in the months leading up to its abrupt closure. (Schencker, 4/22)

A chemical leak at a West Virginia silver recovery business on Wednesday killed two people and sent about 30 others to hospitals, including one in serious condition, authorities said. The leak occurred at the Catalyst Refiners plant in Institute as workers were preparing to shut down at least part of the facility, Kanawha County Commission Emergency Management Director C.W. Sigman said. (Raby, 4/23)

San Mateo County on Tuesday banned the sale of kratom, citing concerns that the herbal substance marketed for its energy-boosting and pain relief properties can cause addiction, overdoses and other health harms. Supervisors unanimously approved an ordinance banning the sale of kratom products in unincorporated parts of the county, becoming the first Bay Area county to do so. (Ho, 4/22)

With Delaware reporting its first detection of chronic wasting disease (CWD) yesterday, the fatal neurodegenerative disease has now been found in 37 US states. The case was detected in a wild white-tailed deer harvested in Sussex County as part of routine surveillance efforts, the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) said in a news release. The infection was confirmed by the National Veterinary Services Laboratory (NVSL). (Van Beusekom, 4/22)

Lawmakers voted for a $319 million package on Wednesday to fully fund the state’s Medicaid program through the end of the fiscal year, settling a monthslong feud with the governor over how much it will cost to avert a projected shortfall in May. While the funding is designed to prevent cuts and maintain the current level of care for the more than 3 million beneficiaries of the subsidized health insurance program for low-income people, the bill adds mandates that immigrant rights advocates say could have “a chilling effect” and jeopardize the health of U.S.-born children in immigrant families — and others in those households who have legal status to be in the country. (Blythe, Fredde and Hoban, 4/23)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Medigap Premiums Leap, And Consumers Have Few Alternatives

After decades of selling insurance, Illinois-based broker John Jaggi had never seen anything like it. More than 80 of his customers who were enrolled in the same Medicare supplemental plan from the insurer Chubb got hit last August with a 45% increase. (Appleby, 4/23)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Food Stamp Work Rules Don’t Increase Employment, Researchers Say

A half-dozen cars had been in the queue for nearly four hours by the time the House of Hope mobile food pantry line began to move. Seventy or so more idled behind them by 11:30 a.m., when the food distribution began. The plan was to begin handing out boxes of groceries at 11, but the Facing Hunger Foodbank truck delivering the food blew a tire en route. No one complained. (Sisk, 4/23)

Gov. Mark Gordon approved one-time state funding for SUN Bucks, a federal program that helps supplement school lunches for families with low incomes during the summer months. Wyoming lawmakers voted to opt out of the program during the last three legislative sessions, with some critics citing concerns about over-reliance on government and government overreach. (Habermann, 4/22)

State officials have suspended some federally funded health care services for Missourians living with HIV, a surprise move one St. Louis provider called "terribly disruptive" to patients. The state informed providers of cuts to the Ryan White program last Monday, and ended support on Wednesday for mental health and substance use services, emergency rental and utility assistance. (Suntrup, 4/22)

A lawsuit for an additional exemption to Indiana’s near-total abortion ban allowing it as a religious right will head straight from a county courtroom to the Indiana Supreme Court. (Kukulka, 4/22)

A Natrona County judge heard arguments on April 22 about the state's partial abortion ban. Abortion is still largely banned in Wyoming starting around six weeks, but Judge Dan Forgey could decide to temporarily allow it again as the lawsuit continues. He didn’t give any timing for when he’ll issue his decision on a temporary restraining order. (Merzbach, 4/22)

Building on prior progress in addressing maternal health care disparities and increasing support for new parents, Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed a slate of bills that have been part of the ongoing “Momnibus” package on Wednesday. The move came just ahead of an annual Virginia March for Life rally around Capitol Square, where more than a thousand exhibited their support for anti-abortion legislation. (Woods, 4/22)

The biological parents of a baby at the center of an embryo mix-up have been identified, according to attorneys for the Florida woman who gave birth to the infant. Tiffany Score and Steven Mills sued the Fertility Center of Orlando and its head reproductive endocrinologist in January after learning that their newborn, Shea, was not genetically related to either of them. (Chuck, 4/22)

Emily Laszlo-Rath felt her first contraction when she was at home in her trailer outside Joshua Tree National Park. A first-time mother, she was living off the grid, far from medical help. At first, the labor pains were mild, like cramps. Over the next three days, as they intensified, she weathered them in bed and on the sofa, trusting her body to know what to do. Now, though, she felt chilled, feverish. (MacKeen, 4/22)

Male infertility could be a warning sign for certain types of cancer, a new study says. Men with severely reduced fertility are more likely to develop colon cancer or thyroid cancer, researchers reported in the European Journal of Epidemiology. (Thompson, 4/22)

Three years after researchers first injected deaf children with a treatment designed to give them hearing, an early scientific consensus is emerging: This gene therapy works. (Broderick, 4/22)

An observational study of more than half a million adults suggests amoxicillin may be the preferred first-line treatment for uncomplicated sinusitis in adults, researchers reported late last week in JAMA. (Dall, 4/21)

Eating too much salt has long been linked to high blood pressure, but new research suggests it could trick the immune system into prematurely aging the blood vessels. A preclinical study recently published in the Journal of the American Heart Association has identified a biological chain reaction that links a salty diet to cardiovascular decay. (Quill, 4/21)

Giving influenza and pertussis (whooping cough) vaccines on the same day during pregnancy was not associated with higher rates of adverse pregnancy, birth, or newborn outcomes, according to a new population-based cohort study published late last week in JAMA Network Open. (Bergeson, 4/22)

A case report today in Pediatrics describes a previously healthy 17-year-old girl with significant encephalopathy later diagnosed as having primary adrenal insufficiency (PAI; Addison disease) as a complication of influenza infection. PAI, which can be caused by an autoimmune process, is suspected in pediatric patients displaying poor growth, poor weight gain, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, and skin hyperpigmentation. Ill or stressed patients with untreated or undertreated adrenal insufficiency are at risk for adrenal crisis, which can lead to hypotensive shock, lethargy, confusion, coma, and death. (Van Beusekom, 4/22)

For the moment, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. seems quieter and more positive on vaccines than many, us included, ever expected he could be. Public messaging has shifted — at least superficially — toward nutrition, chronic disease, and the Make America Healthy Again agenda. Kennedy even acknowledged in a recent congressional hearing that the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine is safe and effective “for most people.” (Will Walters and Richard Hughes IV, 4/23)

High deductibles and flawed incentives are pushing prices higher while leaving patients less protected. (Ashish K. Jha, 4/20)

Recent events are a somber reminder that domestic violence-related shootings are more prevalent than similar acts in public spaces. (Renée Graham, 4/21)

By staying out of a dispute, the justices did right by a Mass. student but left others around the nation either unprotected or guessing. (Kimberly Atkins Stohr, 4/22)

What this law does is create a two-tier system of consumer rights. In 2055, it will be legal for 47-year-olds to purchase a pack of cigarettes but not 46-year-olds. Decades after that, a 92-year-old will need to be carded to buy a cigar, to make sure his 91-year-old friend isn’t doing so illegally. (4/22)