Today's early morning highlights from the major news organizations.
KFF HEALTH NEWS ORIGINAL STORIES
KFF Health News: Rural Americans Wait After Judge Delivers Mixed Ruling On Digital Equity Dollars A federal judge in July gave digital equity advocates a partial victory against President Donald Trump, stopping his attempt to unilaterally kill a multibillion-dollar grant program Congress created. But U.S. District Judge John D. Bates, in a 35-page opinion, also agreed with the administration that it was unconstitutional for the government to use race or ethnicity as the basis to award money under a program created to expand internet skills and access. (Tribble, 9/10)
KFF Health News: When A Friend Becomes A Caregiver For several years, Nicole Straight and Patricia Wood, who lived across the street from each other in Sausalito, California, were more neighbors than friends, exchanging sociable greetings and occasionally having coffee. Then, last October, Wood took a fall, broke her neck, and spent three months in rehabilitation. When she returned to the house she shares with her niece, she couldn’t walk without assistance. “I still don’t dare go up and down stairs unless someone is with me,” said Wood, 93. (Span, 9/10)
KFF Health News: Listen To The Latest ‘KFF Health News Minute’ Jackie Fortiér reads the week’s news: Laser cataract surgery, which can be pricier, may not be worth the extra cost. Plus, the federal government is pulling funding for test strips that can help users detect fentanyl in drugs in favor of other public health approaches. (9/10)
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
CIDRAP: CDC Merges Its Flu, COVID Divisions To ‘Strengthen Operational Efficiency’ The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is merging its Influenza Division with the Coronavirus and Other Respiratory Diseases Division to create the Influenza and Respiratory Viruses Division (IRVD). The organizational change has been planned since the Biden administration. The new division is tasked with preventing disease, disability, and death through the control of seasonal epidemics and pandemic respiratory viral diseases. Its mandate includes disease surveillance, providing support and technical assistance to state and local health departments, and improving detection, diagnostics, vaccines, and treatments. (Boden, 9/9)
NPR: Head Of Special Education At U.S. Education Dept. Quits Kelly Rogers told employees Wednesday that she is resigning from her post overseeing special education at the U.S. Education Department as the agency is in the midst of upheaval and downsizing. Rogers, who has been overseeing the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services (OSERS) since May, announced her departure less than a day before much of her staff were scheduled to move to the Department of Health and Human Services building in Washington D.C., according to internal emails reviewed by NPR. She was supposed to continue overseeing those staff from her perch at the Education Department. Now, it is unclear who will serve in the role after she leaves on Sept. 11. (Mehta, 9/9)
The Washington Sun: Trump Wants The Census To Stop Collecting Race And Ethnicity Data For the first time, the federal government wants to stop collecting race and ethnicity information about Americans as part of the nation’s census, a move that could undercut market research, public policy, scientific study, civil rights enforcement and more. In a proposal published Wednesday, the Census Bureau argued that collecting demographic data doesn’t advance the “fundamental” purpose of the decennial census to dole out seats in the House of Representatives. (Alms, 9/9)
CIDRAP: Polls Show Americans Have Lost Confidence In Federal Government, Public Health Leaders Two new polls, one from the Annenberg Foundation and one from the Associated Press (AP), show that American adults are losing confidence in the federal government in matters of healthcare, and trust in public health figures, such as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and former US public health leader Anthony Fauci, MD, are dropping. In the Annenberg poll, just 38% of Americans said last month they are confident that Kennedy is providing trustworthy information about public health. That proportion is statistically unchanged from both April 2026 (37%) and February 2025 (38%), the Annenberg foundation said. (Soucheray, 9/9)
ELECTIONS
Axios: Trump Plans To Send $500 Obamacare Rebates Before Election The Trump administration plans to send $500 rebate checks to as many as 1 million people who it says were overcharged for their coverage under Obamacare, Axios has learned. The direct-deposit payment would be sent to people in 30 states before the Nov. 3 midterm election, as Trump touts savings from his tax-cut legislation and prescription drug plan. (Caputo, 9/9)
The Washington Post: Rhode Island Governor Loses Democratic Primary Challenge To Former CVS Executive Former CVS executive Helena Foulkes defeated Gov. Dan McKee, making him the nation’s first governor to lose renomination since 2018. McKee had attacked Foulkes for her past work at CVS, which is based in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. He accused Foulkes of contributing to the opioid crisis while at the health care giant, an allegation which she denies. Foulkes said that CVS reduced opioid dispersals by 40 percent when she led the pharmacy division, and the company settled related lawsuits in 2022, after Foulkes had left the company, without admitting wrongdoing. (9/10)
The Washington Post: Democrat’s Ad About Tragic Pregnancy Injects Abortion Into Tight Texas Governor’s Race A personal campaign ad from the Democratic candidate for governor has introduced Texas’ strict antiabortion laws into a competitive race — without ever mentioning the word abortion. State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, who is running against three-term Republican incumbent Greg Abbott, recently released an ad called “Her Story,” in which she recounts the difficult decision she and her husband made 23 years ago to continue her first pregnancy even after genetic testing revealed a fetal anomaly. (Hennessy-Fiske, 9/10)
Stat: 2026 Midterms: Five Consequential Races For Vaccine Policy In Iowa, the Republican candidate for governor wants to end all school vaccine requirements. In Florida, the Republican running for governor recently told CBS that he supported his state’s push to remove certain vaccine mandates for schools. And in Texas, the Republican Senate candidate spent the last few years as the state’s attorney general investigating financial interests linked to vaccine recommendations. (Cirruzzo, 9/10)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Stat: ARPA-H To Invest $62.7 Million In AI Bots For Heart Failure Care ARPA-H, the government agency that funds cutting-edge health research, plans to commit $62.7 million to develop artificial intelligence bots that direct treatment of heart failure. Among the goals of the program, called ADVOCATE, is to produce partially autonomous AI devices authorized by the Food and Drug Administration to help treat patients, including assessing symptom severity, prescribing drugs, and ordering lab tests. (Aguilar, 9/9)
CNBC: Researcher Says AI Has More Than 10% Chance Of 'Killing All Humans' An artificial intelligence researcher quit his job at Anthropic on Tuesday and accused the company, and its chief rival, OpenAI, of acting irresponsibly, igniting a frenzy of concern on social media about the rapid pace of the technology’s development. (Capoot and Kharpal, 9/9)
Becker's Hospital Review: The New AI Deal-Breaker For Health Systems As health systems expand their use of artificial intelligence, some are asking a more fundamental question about vendor access to healthcare data: Does the data need to leave the health system at all. That is the approach Palo Alto, Calif.-based Stanford Health Care is taking as it evaluates AI technologies, Christian Lindmark, vice president and chief technology officer, told Becker’s. (Diaz, 9/9)
Medical Xpress: In A Third Of Cases, AI Chatbots Wrongly Reassure Sleep Apnea Patients That Their Symptoms Aren't Serious In a third of cases, AI chatbots wrongly reassure sleep apnea patients that their symptoms are not serious, discouraging them from seeking a referral to a specialist, according to research presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Congress in Barcelona, Spain. (Clark, 9/6)
OUTBREAKS AND HEALTH THREATS
AP: Pennsylvania Measles Deaths: Coroner Releases More Details On Infants The two measles-related deaths in Pennsylvania last month involved infants, and the virus itself caused one of the deaths, a Pennsylvania coroner confirmed Wednesday. Lancaster County’s coroner, Dr. Stephen Diamantoni, said he told the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of his conclusions. CDC officials, however, have not said whether they will count either death as measles-associated, and the agency’s website still carries a disclaimer about them. Ivan Miller died on Aug. 14 shortly after his birth of a ruptured spleen, Diamantoni said. (Stobbe, 9/9)
CIDRAP: Pediatrics Group Publishes FAQ On Congenital Measles Late last month in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a mom with measles delivered a stillborn baby, who died of a ruptured spleen, what the coroner called a measles-associated death. The midwife attending the birth told the mom that the baby died because of the unvaccinated mom’s serious case of measles, per The Atlantic. Few pediatricians have treated a newborn with congenital measles—meaning a case in a newborn contracted from the mother—especially one with such a tragic outcome. (Holohan, 9/9)
CIDRAP: People Who Say They’ll Get Vaccinated Against COVID And Flu Often Don’t. Why Not? Low vaccination rates are often attributed to vaccine hesitancy, but people who express an unwillingness to get vaccinated aren’t the only ones who sometimes forgo immunizations. Even people who intend to get vaccinated don’t always follow through. Research published this week in Vaccine found that 39% of participants who said they were willing to receive a COVID-19 vaccine during the 2025-26 respiratory virus season remained unvaccinated by the end of the season. (Bergeson, 9/9)
Medical Xpress: Mpox Outbreak In 2022 Caused By Less Severe Form Of The Virus, Study Reveals The strain of mpox behind the 2022 outbreak was a weakened form of the virus, which may have helped it spread faster, a new study from the University of Surrey reports. The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, show that the virus acquired mutations before it spread globally. These mutations, which are absent from forms of the virus currently circulating in parts of Africa, cause less severe symptoms in patients, who may have unknowingly spread the virus across borders. (9/8)
REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH
Politico: Louisiana’s Abortion Pill Case Could Wipe Out Access In Blue States The next phase in the abortion wars may come down to one question: Do the rights of red states to enforce bans override the rights of blue states to protect access? Louisiana will argue before a federal appeals court this week that FDA rules allowing telehealth prescription and mail delivery of the drug mifepristone infringe on the state’s right to prohibit abortion within its borders. But should its lawsuit succeed — or one of the others like it filed by Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri or Texas — it would wipe out online and mail access in states where abortion is legal, cutting off millions of residents from a method they increasingly depend on. (Ollstein, 9/9)
Wyoming Public Radio: More Western States Are Letting Medicaid Reimburse For Doula Care The majority of western states now let Medicaid help cover the cost of doulas, the trained professionals who provide emotional support and information to people before, during and after childbirth. (Merzbach, 9/9)
Medical Xpress: This Is How Dense Breast Tissue May Lead To Cancer Breast cancer often grows in tissue that is unusually dense. That's why clinicians flag women with this kind of breast tissue for follow-up after a mammogram. A UC San Francisco study has uncovered a mechanism that could help explain how this dense environment promotes breast cancer. (9/8)
AP: Former Amazon Employees Allege Discrimination Against Pregnant Warehouse Workers In Lawsuit A group of former Amazon warehouse employees is suing the company for systemically discriminating against pregnant workers, accusing the company of denying them basic accommodations and penalizing some who took breaks to pump milk or time off for hospital visits. (Savage, 9/9)
HEALTHCARE WORKERS
MPR News: Two Doctors With Minnesota Ties Missing After Nepal Flooding Two doctors with ties to Minnesota are among the thousands of people missing after last month’s flash flooding in Nepal and Tibet. (9/9)
MPR News: Allina Health Doctors File 10-Day Strike Notice Doctors at Allina Health’s Mercy hospital campuses in Coon Rapids and Fridley filed a 10-day strike notice Friday that could lead to doctors walking off the job if a deal isn’t reached on a new contract. (Wurzer and Woldeslassie, 9/9)
STLPR: Hospital CEOs Got Pandemic Pay Raises At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the heads of the largest hospital systems in the St. Louis area came together for a public service announcement. “When times are tough, we come together as a system, as healthcare workers, and as a community,” said Richard Liekweg, who was CEO of BJC Healthcare at the time. (Wicentowski, 9/9)
HealthDay: Fake Doctor Reviews Look More Trustworthy Than Real Ones, Study Finds People may need to be as wary of fake reviews when they’re shopping for a new doctor as they would be scrolling on Amazon, a new study says. Fake reviews not only show up in some online doctor review platforms, but are often seen as more trustworthy and helpful than genuine reviews, researchers reported recently in the journal Internet Research. (Thompson, 9/9)
Medical Xpress: Not All Colonoscopies Are The Same: New AI Audits Them At Scale A team of Northwestern Medicine scientists has developed an AI tool that rapidly and successfully measures colonoscopy quality by reviewing footage of the procedure. (9/9)
CIDRAP: Study: Candida Auris Often Spreads From Patients To Gloves, Gowns Of Healthcare Workers A new study indicates that transmission of a multidrug-resistant fungus from patients to the gloves and gowns of healthcare personnel (HCP) occurs frequently during routine patient care, researchers reported yesterday in Open Forum Infectious Diseases. Labeled an urgent threat by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Candida auris is difficult to eradicate and spreads rapidly in healthcare settings. Invasive infections are fatal in 29% to 62% of patients, many of whom have weakened immune systems and require complex medical care. A total of 6,304 clinical cases were reported in the United States in 2024. (Dall, 9/9)
HEALTHCARE INDUSTRY
MedPage Today: Medicare Paid $380 Million On Organs Never Used For Enrollees Medicare paid an estimated $380 million over a 6-year period for acquiring organs that weren't transplanted in Medicare enrollees because of conflicting federal program rules, according to a report from the HHS Office of Inspector General (OIG). (Frieden, 9/9)
Axios: Medicare Advantage Plans Appear To Be Cutting Benefits In 2027 Next year is shaping up to be tumultuous for Medicare Advantage as insurers continue to shore up their profits. Benefit cuts and insurer exits from certain markets mean more upheaval for seniors — and right before the midterm elections. (Owens, 9/10)
Chicago Tribune: Weiss Memorial Hospital Loses Illinois Hospital License Weiss Memorial Hospital has lost its Illinois hospital license, even as its owners and community leaders continue to discuss plans to reopen the facility. (Schencker, 9/9)
MedPage Today: ADA Says Its Investigation Of Meeting Controversy Isn't Done Yet Just a few days after the American Diabetes Association (ADA) announced that it completed its investigation into events that occurred at its annual meeting in June, it now says the work isn't done. Over the Labor Day weekend, the ADA issued a statement that its audit and governance committee, which conducted the investigation at the request of the board of directors, will provide "additional information" to the board that "may clarify or correct the information previously provided and could result in further actions by the Board." (Fiore, 9/9)
Modern Healthcare: University Of Iowa Health Care Drops $2B Patient Tower Plan University of Iowa Health Care is scrapping its $2 billion-plus patient tower project and will instead upgrade existing facilities, the system said Wednesday. Financial headwinds and an increased need for updated facilities and additional patient beds sooner led to the decision, the system said in a Wednesday news release. The tower project, which began in June 2025, was slated to be completed in 2032. The upgrades will cost an estimated $400 million and take about four years to complete, a spokesperson for UI Health Care said. (DeSilva, 9/9)
Modern Healthcare: How Duke Health, Stryker Use Apple Vision Pro In Hip Surgery A Duke Health orthopedic surgeon recently used augmented reality to replace the physical monitors he normally relies on during a hip arthroscopy, a shift that could improve the surgical workflow and reduce costs. Stryker Corp.’s SportSuite Vision, which received De Novo authorization from the Food and Drug Administration in July, is an application for the Apple Vision Pro that brings the video captured by a tiny camera inserted through a small cut into a joint, CT images and other surgical information into the headset. The surgeon can arrange and view that information in their field of vision and manipulate a 3D model of the hip in real time. (Dubinsky, 9/9)
STATE WATCH
Fierce Healthcare: OBBBA's State-Directed Payment Caps Will Trim Some States' Medicaid Spend By A Quarter: Study Upcoming statutory limits on providers’ state-directed payments (SDPs) are expected to trim tens of billions of dollars from states’ Medicaid spending, and for 17 hard-hit states could range from 10% to 25% of their total annual Medicaid spending, according to a newly published analysis warning of subsequent reductions in care access. (Muoio, 9/9)
The New York Times: Lawmakers Question N.Y.C. Tech Official About 911 System Breakdown New York City lawmakers on Wednesday grilled the leader of a city technology agency at the center of a 911 system outage that prevented hundreds of callers from reaching operators, and was not disclosed for hours. Lisa Gelobter, the chief of the city’s Office of Information and Technology, which oversees the technology behind the 911 system, withstood more than three hours of criticism during a City Council hearing about the partial breakdown on Aug. 18. (Cramer and Marcius, 9/9)
The Baltimore Sun: Maryland Hospital Outages Test Emergency Plans, Cyber Defenses An Eastern Shore hospital system lost Internet, phone service and access to electronic records last month after construction workers inadvertently struck a sprinkler pipe that damaged an IT area. TidalHealth’s clinical teams sprang into action, shifting to paper documentation using pre-printed forms, switching to backup communications and setting up an incident command structure across the health system. The Aug. 13 response was the same as it would have been had the 30-medical-site system been hit by a cyberattack. (Mirabella, 9/10)
Los Angeles Times: L.A.'s Homeless Authority Is Put On Notice It Will Have To Compete To Save Itself The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority has been put on notice that it will have to compete for the first time with other applicants for key federally-mandated functions, setting the stage for a possible breakup of the city-county joint powers authority. (Smith and Zahniser, 9/9)
SMOKING AND HEALTH
Medical Xpress: Second-Hand Smoke Causes Nearly 1.7M Deaths Globally: Study More than 2.7 billion people, including children, were exposed to secondhand smoke globally, contributing to nearly 1.7 million deaths in 2023, according to a study published Tuesday in The Lancet Public Health. (9/8)
Medical Xpress: Why Is Smoking Linked To A Lower Risk Of Parkinson's? The researchers say both smoking history and exhaled carbon monoxide were linked to a lower risk of Parkinson's disease. While smokers generally had higher carbon monoxide levels in their breath, the researchers say nonsmokers with high carbon monoxide levels also had a lower risk of Parkinson's—suggesting carbon monoxide may independently protect against the disease. (9/8)
The Hill: Smoking Tobacco Linked To Fertility Issues In New WHO Report Smoking at any point in your life could cause fertility issues, according to a new report from the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative issued the report, summarizing research linking tobacco smoking and infertility, with the agency citing decades of evidence. The organization defines infertility as failing to get pregnant after 12 or more months of regular, unprotected sexual intercourse, estimating that 1 in 6 people globally suffers from infertility. (Whiteside, 9/9)
HEALTH AND WELLNESS
The New York Times: A New Drug Lifts The Fog Of Sleepiness For Those With Narcolepsy Many people have a cartoonish idea of narcolepsy, perhaps picturing someone falling asleep standing up. What people don’t understand is that sleepiness can infiltrate every aspect of daily life, said Julie Flygare, 42, who was diagnosed with the sleep disorder in 2007, during her second year of law school. It interferes with memory, attention and weighs down everyday existence like a “heaviness on the skull,” she said. (Johnson, 9/9)
MedPage Today: H. Pylori Exposure And Colorectal Cancer: The Evidence Grows Exposure to Helicobacter pylori, known for its role in gastric cancer, may also play a role in colorectal cancer (CRC), according to results from a risk-attribution modeling study. (Bassett, 9/9)
CNN: First On CNN: Routine Blood Testing May Hold Hidden Clues To Colorectal Cancer Before Age 45 When you have blood drawn in a routine doctor’s visit, some of the markers that get tested could hold unexpected clues to how likely you are to develop colorectal cancer at a young age, new research suggests. Adults younger than 45 who had lower levels of two liver enzymes – aspartate transaminase, or AST, and alanine transaminase, or ALT – were more likely to be diagnosed with early-onset colorectal cancer compared with their peers in an analysis released Wednesday by Epic Research, which is owned by the health-care software company Epic. (Howard, 9/9)
MedPage Today: Borderline Anemia Linked To Higher Mortality Risk Borderline anemia was associated with a higher risk of mortality in a prospective cohort study, according to researchers. (Bassett, 9/9)
GLOBAL WATCH
AP: Americares Receives $50M Donation To Boost Access To Medicines In High-Need Areas A major American aid group is promising to deliver more medicines in high-need areas around the world after receiving its largest ever donation. Americares, a nonprofit that supports thousands of health centers globally, announced a $50 million gift Wednesday from an unidentified Connecticut family. The contribution represents an unusual expansion at a time when the United States’ sudden aid cuts have hamstrung programs ranging from maternal and child health to HIV treatment and prevention. (Pollard, 9/9)
The New York Times: August Ties the Record for Earth’s Hottest Month on the Books Last month tied July 2023 as the planet’s hottest month on record, European scientists said on Thursday, as human-caused warming pushes the Northern Hemisphere’s muggiest, most uncomfortable time of year into new realms of stickiness and discomfort. August tied the record for the oceans’ hottest month in history as well, scientists said, as El Niño conditions caused warm water to accumulate at the surface of the tropical Pacific. This extra warmth will spread to the rest of the planet in the months ahead, making the globe’s average temperatures likely to break more records through the end of the year and into 2027. (Zhong, 9/9)
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