Trump's chronic disease crew

What would former President Trump do about chronic disease if re-elected? An emerging "Make America Healthy Again" movement gives us some clues. And two of the most prominent, freshest faces are a pair of siblings, Isabella Cueto writes.

Entrepreneurs Calley and Casey Means have sprung into Trump's orbit in recent months — with a boost from Tucker Carlson and soon, Joe Rogan — as conservative rabble-rousers on health issues. And they have some sweeping proposals for Trump to root out what they describe as pervasive corruption in government, health care, and scientific research. It involves slashing NIH funding to researchers with conflicts of interest, eliminating the FDA's user fee funding mechanism, restricting ultra-processed foods for SNAP recipients, and more.

(If some of this sounds familiar, that's because it is: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pushed a similar vision in his newer role as a Trump campaign surrogate.) But the Meanses have gone even further with their message, effectively activating conservative anxieties about personal freedoms, family values, and institutional corruption.

drug pricing

Trump abandons his favored drug pricing plan

In a strange about-face, Trump's campaign says he has no plans to pursue the most-favored nations drug pricing policy that he proposed during his first term, despite actively promoting the idea earlier this campaign season, my co-author Rachel Cohrs Zhang reports.

Trump in June 2023 released a video bashing the pharmaceutical industry for "freeloading" off of American consumers, and promised to issue an executive order on day one of his presidency reviving a plan to ensure that the United States pays the least amount of any developed country for medications.

That's apparently not the case anymore and the video promoting the policy on his campaign website has been deleted (though a transcript remains). Kudos to Inside Health Policy for first reporting the pivot. Read the full story for details on what we do, and don't know about what Trump could do instead.

eye on fda

In retirement, Woodcock gets to rare-disease drug development

Janet Woodcock is taking time away from retirement to advise, without pay, a nonprofit that repurposes existing drugs for rare diseases, Matt Herper scooped yesterday.

Woodcock retired this year after decades of being one of the most influential officials at the FDA. She refuses to take positions on boards of for-profit companies and is hesitant to serve on the board of any organization. She said she's spending her time gardening, growing orchids, and playing with her grandson, who is just a year old.

Every Cure is an exception because its mission jibes with what was one of Woodcock's biggest interests at the FDA: developing rare disease drugs. President Biden's Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) granted Every Cure $48.5 million to use artificial intelligence to look into whether any of the 19,000 drugs already on the US market could be used for rare diseases that lack treatments.

Research

Why NIH is spending $30 million to study ableism

A new NIH program will allocate nearly $30 million to 10 groups over five years to examine the impact of ableism on various health outcomes for people with disabilities and to develop strategies to combat these disparities. This didn't happen easily, as STAT's Timmy Broderick reports.

Timmy sat down with Theresa Cruz, director of the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research, who is running the program. Cruz discussed the evolution that brought NIH to this program, and how we saw disability in medicine before.

"Ableism is very entrenched in our society," Cruz said. Read more on how Cruz says the new NIH program is addressing it.

More around STAT

Check out more exclusive coverage with a STAT+ subscription

Read premium in-depth biotech, pharma, policy, and life science coverage and analysis with all of our STAT+ articles.

What we're reading

Medicare Advantage market expected to grow in 2025, despite big changes from insurers, STAT
Trump's speeches, increasingly angry and rambling, reignite the question of age, New York Times
Opinion: Philanthropists Laura and John Arnold warn: Beware hospital consolidation, STAT
White House should declare national emergency over IV fluid shortages caused by Helene, says hospital group, STAT