Updates on chaos, confusion, and surprise

Plus: RFK Jr.'s blueprint for questioning vaccine safety

January 28, 2025 Check out STAT+

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By Theresa Gaffney Morning Rounds Writer and Podcast Producer

Good morning, happy Tuesday. I was recently reading an interview with Lucy Dacus — one of my favorite musicians — and was surprised to see longevity science come up. Lucy's take? "I think it's silly that these people are trying to live forever, because they're not going to do it. ... I see people like that, and I feel bad because they live constantly in fear, and I don't want to live that way." What do you think?

policy Updates on DEI, NIH, & WHO (Chaos, confusion, & surprise) Adobe Let's start with DEI: On Tuesday last week, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to stop any federal programs that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. Just two days later, scientist Naomi Lee received an email that the NIH was terminating the contract that provided funding for her work with students from underrepresented backgrounds. A team of STAT reporters write about the speed with which the new administration is enacting the order — and the effect such action may have on projects that incorporate the basic idea that more diverse research is more accurate research. The full impact of that executive order is still unclear, partly because of the government freeze on most public communication through Feb. 1. But yesterday, the NIH clarified its restrictions on staff after the initial freeze unleashed confusion across the agency, STAT's Sarah Owermohle reported in an exclusive story. Right now, NIH employees can start new work on mission-critical research and continue working on ongoing studies, but cannot publicly communicate about it.  And finally — surprise. Senior leaders at CDC received an email Sunday night telling them that anyone who works with the WHO must immediately stop and "await further guidance." "People thought there would be a slow withdrawal. This has really caught everyone with their pants down," public health expert Jeffrey Klausner told the AP. Now biological threats like Marburg virus loom even larger, the White House's former coordinator for global health security Stephanie Psaki warns in a First Opinion essay yesterday. Getting rid of our emergency preparedness system without putting anything in its place is "irresponsible and dangerous," she wrote.  Please reach out if you have any experiences that you want to share, and keep an eye out for more updates tomorrow. one important number 4 in 10 That's about how many Americans trust President Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Dr. Mehmet Oz either "a great deal" or "a fair amount" when it comes to making the right health recommendations. That's according to a survey of more than 1,300 people conducted earlier this month by KFF. The results, released today, show that this trust is heavily partisan, with far more Republicans feeling positively about the president and his health agency nominees than Democrats. People's own doctors are still the most trusted source for health information, but even those experts have lost some pull — in June 2023, KFF found that 93% of surveyed adults trusted their doctors' recommendations. That dropped to 85% this month. politics RFK Jr.'s blueprint for questioning vaccine safety Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has insisted he doesn't want to take away vaccines  —  he just wants to make sure they're safe. But in a 2023 book and on the website for a nonprofit he's worked for, Kennedy sketches out a blueprint that could subject recommended vaccines to renewed scrutiny, redirect research, strip legal protections for vaccine makers, and change how vaccines are advertised. His 7-step plan provides a window into how he could use the levers of power as the top U.S. health official to sow doubt about vaccines at a time when rates of childhood immunizations are already slipping. Read more from STAT's Rachel Cohrs Zhang and Sarah Owermohle. Kennedy's confirmation hearing with the Senate Finance Committee will take place tomorrow, and vaccines are sure to come up.

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medication Kids with ADHD and the Adderall shortage In Oct. 2022, the FDA announced a shortage of Adderall, the go-to treatment for ADHD. Since then, an increasing number of kids have gotten prescriptions for other stimulants, according to a study published yesterday in Pediatrics.  The dip in Adderall prescriptions has been offset by an increase for a drug called Focalin.    Researchers analyzed trends in the dispensation of stimulants to kids ages 5 to 17 between 2017 and 2023. Prescriptions declined in the beginning of the pandemic, but they've slowly climbed back up to normal, with a few exceptions. Most notably, in December 2023, girls aged 11 and younger had a monthly stimulant-dispensing rate that was 9% higher than pre-pandemic trends predicted. This likely doesn't mean that more girls have ADHD than before, but perhaps signals that the condition isn't going undiagnosed in girls as often as it used to. (In the last days of the Biden administration, the DEA proposed a long-awaited special registration process for prescribers who want to provide controlled substances like Adderall via telehealth. It's unclear how the Trump administration will move forward on the rule.) racial health inequities Racial gaps in life expectancy narrowed — but not enough Longstanding racial gaps between white and Black life expectancies shrank in the three decades before the pandemic, according to a new state-by-state analysis published yesterday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Urban Institute. But even after improvements, by 2018 white women could still expect to live three years more than Black women, and white men five years longer than Black men.  The researchers used data from 1990 to 2018 for their analysis, and found a lot of variation state-by-state over the years. Northeast and Southeast states like Massachusetts, New York, and Florida saw the greatest reductions in life expectancy disparities. Those disparities grew in Wisconsin and D.C.  Life expectancy gains overall declined during 2020 and 2021. The researchers say they will detail how Black and white people fared state-by-state during the pandemic in a future analysis. (If you didn't click on the story above about the impacts of Trump's ban on anything DEI-related, can I encourage you to click on it now?)

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What we're reading Trump administration halts HIV drug distribution in poor countries, New York Times A less brutal alternative to IVF, Atlantic RFK Jr. campaign uses HHS freeze as a fundraising tool, STAT Trump expected to sign executive order barring transgender people from military service, NBC News The most important survival skill for doctors, STAT

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Thanks for reading! More tomorrow,

theresa.gaffney@statnews.com

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