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HHS' move against the WHO: a line in the sand, or political theater?

July 21, 2025
July 21, 2025
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Morning Rounds Writer and Podcast Producer
Over the weekend, we learned that two more major hospitals will no longer provide gender-affirming care to young people: Children's National Hospital in D.C. is stopping all such care, while Rush Medical Center in Chicago will stop taking new patients under 18. Tips, insights, comments, concerns can go to: theresa.gaffney@statnews.com. 

in conversation

ER training comes in handy during an academic crisis
A portrait of Rebecca Cunningham, who has short, curly dirty blonde hair and wears round red glasses.

Courtesy University of Minnesota

One year into her job as president of the University of Minnesota, Rebecca Cunningham has found herself often drawing from previous experience as an emergency medicine doctor. Her school has seen grants terminated, an international student arrested, and state support flatline. STAT's Jonathan Wosen sat down with Cunningham to talk about making tough budgetary choices, how she's supporting students and faculty, and why she's still optimistic about the university's long-term future.

"I like to say emergency medicine is the best senior management training you can possibly have," Cunningham said. "Leadership at this level is around crisis management, as well as setting strategy." Cunningham proposed a $5.1 billion budget for the university, which the board approved. But still, there have been layoffs. Read the conversation to get a sense of what this triage looks like from the top.

global health

What it means that HHS rejected WHO's regulatory amendments

Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Friday that the U.S. has rejected amendments made last year by WHO members to the organization's International Health Regulations. Kennedy claimed that the amendments give WHO "unprecedented power" and could enable "global medical surveillance of every human being." (Reminder: Here in the U.S., the Trump administration just gave ICE officials access to personal data on the country's 79 million Medicaid enrollees.) An HHS press release noted that the IHR amendments are binding for the U.S., even after the country's withdrawal from WHO.

But Lawrence Gostin, an international health law expert from Georgetown, said the move was effectively political theater. The U.S. had already signaled it wouldn't accept the amendments when President Trump signed the executive order to withdraw from the WHO. On top of that, the WHO has no power to enforce the regulations, which establish the responsibilities of WHO and its members during global health events or emergencies. During the Covid pandemic, there were "daily violations of the IHR," Gostin told STAT's Helen Branswell. 

Not being party to the IHR amendments runs counter to U.S. interests, he added. "We want other countries to rapidly detect and respond to infectious diseases that are novel and [could] turn into pandemics," he said. "That's exactly what we've always wanted. We want scientific sharing of information."

on the media 

Why public broadcasting cuts matter for health policy

On Friday, Congressional Republicans passed legislation to take back money they'd already appropriated this year, enacting steep cuts to foreign aid and public broadcasting. It doesn't sound like it's in STAT's health care news lane, but as John Wilkerson explains, the decision could actually jeopardize bipartisan health care measures this year.

"They are breaking the appropriations process," said Senate Appropriations Committee member Chris Murphy, when asked whether passage of the rescissions bill jeopardizes expiring health care programs. "We're going to have to live with the risks of that." Read more from John about what, exactly, is at risk. 

first opinion

Her mom made a hard choice. Doctors dismissed it.

The flower of a yellow rose sits in somebody's hands

Adobe

Joy Lisi Rankin isn't sure when her mother first found out she had breast cancer. She told the family in 2002, and died in 2007. What Rankin does know is that her mother chose not to treat the cancer. And in her last year of life, health care professionals constantly pushed back on this decision, asking questions like: "Do you understand what's going to happen?" And: "You know you're going to die, right?" 

In a new First Opinion essay, Rankin argues that by dismissing her mother's choice, clinicians also deprived her of the opportunity to prepare for the ways her body would undoubtedly change. "Doctors and nurses seemed to view her as a waste of time. She hadn't taken care of herself the way they thought she should," Rankin writes. "It didn't matter that she had taken care of herself the way she thought she should." Read more about how her mother was treated, and how this one choice has affected Rankin's own medical care.

screen time

A new study on teens, phones, & mental health

For young adults, owning a smartphone before age 13 is associated with worse mental health, according to a study of 100,000 people ages 18 to 24 published today in the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities. Suicidal thoughts, aggression, feeling detached from reality, and hallucinations saw the strongest link. The data come from the Global Mind Project, which includes mental health assessment scores for more than 2 million people around the world. 

Of course, correlation doesn't equal causation. The association was also affected by factors like early social media access, cyberbullying, and IRL complications like disrupted sleep and poor family relationships. Still, "the explanatory power of technology is tantalizing," as Molly Fischer wrote in the New Yorker a few weeks ago, reviewing journalist Matt Richtel's latest book, "How We Grow Up." Richtel positions phones as a legitimate concern, but not the singular explanation for the teen mental health crisis, Fischer writes. Richtel has even come up with a name for today's teens: "Generation Rumination."

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What we're reading

  • A push for more organ transplants is putting donors at risk, New York Times

  • First Opinion: A sloppy report on mifepristone is being used to undermine the FDA — and the biotech industry, STAT
  • ACA health insurance will cost the average person 75% more next year, research shows, NPR
  • GOP tax law will increase overdose deaths by 1,000 each year, analysis finds, STAT

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