#public-health-policy

#public-health-policy

Dr. Ralph Lee Abraham, the Louisiana surgeon general who halted his state's vaccine promotion campaigns and delayed warning the public about a deadly whooping cough outbreak, has quietly been installed as the second-highest official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Department of Health and Human Services did not announce this appointment. The news was first spotted by Dr. Jeremy Faust, who runs the Substack called Inside Medicine.

The country ranked fifth on the measles outbreak list last year, reporting 30,692 cases and 23 deaths. According to Dr. Aurora Stanescu, an epidemiologist at the National Institute for Public Health in Romania, five of those deaths were children under age 1. Schwalbe calls those figures a "wake-up call." "That's a lot of cases of measles, and that's a lot of deaths from a disease that really shouldn't be killing anybody at this point," Schwalbe says.

The standard pandemic-preparedness playbook "has failed catastrophically," NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya and NIH Principal Deputy Director Matthew J. Memoli wrote in City Journal, a magazine and website published by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a conservative think tank. The pair argue that finding and studying pathogens that could cause outbreaks, then stockpiling vaccines against them, is a waste of money.

Between 1984 and 2005, rates of cervical cancer had been dropping steadily. But a report published Monday by the Canadian Cancer Statistics Advisory Committee shows a plateau in the annual percentage change for cervical cancer rates, which is just under zero for the period from 2005 to 2021. "Cervical cancer is not one of the most common causes of cancer death for females in Canada, but each one of the 430 deaths expected in 2025 due to this cancer was potentially preventable," the report said.

In text messages sent in 2017, disgraced financier and registered sex offender Jeffrey Epstein appears to position himself as a middleman between president Donald Trump's administration and Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, even seemingly representing himself as passing on information directly from Trump to Gates through an intermediary. The messages, which the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released on Wednesday and originated with the Epstein estate, begin on January 27, 2017, years after Epstein had already pleaded guilty to state prostitution solicitation charges.

"Of all the specific initiatives that you guys have worked on effectively, the most important thing is that your team is willing to ask questions that people in government haven't been asking in a long time,"

For the first time in Great Britain, there are more over-16s using vapes or e-cigarettes than smoking cigarettes, according to the Office for National Statistics. Some 5.4 million adults use vapes daily or occasionally, compared with 4.9 million using cigarettes, an ONS survey for 2024 suggests. Daily use of vapes is most common among 25-49 year olds, with rising use among women. The popularity of cigarette smoking has been falling for the past decade as the harmful effects of tobacco encouraged many to quit, while less risky vape use has been rising - particularly among younger age groups.

If you've spotted a tiny white spoon inside a black triangle next to your soda or combo meal lately, that's not a new McFlurry flavor. It's a warning. As of October 2025, chain restaurants across New York City are required to post this "sugar spoon" symbol next to menu items that contain more than 50 grams of added sugar, the entire daily recommended limit.

Major US soft-drink and snack-food corporations are waging a coordinated campaign that aims to pit Donald Trump's Maga faithful against Robert F Kennedy Jr's Make America Healthy Again movement, a Guardian investigation in partnership with environmental watchdog Fieldnotes has found. Their goal is to stymie the Maha-led effort to curb Americans' consumption of soda and ultra-processed foods. To carry out the plan, the companies have turned

A gamechanging injection to prevent HIV is set to be approved for use in England and Wales. The long-acting jab, administered every two months, will offer an alternative to the daily pills used to protect against the virus. This form of HIV prevention therapy, known as PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis), is typically taken by HIV-negative people to reduce their risk of infection.

The San Francisco Bay Times joins with Olga Talamante and The Ven. Miguel Bustos in thanking Sandra R. Hernández, MD, for her inspiration and support in creating the inaugural Honoring LGBTQ+ Bay Area Latine Leaders, which will take place on October 24, 2025. Beyond this event, all Californians have benefited from her work. Dr. Hernández is the President and CEO of the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which for decades has worked to benefit the lives of many in the state and particularly in the Bay Area.

Under a new Health Department rule that took effect October 4, restaurants that are part of chains with 15 or more locations nationwide must display a warning icon next to any food or drink containing 50 grams or more of added sugars. The regulation affects nearly 4,000 restaurants citywide. Fines to follow "Every New Yorker deserves access to delicious, healthy food that they feel good about eating," said Acting Health Commissioner Dr. Michelle Morse.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) hit back at an op-ed written by the most recent six surgeons general, who said they wanted to warn the U.S. about the dangers of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The op-ed, published in The Washington Post on Tuesday, called the health secretary's policies and positions an "immediate and unprecedented" threat to the nation's health. In a statement to ABC News, HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said the doctors are the same officials "who presided over the decline in America's public health."

Over the past 20 years, there has been a 67% rise in diabetes cases in Turkey, meaning that overall prevalence has almost doubled, to more than 16% of the population. The International Diabetes Federation now lists Turkey as the country with the highest diabetes prevalence in the European region. According to data from the World Health Organization's (WHO)Global Health Observatory, the age-standardized prevalence of diabetes in Turkey in 2022 was 16.6% of the adult population (aged over 18): 16% of men and 17.1% of women.

Researchers are concerned about what will happen should pregnant women follow US President Donald Trump's advice to avoid the painkiller Tylenol also called paracetamol and acetaminophen. In an address at the White House on September 22, Trump claimed the medication is linked to autism and other long-term neurodevelopmental conditions in the developing child. But experts warn that avoiding the drug when it is needed could place women and their fetus at even greater risk.

We're doing a series of working groups, and in those working groups are experts, not just from the United States but all over, and one of the biggest concerns is what we are doing in our own country to put our own people's health at risk: dismantling public health, listening to literally crackpot ideas about what's happening. The Democrat then noted that in 1800 U.S. life expectancy was 35 and is now 78, before rounding directly on Kennedy:

Mexico is one of the world's top consumers of sugary drinks, with Mexicans consuming on average 166 litres of soda per year. This has had a devastating impact on the country's health: one in three Mexican children are overweight or obese while, at 100,000 deaths a year, diabetes is the nation's second-leading cause of death. 'It's deadlier than the drugs trade,' said Viri Rios, a Mexican public policy analyst.

In 2022, the medical establishment and public health world nixed the name "monkeypox" for two key reasons. Animal-to-human transmission comes from rodents. And the name "monkeypox" was seen as racist and stigmatizing language. To replace it, World Health Organization (WHO) officials decided to call the disease that causes painful lesions "mpox." Now, the U.S. is reverting to the old term "monkeypox."

US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr defiantly defended his controversial actions to upend public health at a Senate hearing on 4 September. Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine advocate, also made unfounded allegations about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines and accused the medical establishment of corruption. What was supposed to be a routine hearing about the health care agenda of Republican President Donald Trump was anything but.

Later this month, the United Nations General Assembly will discuss a proposal to eliminate trans-fatty acids (trans fats) from diets. These fats are mainly produced industrially. They clog up arteries, increasing people's risk of a heart attack or death. Some 60 countries are already on a path to eliminating these fats and the World Health Organization has certified that 9 have removed industrially produced trans fats from their food supply.

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"The American people demanded science, safety, and common sense," he wrote. "This framework delivers all three."

Young people who vape are three times as likely to start smoking, develop asthma and have poor mental health as those who do not. The study indicates consistent links between vaping and future smoking among youth.

Among U.S. adults with any mental illness, 25 percent are current smokers—more than double the rate for those without mental illness. Patients with serious mental illness have substantially elevated smoking rates, with schizophrenia rates as high as 80 to 90 percent.

The NSDUH revealed a one-third reduction in serious thoughts of suicide among 12 to 17-year-olds, dropping from 13% to 10%, contributing to a decline in tragic outcomes.