Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT’s free newsletter Morning Rounds. Sign up here.
Good morning, how was your weekend? I saw Katie Gavin perform her album in Boston, which was amazing. I’ve also had the new Julien Baker & TORRES song “Sugar in the Tank” stuck in my head for days.
An exit interview with CDC director Mandy Cohen
CDC director Mandy Cohen (pictured above) is in the final days of her tenure at the federal health agency, but she’s got plenty of work left to do. She’s in persuasion mode, as STAT’s Helen Branswell puts it, simultaneously trying to sell the incoming administration on the message that the CDC has changed and calm nervous staff about what’s to come. (On deck to replace her is doctor and former congressman Dave Weldon, who asserts that childhood vaccines are linked to rising autism rates.)
“Folks may have an image of what CDC was in April of 2020 during the [first] Trump administration. And I want folks to make sure that they take time to see the progress that we have made,” she told Helen in an interview last week. Read more.
Average BMI declined in 2023, study shows
After steadily increasing for close to a decade, the average adult BMI in the U.S. plateaued in 2022 and decreased slightly in 2023, according to a study published Friday in JAMA Health Forum. The same pattern was seen in annual changes in the percentage of adults who have obesity according to their BMI.
Researchers analyzed deidentified data from linked medical and insurance claims, as well as electronic health records for more than 16.7 million people across the country between 2013 and 2023. In 2013, the average BMI was 29.65. That rose steadily until 2021, when it was 30.23. By the end of 2023, it was back down to 30.21.
These are undoubtedly small changes, but researchers pointed to the proliferation of GLP-1 medications as well as demographic shifts (due to the number of deaths among those at higher weights) and behavior changes through the pandemic as potential contributing factors. And, of course, we need to remember that the BMI is a deeply imperfect health measure.
Your name in lights gene therapy treatment
Honorary naming is a staple of philanthropic fundraising — just take a look at any major building at any major university. But it’s a strategy that has yet to be applied to drugmaking, until now. Last week, STAT’s Jason Mast wrote about one dad, Terry Pirovolakis, who built a gene therapy for his son. As more parents follow in Pirovolakis’s footsteps to help their own children with rare diseases, they’re turning to whatever fundraising maneuvers they can think of.
Amber Freed is a mother who has tried everything: GoFundMes, lemonade stands, golf tournaments, a foundation. Now she’s offering to name the treatment for her son after the highest-bidding donor. She needs $1 million. Read more from Jason.
What RFK Jr. gets wrong about infectious & chronic diseases
For Larry Schlesinger, a physician-scientist, the connection between infection and chronic disease isn’t just a professional question. It’s a personal one. A few years ago, he was diagnosed with oral cancer that his doctor traced back to an HPV infection he’d had decades earlier.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the next potential head of HHS, has called for government-funded research to focus on chronic illnesses like diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and cancer, while taking “a break” on infectious disease research. In a new First Opinion essay, Schlesinger writes that this isn’t actually an either/or situation. Read more.
Needle exchanges work in Canadian prisons
In 2019, just 9 out of 43 federal prisons in Canada had needle exchange programs to combat hepatitis C and other blood-borne infections for those who are incarcerated. But if the country began adding more programs so that, by 2030, half the federal prisons offered needle exchange, it could prevent 15% of new hepatitis C cases and 8% of injection-related infections, according to a study published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Of course, expansion isn’t free, but the researchers also found that every dollar invested in the current program or its expansion is estimated to save $2 in hepatitis C and injection-related infection treatment costs. And saved money can save lives — you may recall Nick Florko’s investigative series from last year about how many U.S. prisons blatantly refuse to test and treat people with hepatitis C.
What we’re reading
-
Kennedy’s lawyer has asked the FDA to revoke approval of the polio vaccine, New York Times
-
Defense bill banning trans care for minors could put some families in ‘survival mode,’ NBC News
- Broken promises, lax scrutiny: Inside Massachusetts’s failure to regulate Steward Health, STAT
- Texas challenges shield laws by suing New York doctor who prescribed abortion pills, NPR
- Three major health care policy issues to watch in 2025, STAT