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Good morning! I’m losing my “Survivor” fantasy league handily — never trust me in a social experiment where everyone is starving to death and wearing wet sneakers.
Which reminds me: Check out round two of STAT Madness now. There were some pretty tight races in round one, so make sure you get your vote in.
In 2022, the Mayo Clinic signed a five-year partnership with a USDA program funded by dairy farmers and importers. Its mission: to promote dairy consumption. The collaboration includes research on dairy’s cardiovascular impacts and outreach “communicating dairy’s strong body of evidence,” a press release notes. The announcement didn’t draw much attention at the time, but now, the top-rated health system is drawing criticism for the deal’s potential to undermine Mayo’s credibility.
So what happened? Earlier this year, the clinic launched a three-part podcast series on dairy as part of the partnership. It caught the attention of a local physician, who wrote in the Minnesota Reformer that the show provides the dairy industry a platform to present “an imbalanced perspective on dairy’s role in chronic health outcomes.” As they say — high jinks ensued. Read more from STAT’s Sarah Todd about the controversy, and what it illustrates about the industry’s ties to health organizations overall.
Chronic pain linked with depression, anxiety
It’s well known that those with any chronic health condition are likely to have more. That can play out across mind-body lines, too: A new study suggests about 40% of adults with chronic pain also have clinically significant depression or anxiety — a “significant public health concern,” writes the international team of researchers in JAMA Network Open. To find that number, they conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of research published on the subject between 2013 and 2023.
The highest prevalence of mental health symptoms was among people with fibromyalgia, a not-well-understood condition that can cause extreme pain. More than half of fibro patients in the studies had clinical symptoms of both depression and anxiety. Younger people and women were also more likely to have depression and anxiety, the study found. Understanding the links between mental health conditions and pain is key, especially since patients with mood and anxiety disorders may be dismissed as having psychosomatic issues or excluded from clinical trials. — Isabella Cueto
CDC issues a health alert on measles
The CDC issued a health advisory Friday on the measles outbreak in Texas and New Mexico. The agency advises that “all U.S. residents should be up to date on their MMR vaccinations,” which remain “the most important tool for preventing measles.” Travelers heading to areas with outbreaks domestically or internationally should also check for local health notices, and monitor themselves for symptoms after travel.
Now, we wouldn’t ordinarily consider the advisory itself newsworthy — it’s standard practice during an outbreak like this, with 208 confirmed cases as of Friday and two reported deaths. But that’s why many of us at STAT found it important. In particular, saying that the notice applies to all U.S. residents diverts from the seemingly coded language used by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a week ago, which emphasized parental choice in vaccination.
The NIH programs Francis Collins is worried about
Days after retiring from the NIH, former agency Director Francis Collins warned that two signature programs — the BRAIN, which aims to decipher how the lowercase brain works, and All of Us, a large, diverse genomics database — are threatened by Trump administration actions.
“Both of these groundbreaking projects are now at severe risk because of budget and workforce cuts,” Francis Collins said during a speech in D.C., during one of dozens of Stand Up for Science rallies held around the U.S. on Friday. Events took place in 32 cities across the country, with a smattering of affiliated rallies in other towns and university campuses across the globe. Read more from STAT’s Anil Oza and Katherine MacPhail about what Collins and other science leaders had to say.
7%
That’s the percentage of U.S. adults who have been present during a mass shooting — in which four people or more are shot — according to a survey of 10,000 people published Friday in JAMA Network Open. For most (76%) of the people who have been through it, the shooting occurred in their local community. Younger people, men, and Black people were more likely than older folks, women, and white or Asian people respectively to be a witness to a mass shooting.
Last summer, former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared gun violence a public health crisis. At the time, he hoped the designation would “firmly take it out of the realm of politics and put it into the realm of public health,” as he told former STAT reporter Nalis Merelli. It’s unclear how President Trump’s pick for the position, Janette Nesheiwat, will or won’t address gun violence if confirmed for the role. The New York Times reported in December that Nesheiwat’s father died from an accidental gunshot wound when she was a child.
Researchers say journal publishers violate antitrust law
Four researchers are suing six of the world’s biggest publishers of academic journals, arguing that the system in which they operate is exploitative and overly expensive, and that it relies on illegal and anticompetitive practices.
The scientists allege that these publishers — Elsevier, John Wiley & Sons, Sage Publications, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, and Wolters Kluwer — collude not to pay researchers for peer-reviewing manuscripts, prevent them from submitting papers to more than one journal at a time, and block authors from publicly discussing or sharing work once they’ve submitted it to a journal. Read more from STAT’s Jonathan Wosen about the sweeping implications the case could have on the research community.
What we’re reading
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Social Security now requires Maine parents to visit an agency office to register newborns, Portland Press Herald
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Chaos at the VA: Inside the DOGE cuts disrupting Veterans Affairs, New York Times
- Tariffs will make it even more expensive for Americans to eat healthy, STAT
- The reality of navigating immigration enforcement and abortion bans as a pregnant migrant, The 19th
- HHS makes $25,000 buyout offer to most of its employees, AP