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Federal officials have released a bleak assessment of the country’s progress in understanding and preventing stillbirths, calling the rate “unacceptably high” and issuing a series of recommendations to reduce it through research and prevention. The National Institutes of Health report, titled “Working to Address the Tragedy of Stillbirth,” mirrored findings of an investigation by ProPublica last year into the U.S. stillbirth crisis, in which more than 20,000 pregnancies every year are lost at 20 weeks or more and the expected baby is born dead. (Eldeib, 3/23)

A new study from researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system, suggests that men who regularly lift heavy objects at work have higher sperm counts. The study, is part of the Environment and Reproductive Health (EARTH) cohort, a clinical study that aims to explore how exposure to environmental chemicals and lifestyle choices affect reproductive health. (3/21)

Two days each week, a tiny room inside the Pueblo county jail transforms into a health clinic to screen, test and educate women of reproductive age for syphilis, with the hope that if and when they become pregnant, their baby is safe. Many women seated inside that room have never heard of the sexually transmitted disease — one that is preventable and easily treated with penicillin, but continues to rise among Colorado newborns after being passed on by their mothers. (Prentzel, 3/23)

After offering free H.I.V. testing at a drive-through event last year, staff members at Nashville CARES, a nonprofit sexual health clinic, made an alarming discovery: a cluster of positive tests from a single neighborhood. “There was one person who had unknowingly passed it to multiple partners, and we were able to intervene quickly before it became a full-blown outbreak,” said Lisa Binkley, who leads the clinic’s H.I.V. prevention team. (Sasani, 3/24)