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Cyclosporiasis outbreaks in four states are likely epidemiologically linked, part of an unusually large wave of cases in at least 34 states, CDC officials said. While the agency still hasn't identified a specific culprit behind the likely foodborne illnesses, cases in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia are likely part of a single outbreak, said Gwen Biggerstaff, ScD, deputy director of CDC's Division of Foodborne, Waterborne, and Environmental Diseases. (Rudd, 7/14)

Nearly 7,000 people nationwide may have cyclosporiasis, a foodborne illness that can cause weeks of severe diarrhea, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. The bulk of the cases are in Michigan, which has confirmed 3,309 cases. In a health alert, the CDC reported that 1,645 people have been sickened by cyclosporiasis across the country, making it one of the largest outbreaks of foodborne illness in the U.S. in years. The CDC urged doctors to be alert for patients with common symptoms of the infection, including watery diarrhea, bloating and nausea. (Edwards, 7/14)

Yum Brands’ Taco Bell said on Tuesday it had removed limited items from some restaurants as a precaution but said U.S. health officials have not linked the widening outbreak of cyclosporiasis to the chain or any specific food product. “Public health officials have not confirmed a link to Taco Bell or any specific ingredient, supplier, restaurant or retailer,” Taco Bell said. The chain said it would continue to monitor the situation closely and follow the guidance of public health authorities. (7/14)

A Public Health Alerts report today details the characteristics of 49 hospitalized measles patients in the ongoing outbreak in Utah. The patients represent 8% of the total assessed, and 90% were not vaccinated. (Wappes, 7/14)

Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, has explained his month-long absence from Congress as the result of a fall at home, caused by complications from the polio infection he survived as a child. “Surviving childhood polio meant spending my entire life with mobility challenges,” said McConnell, 84, in a July 12 statement. “They haven’t exactly gotten easier to manage with age. And last month, I took a fall which landed me in the hospital.” (Szabo, 7/14)

Nigeria has recorded 221 deaths from Lassa fever since the beginning of the year, now surpassing the 190 fatalities recorded last year, officials from the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (NCDC) announced yesterday. (Soucheray, 7/14)

Dr. Erica Schwartz, Trump's latest nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is scheduled to appear before a Senate committee Wednesday morning, to answer questions about her vision and qualifications for the role. The confirmation hearing, with the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee, will be Schwartz's first public appearance since Trump nominated her for the role in mid-April. Schwartz is Trump's third nominee to lead the nation's beleaguered public health agency, which has not had a permanent director for most of Trump's second term in office. (Huang, 7/15)

The latest Senate debate over a Trump health appointment kicks off Wednesday with a less polarizing nominee than some of the president's previous picks — but that doesn't mean controversies around vaccines and public health are over. (Sullivan, 7/15)

The House voted Tuesday to end Americans’ practice of switching their clocks twice per year, delivering a win for President Donald Trump, who has called for permanent daylight saving time over the objections of medical groups and lawmakers who represent Midwestern states. The bill passed by a lopsided 308-117 vote but still needs to clear the Senate, where its prospects are uncertain, to take effect. ... The American Academy of Sleep Medicine and other medical groups have said that year-round daylight saving time does not align with humans’ natural circadian rhythms and that year-round standard time would be preferable. (Liss-Roy and Diamond, 7/14)

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Monday asked the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) to investigate whether Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. violated the Hatch Act last month when he spoke with two candidates running for congressional office. In a letter to Acting Special Counsel Jamieson Greer, Wyden requested that he “immediately open an investigation” into Kennedy’s contact with two Libertarian candidates in June and whether these interactions violated the Hatch Act. The Hatch Act of 1939 limits federal employees from participating in certain political activities. (Choi, 7/14)

Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) are calling on the nation’s largest Medicare Advantage insurers to provide internal records and detailed information on their use of artificial intelligence to block rehabilitative care. (Ross and Herman, 7/15)

Two high-ranking Democratic senators are questioning the credentials and financial conflicts of members of an advisory committee established by health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that aims to improve and modernize the health care system. (Cirruzzo, 7/14)

Physicians would see a small Medicare pay cut next year under a proposed rule the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued Tuesday. The conversion factor of the Physician Fee Schedule — the key multiplier that determines payment amounts for specific services — would decline 1.7% to $32.84 for most doctors and 1.2% to $33.17 for physicians participating in Medicare’s advanced alternative payment models. This partly reflects the expiration of a one-year reimbursement bump enacted in President Donald Trump’s tax law. (Young, 7/14)

UW Health has entered a definitive agreement to buy a Wisconsin medical center from Sanford Health’s Marshfield Clinic region. The acquisition of Marshfield Medical Center-Beaver Dam is slated to close by November, a Sanford spokesperson said. Financial details and agreement terms were not disclosed. (DeSilva, 7/14)

Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare estimates changes to the ACA environment will cost it from $1 billion to $1.2 billion in 2026, up significantly from an April estimate of $600 million to $900 million, according to July 14 preliminary financial results. The hit is partly offset by a Medicaid Supplemental Payment Programs reversal, which HCA expects to add $300 million to $500 million in revenue, versus a loss of $50 million to $250 million this year. (Scheetz, 7/14)

Healthcare payers, including the federal government, aren't investing enough in primary care, said experts during a conference sponsored by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) on Tuesday. Without that investment, there are "consequences in terms of [detecting] disease and initiating lifestyle change, and consequences in the chronic disease burden that we see in America," including obesity, said Abe Sutton, director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation. (Frieden, 7/14)

A yearly physical is the standard preventive measure for adults, but many Gen Z patients are forgoing regular doctor appointments. More than 1 in 4 young adults don’t have a primary care provider, according to a recent national survey by the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. (Galinato, 7/14)

Before she went into surgery, Elizabeth Wehrle knew that doctors wanted to transplant four new organs into her body. She didn’t know, at the time, that the operation at Northwestern Memorial Hospital was potentially the first of its kind in the country — a quadruple-organ transplant performed on a person who had already had a previous lung transplant. (Schencker, 7/14)

Fewer patients went to US emergency departments (EDs) because of infections with a dangerous bacterium called Clostridioides difficile, or C difficile, from 2014 to 2024, according to a study last week in the American Journal of Infection Control. C difficile infection (CDI), which causes severe, watery diarrhea and inflammation of the colon, can be deadly. Doctors diagnose almost half a million cases a year. Most infections occur while or after taking antibiotics. (Szabo, 7/14)

Leonard Abramson, a former pharmacist who built U.S. Healthcare, one of the first health maintenance organizations, and who used some of the nearly $1 billion he received from selling it to give generously to cancer research and other medical causes, died on July 4 at his home in Blue Bell, Pa. He was 93. His daughter Judith Abramson Felgoise confirmed the death.Mr. Abramson started U.S. Healthcare at the right time: two years after the passage of the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973, which encouraged the growth of H.M.O.s to fight spiraling medical costs. (Sandomir, 7/14)

Dr. Joseph F. Fraumeni Jr., who helped discover one of the first examples of a cancer linked to a human gene, paving the way for a field that has so far seen the discovery of more than 120 genes that predispose people to cancer, died on June 22 in McLean, Va. He was 93. His death, at a skilled nursing facility, was confirmed by Holly Fraumeni, his niece. (Gabriel, 7/9)

Prescription medicines purchased in the U.S. under a controversial government discount program amounted to $100 billion in 2025, a 22.8% increase from the previous year, according to the Health Resources and Services Administration, which oversees the program. (Silverman, 7/14)

The Federal Trade Commission settled a lawsuit against CVS Caremark, one of the largest pharmacy benefit managers in the U.S., over allegations that the company artificially inflated the price of insulin and impeded access to the lifesaving diabetes treatment. (Silverman, 7/14)

HHS has denied a report that the agency is planning to abandon the proposed rule to block Medicaid and Medicare funding for hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to pediatric patients. NPR reported July 13 the news agency had obtained an official document showing details of the reversal. (Gregerson, 7/14)

An analysis of a torrent of public comments submitted on a White House proposal to change the way federal contracts and grants are doled out shows a widespread rebuke of the potential change by scientists and others. (Oza and Parker, 7/15)

The Departments of Veterans Affairs and Health and Human Services signed an agreement Monday to increase coordination on research into psychedelic drugs for treating veterans’ mental health disorders. Under the new memorandum of understanding, VA and HHS plan to increase clinical trial participation, train therapists, nurses and doctors to administer psychedelic medications if they receive federal approval and collect data and evidence to support patients, physicians and federal regulators in considering such treatments. (Kime, 7/14)

A coalition of public health groups sued the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday, seeking to block a new policy that could allow a wave of new flavored e-cigarettes and nicotine pouches to enter the market without completing the required scientific review. The lawsuit asks for a judge to set aside a policy that was announced in May and finalized just days after executives of companies pushing for it dined with President Trump at his golf club in Florida. Two days before the lunch, Reynolds American, which sent top staff members to the meeting, donated $5 million to a super PAC backed by the president, campaign finance records show. (Jewett, 7/14)

In a recent town hall meeting, Karim Mikhail told Food and Drug Administration staff that he was normal. “I am with you on planet Earth,” he said in June. “I understand very well what everybody is going through.” Typically, such an acknowledgment would be unremarkable. But Mikhail is acting director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, where the previous leader, Vinay Prasad, was decidedly outside the norm. (Lawrence, 7/15)

The Trump administration has launched a national crackdown on how school districts handle accusations of sexual misconduct by teachers, following a KQED-ProPublica investigation into California’s teacher disciplinary system. (Jan and McDede, 7/14)

�������ýҕ�l Health News: Facing Funding Losses, States Call Out Big Businesses With Employees On Medicaid

As the Trump administration’s January deadline looms for states to enforce new Medicaid work requirements, some state lawmakers are turning the tables by pushing to publicly name the largest companies that have employees enrolled in the government program covering low-income and disabled people. California lawmakers seek to revive an expired law that would require the state to identify companies that employ 100 or more people and have employees enrolled in Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. (Orozco Rodriguez, 7/15)

New York City is managing a community cluster of Legionnaires’ disease cases on the Upper East Side that officials believe is tied to bacteria found in cooling towers. Towers on 76 buildings on the Upper East Side have tested positive for the bacteria, the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said Tuesday. (Christensen, 7/14)

Some of New York City’s emergency medical workers make just $18 an hour. Their boss, Zohran Mamdani, has staked his mayoralty on making New York City more affordable for all. (Shapiro, 7/15)

In 2025, 1 in 4 911 callers waited more than 15 seconds before a San Diego County Sheriff's Office dispatcher picked up the phone. (Futterman, 7/14)

Immigrant detainees say they pay $20 for tampons and nearly $19 for instant coffee while earning only $1 per day through a federal work program. (Davis, 7/13)

A group of 26 Meta employees has sued the company, claiming it used artificial intelligence systems to select people for layoffs, disproportionately targeting those on medical, parental or family leave. They are among the 8,000 employees, or about 10% of its workforce, Meta said it would lay off in May. The lawsuit filed late Monday in federal court in Oakland, California, claims the company used internal AI systems, keystroke and activity-monitoring data, AI token-usage dashboards and algorithmically assisted performance rankings, among other methods, to determine who would be laid off. (Ortutay and Olson, 7/15)

As of July 1, public high school students are required to receive electrocardiogram tests to participate in school-sanctioned sports. (Baldon, 7/14)

A Campbell County judge on Tuesday dismissed a case that challenged Virginia’s pending reproductive rights amendment. Those who challenged the amendment said they plan to appeal. (Malinak, 7/15)

When Areli Ramos arrived for her appointment at the women’s health clinic Tia in June 2022, she was showing signs of pregnancy. Her ankles were swollen, and she had missed several periods. At Tia Inc.’s Scottsdale, Arizona clinic, providers performed a pelvic exam and collected urine and blood samples. Ramos assumed she was being tested for pregnancy. (Yehiya and Pulmano, 7/14) 

Pennsylvania’s online casinos need new regulations that would transform how they are allowed to operate, according to a state report on options to address what some mental health experts are calling “an urgent and escalating public health challenge.” But at the heart of a new state report on gambling addiction is a choice that isn’t resolved: Should Pennsylvania address the problem quickly and risk denting the gambling industry’s revenue, or study it more carefully and issue targeted changes more slowly? (Morrison, 7/14)

An Idaho woman charged with killing her 18-month-old twins appeared in court Tuesday, where state prosecutors referred to evidence that they say demonstrates she suffocated the children. The case has drawn attention because the woman, Andrea Shaw, has publicly blamed vaccines for the twins’ deaths. (Bendix, 7/15)

Heavy smoke from several large wildfires blazing in Canada and Minnesota is expected to engulf large swaths of the Midwest and Northeast U.S. this week, exposing millions of people to dangerous air pollution. Minnesota officials issued an air quality alert from Tuesday through Friday for areas including the Twin Cities metro area, Alexandria and Two Harbors, with very heavy smoke expected across the state’s northeastern corner as large wildfires spread. Air quality levels in Two Harbors, the Tribal Nation of Grand Portage and other regions in northeast Minnesota were expected to reach hazardous levels, making it unsafe for everyone. (Pineda and Ganun, 7/15)

A blood test may predict if apparently healthy older adults are likely to develop Alzheimer’s symptoms in the next five or 10 years, researchers reported Wednesday. That information could be reassuring or terrifying, but for now it’s a potential tool to speed drug development by helping to identify and enroll high-risk people into studies of possible Alzheimer’s treatments or preventive strategies. Already large clinical trials are testing if certain drugs could prevent or at least delay the disease — and if any of those pan out, doctors will need an easy way to tell who should try them. (Neergaard, 7/15)

Chesley B. Sullenberger III, the pilot known as Sully who guided a passenger jet to a water landing in 2009 in what became known as the “Miracle on the Hudson” after he saved 155 lives, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, he said in a statement on Tuesday. The diagnosis is “early stage,” he said, adding: “I am in the beginning of this long journey.” (Cerro, 7/14)

A new startup is making a bold move in the world of obesity drug development: It’s not working with the GLP-1 target that has taken the world by storm. (DeAngelis, 7/15)

Alcohol kills more than 178,000 Americans each year. It doesn’t have to. Drinking’s deadly toll in the U.S. is the result of decades of policy decisions, industry influence, and cultural inertia, as STAT shows in its investigative series, The Deadliest Drug. The U.S. has not made a concerted effort to reduce heavy drinking since Prohibition ended nearly a century ago. (Cueto and Facher, 7/14)

Pitching injuries have soared over the last decade in parallel with a rise in average velocity, which seems intuitive: The harder you throw, the more likely you are to get hurt. The same seems true for swinging: According to The Athletic, the league’s hardest swingers have missed more than twice as many days because of injury since 2023 as players who swing 10 miles per hour slower. Within baseball, the rise in injuries is often described in bleak terms like “epidemic” and “crisis,” but the same conversation is happening across sports. (Gordon, 7/13)

The space between stars just got a little sweeter. Astronomers have detected a type of sugar in space that’s also found in raspberries and self-tanners. The sugar, called erythrulose, lurks in what’s called the interstellar medium: thin clouds of gas and dust littered between stars. Sugar does more than sweeten tea and powder doughnuts. Different varieties fuel our cells and even make up DNA. Scientists are itching to know how sugars form because they’re a key ingredient for life as we know it. (Ramakrishnan, 7/13)

In a statement, [Republican Sen. Mitch] McConnell attributed the lack of information as to his whereabouts to his reticence, as an older American, to share health information. “Folks of my generation often hesitate to share the vulnerability that comes with growing older,” he said. “Even in the public eye, I feel that same instinct — I can’t help it.” Well, with all due respect to McConnell, he should help it. (7/14)

This week, public health detectives in Michigan got their first big lead in the cyclosporiasis outbreak that has sickened thousands of people in the state amid a broader national surge. Initial evidence suggests contaminated lettuce or salad greens could be driving infections — though authorities caution that other food sources can’t be ruled out. (Lisa Jarvis, 7/15)

As of Tuesday, a parasite called cyclospora has sickened nearly 7,000 people in 34 states so far this summer. On Monday, Michigan health officials announced their first potential source: lettuce and salad greens. Their advice was sound: Buy whole heads, discard the outer leaves, wash what’s left. But it landed after vinegar rinses and peeling rituals had circulated online for weeks. (Katrine Wallace, 7/15)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued a report about a sneaky and bizarre illness called alpha-gal syndrome. The condition, which is linked to tick bites, manifests as an allergy to red meat. Even more alarming: The agency estimates that almost one in four residents in some states may have already been exposed to it. (Leana S. Wen, 7/14)

Every state has a Medicaid Fraud Control Unit that is responsible for investigating and prosecuting health care providers who bilk the system. Many of these offices have been neither aggressive about nor effective at policing the spending of federal money. (7/14)