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Politico
27-05-2025
- Health
- Politico
The UN plan to make the world healthy again
WORLD VIEW The United Nations is working on a make-the-world-healthy agenda for 2030. How so: World leaders are meeting September 25 on the margins of the U.N. General Assembly in New York to discuss preventing and controlling noncommunicable diseases and promoting mental health and well-being. Participating leaders — names are still to be confirmed — are expected to adopt a political declaration that, while not legally binding, pressures governments to align behind the same goals. A first draft of the proposed goals demands that leaders commit to: — Reducing the number of tobacco users from the current 1.3 billion to 150 million by 2030 — Adding 150 million people to the 260 million currently receiving treatment for their high blood pressure — Ensuring 150 million more people have access to mental health care The draft also addresses obesity, which it says 'is largely driven by unhealthy food environments and lack of physical activity.' It notes that 'there has been no progress to stem the rate of overweight in children under 5 years of age in nearly 20 years; the number of children currently affected is 35 million.' Those lines echo similar concerns about growing obesity rates among American children from the Make America Healthy Again movement led by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy. How to solve obesity: The solutions proposed in the draft resolution might not be to many governments' liking, as they entail increasing taxes on tobacco, alcohol and sugary drinks. The draft also calls for implementing graphic health warnings on all tobacco packages across the world and restricting e-cigarettes and other similar products. To fight obesity, the draft calls for: — Eliminating trans-fatty acids, and reducing levels of saturated fat, sugar and sodium in processed food and beverages — Providing nutrition labeling on food and drinks — Ensuring public food procurement emphasizes healthy diets — Protecting children 'from the harmful impact of food marketing' — Promoting optimal breastfeeding practices What's next: Diplomats will continue negotiating the final resolution for the world leaders to agree to, which could result in scaling back the ambitions. WELCOME TO FUTURE PULSE This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. Most of the artificial intelligence companies that have achieved unicorn status this year — with estimated values of $1 billion or more — are making health care products, CB Insights reports. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Danny Nguyen at dnguyen@ Carmen Paun at cpaun@ Ruth Reader at rreader@ or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@ Want to share a tip securely? Message us on Signal: Dannyn516.70, CarmenP.82, RuthReader.02 or ErinSchumaker.01. CHECKUP Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s ringing endorsement of whole milk in his Make America Healthy Again report last week challenged a lot of conventional wisdom about the long-maligned and fatty drink. Kennedy's report said whole milk does the body good because it provides 'calcium, vitamin D and bioactive fatty acids, which support bone health, help regulate inflammation and may reduce the risk of type two diabetes.' Is that so? It's debatable. Walter Willett, a professor of epidemiology and nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, has made the case that whole milk's bad image is outdated, stemming from decades-old thinking about its high saturated fat content and links to high cholesterol and heart disease. He contends that the creamy beverage satiates drinkers, helping them resist sugary and high-carb snacks that lead to weight gain. He points to studies that show people who drink whole milk are less likely to put on weight. But even within Willett's own department, opinions differ. Dr. Frank Hu, a nutrition and epidemiology professor, says it's best to consume full-fat dairy products in moderation, given their link to heart disease. Why it matters: Lawmakers who represent dairy farmers are keen to reverse a law then-President Barack Obama signed in 2010 eliminating whole milk from the National School Lunch Program and to see whole milk endorsed in an upcoming rewrite of national dietary guidelines.
Politico
27-05-2025
- Health
- Politico
CDC drowning safety team no longer afloat
Presented by With help from Danny Nguyen Driving The Day SAFETY NET GONE — Memorial Day, for many, marks the start of the swimming season. This year, the federal team that tracks drowning incidents and issues public water safety alerts has been disbanded, POLITICO's Sophie Gardner reports. In April, President Donald Trump laid off the team at the CDC responsible for drowning prevention work. Why it matters: That team regularly publicized the latest statistics for U.S. drowning deaths each May to inform families of the risks and also worked with partners like the YMCA and the American Red Cross to enroll at-risk children in swimming lessons. That collaboration has been halted. The cuts come as drowning deaths rose during the pandemic, hitting 4,300 in 2023, the most recent data, compared with around 4,000 in 2019. They rose even more among the youngest children, ages 1 to 4, for whom drowning is the No. 1 cause of death — according to the team's previously published numbers. 'I can't tell you how many media calls we got after that report was released because I think it was a shocking number to people, and they wanted to know what's going on,' said Amy Hill, who works on Chicago's water safety task force, referring to a CDC study released last May. 'When the CDC issues a report like that, people pay attention.' Work halted: States will continue to report drownings through the CDC's National Vital Statistics System, but the data will no longer have a team to analyze it. Two CDC scientists, who spoke with POLITICO on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said the team had been close to publishing a handful of reports before the layoffs — including one on drowning deaths among people with autism. 'The way that this was done means that there [were] a lot of taxpayer dollars that were wasted here because there was work already in process,' a CDC official granted anonymity for fear of retribution told POLITICO about the layoffs. 'We could have done it in a way that did not undermine all of this critical work, especially for something like drowning, that literally nobody else is working on.' RFK Jr.'s view: At a Senate hearing on Trump's fiscal 2026 budget proposal Tuesday, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. broadly defended downsizing federal health agencies as necessary to stem what he described as bureaucratic bloat that occurred during the Biden administration and to restrain the federal deficit. But he wasn't specifically asked about the cuts to the drowning-prevention team. 'The safety and well-being of all Americans — especially our nation's children — is a top priority for HHS and Secretary Kennedy,' the HHS spokesperson told POLITICO in an email. 'The Department is strongly committed to preventing tragic and preventable deaths, including those caused by drowning.' The spokesperson did not respond to a follow-up question asking for details. WELCOME TO TUESDAY PULSE. We hope you had a relaxing Memorial Day weekend! I spent it watching the Indy 500 for the first time. Send your tips, scoops and feedback to ccirruzzo@ and khooper@ and follow along @ChelseaCirruzzo and @Kelhoops. In Congress JOHNSON'S SENATE PLEA — When the Senate returns the first week of June to consider the sweeping megabill passed through the House last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson has a plea for GOP senators: Don't make major changes, POLITICO's Gregory Svirnovskiy reports. 'I encourage them to do their work, of course, as we all anticipate,' Johnson told CNN's Jake Tapper on Sunday on 'State of the Union.' 'But to make as few modifications to this package as possible, because remembering that we've got to pass it one more time to ratify their changes in the House. And I have a very delicate balance here, very delicate equilibrium that we've reached over a long period of time. And it's best not to meddle with it too much.' Why? Jamming the megabill through the House the first time was a Herculean task for Johnson and his allies in leadership. It required a visit from President Donald Trump to the Capitol and careful negotiating by the speaker to bring the chamber's many coalitions aboard. Doing it a second time — with major changes from the Senate side — could prove impossible. What could change: Key senators are already looking to make modifications, with different factions holding that the bill goes too far in its approach to Medicaid and clean-energy tax credit cuts. Others, such as Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), say it doesn't move the ball far enough. Johnson wants to cut spending by roughly $6 trillion instead of the $1.5 trillion in the House bill. 'This is our only chance to reset that to a reasonable pre-pandemic level of spending,' Ron Johnson told Tapper, also on Sunday. 'And again, I think you can do it in the spending that we would eliminate, people wouldn't even notice. But you have to do the work, which takes time.' 'The problem is the math doesn't add up,' Paul told host Shannon Bream on 'Fox News Sunday.' 'They're going to explode the debt by the House says $4 trillion, the Senate's actually been talking about exploding the debt $5 trillion.' MURTHY ON SOCIAL MEDIA — As lawmakers work to push forward the Trump administration's megabill, former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy is calling on Congress to implement social media safeguards for children, POLITICO's Amanda Friedman reports. Why it matters: While the sweeping legislative package has implications for immigration, defense and health care, it gave limited attention to online safety or tech regulation. 'It's the equivalent of putting our kids in cars with no seat belts, with no airbags, and having them drive on roads with no speed limits and no traffic lights,' said Murthy, who served under former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, during an interview on NBC's 'Meet the Press' that aired Sunday. 'And that is just morally unacceptable. I think Congress has so far failed in its responsibility to protect our kids.' Efforts to establish rules for platforms popular among young people, like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat, have long stalled amid industry lobbying and political gridlock. For a solution, Murthy called on Congress to implement 'real safety standards' for social media platforms, including issuing warning labels so that 'parents and kids are aware of the risks.' Murthy also stressed the importance of increasing data-transparency requirements for platforms, comparing the measure to the historical precedent of auto safety laws. 'Researchers routinely say they can't get the full data about the impact of these platforms on our kids' health from the companies,' Murthy said. 'But just like we did for cars a few decades ago, we'll be putting safety standards that got us seat belts, airbags, crash testing, and those have reduced the number of deaths.' 'But it's not too late,' Murthy said, referring to Congress. 'They need to step up and act now.' Lobbying 3 MUSKETEERS TAKE ON CAPITOL HILL — Mars Incorporated, the company that manufactures M&Ms, Skittles, Snickers and other popular candies, has hired a lobbying firm prominent in Republican circles as the Trump administration weighs crushing regulations on the artificial foods industry, Danny reports. A general disclosure filing shows the group hired the Duberstein Group, a lobbying firm founded by Ken Duberstein, who served as chief of staff to former President Ronald Reagan. The hiring comes as the confectionary industry braces for a crushing blow from the Make America Healthy Again Commission, a brainchild of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., which will unveil a regulatory framework to reel in the food and pharma industries that the group accuses of poisoning children and causing a surge in chronic disease. It also comes days after the first MAHA commission report, expected to emphasize the dangers of products used and produced by those sectors, but which barely mentioned those industries. The agrochemical, artificial food and farming industries have emphasized to lawmakers and Kennedy over the past weeks that any regulation could seriously hurt their bottom line. And if the first report is any indication, those lobbying efforts are working. On the Mars ticket are David Schiappa, a former secretary of the Senate Republican minority; Katherine Winkler Keating, a former chief of staff to Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.); Benjamin Howard, the former deputy assistant of legal affairs to President Donald Trump; and Elizabeth Kelley; who was former President Barack Obama's special assistant on economic policy. WHAT WE'RE READING NBC News reports on how artificial intelligence can address medical errors. The Wall Street Journal reports on a study showing that fears about food spoiling could be keeping some people from healthy foods.
Politico
22-05-2025
- Health
- Politico
Organ-chips not ready to replace animal studies
Presented by EXAM ROOM One of the cutting-edge technologies the Food and Drug Administration wants to use to replace animal studies might not be ready for a solo performance. Organ-on-a-chip technology, which uses human cells on microfluidic chips to mimic the structure and function of organs in a laboratory setting, can't yet replace animal tests, according to a new Government Accountability Office report. Standing in the way: Challenges include cost, availability of materials, a time-intensive process and the need for highly trained staff to operate the technology. OOCs aren't standardized, which makes reproducibility difficult. The National Institute of Standards and Technology told the GAO that standards are needed, particularly for multi-organ chips, but the technology is evolving too rapidly to set them. The report also highlights a lack of agreed-upon benchmarks for OOCs and validation studies. However, OOCs could work alongside animal studies, particularly for exploring toxicity, the GAO said. It also found that OOCs could be used in lieu of animal studies for certain standardized tests, for example, to assess skin damage from a compound. Some recommendations: GAO called for policies that: — Increase access to diverse, high-quality human cells — Create standards around the technology — Encourage more research and validation studies — Provide regulatory guidance Notably, it said companies were confused about FDA guidance regarding OOCs. And as of the end of last year, the agency hadn't qualified an OOC for use in regulatory review. However, the FDA's Innovative Science and Technology Approaches for New Drugs pilot program accepted a letter of intent for an OOC that would eventually predict drug-induced liver injury. What's next: 'Body-on-a-chip' is coming. Instead of chips with single organs, the next generation of OOCs will link multiple organs, including intestines, livers and kidneys— to understand how they interact. WELCOME TO FUTURE PULSE This is where we explore the ideas and innovators shaping health care. Kids advocacy group Fairplay and the Electronic Privacy Information Center are asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether a new kid-focused release of Google's AI chatbot Gemini is violating children privacy laws. Google says the technology is available through parent-supervised accounts and parents are free to disable it. Share any thoughts, news, tips and feedback with Danny Nguyen at dnguyen@ Carmen Paun at cpaun@ Ruth Reader at rreader@ or Erin Schumaker at eschumaker@ Want to share a tip securely? Message us on Signal: Dannyn516.70, CarmenP.82, RuthReader.02 or ErinSchumaker.01. AROUND THE NATION States are increasingly interested in making Apple and Google responsible for protecting kids from online harms. Texas is poised to be the second state to require app stores, like Apple's App Store and Google's Google Play store, to verify their users' ages and — if they're minors — get parental consent to download apps. In March, Utah became the first state to sign an app store age-verification bill into law. The bill sailed through the Texas House with support from 80 percent of the state Legislature and passed in the Senate by voice vote last week. Now it's awaiting Governor Greg Abbott's signature. In practice, app stores must verify a user's age. If the user is a minor, the app store must obtain parental consent for each app download. The app stores would then relay this information to the app developer, because some apps provide different experiences based on age. However, certain apps like crisis hotlines and emergency services won't require parental consent. Pushback: Google isn't happy about the bill's advancement (Apple also opposes this legislation). In particular, the company says there's no commercially reasonable way to verify who a child's parent is. 'Will they need to show a birth certificate or custody document to demonstrate that they have the legal authority to make decisions on behalf of a child?' asked Kareem Ghanem, Google's Senior Director of Government Affairs & Public Policy. Google prefers a targeted approach: Send 'an age signal' with explicit parental consent only to developers whose apps pose risks to minors. But such picking and choosing could open this legislation up to legal scrutiny. Long-time concerns: Doctors, including former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy; parents; and even kids are frustrated with the state of online media. For years, growing evidence has suggested that social media apps wear on kids' mental health. But social media platforms enjoy protections from a decades-old law that prevents them from being sued their platforms' content. And states like California and Maryland that have tried to put guardrails on social media have been sued for blocking free speech. Legal challenges: Requiring app stores to verify ages isn't likely run into First Amendment issues. What's more, the policy rests on a fairly well-established legal foundation: contract law. For years, app stores have required minors to sign lengthy contracts — the ones most people don't read — before creating accounts, and legally, it can't do that. Minors can sign contracts but they aren't legally enforceable. App store age-verification laws, however, require sign-off from a legal guardian. Supporters hope app store accountability laws will provide a first-line defense, funneling more kids into parent-linked app store accounts. It could also render the 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which limits the amount of data that apps and websites can collect on children under 13, more enforceable. However, the law doesn't change social media or the risks associated with those platforms. What's next: As more states take up app-store age verification, federal lawmakers considering similar legislation are likely to feel more pressure to prioritize it.
Politico
24-02-2025
- Politics
- Politico
POLITICO Announces 2025 Class of POLITICO Fellows
POLITICO Press Team Brad Dayspring EVP, Global Communications & Brand, POLITICO bdayspring@ Melissa Cooke Director of Communications, POLITICO mcooke@ Dana Beckman Communications Specialist, POLITICO dbeckman@ Tweets by POLITICOPress POLITICO Announces 2025 Class of POLITICO Fellows Announcement from POLITICO's Editorial Director for Diversity and Culture John Yearwood, Senior Managing Editor Sudeep Reddy, and Deputy Editor-in-Chief Joe Schatz: Hi all, We're thrilled to announce that Danny Nguyen and Cassandra Dumay will be joining us as 2025 POLITICO Fellows. Both journalists have distinguished themselves in reporting in Washington and elsewhere. The POLITICO Fellows Program, among the most prestigious in the industry, trains young journalists in the fundamentals of covering politics, policy and power. The journalists rotate among various teams in the newsroom for one year and are then given the opportunity to apply for permanent positions with POLITICO if they successfully complete the program. Since the program's inception in 2020, fellows have had a major impact on POLITICO's work. Their stories have been critical in our coverage of the 2024 presidential election, war in Ukraine and the Covid pandemic, among so many others. The program is part of POLITICO's extensive commitment to train the next generation of journalists. In addition to fellows, POLITICO employs dozens of student interns each year and sponsors the POLITICO Journalism Institute, an intensive training program to advance diversity across the industry and support the next generation of journalists in covering politics and policy. 'The fellowship program is a great way to bring super-talented young people into our newsroom,' said John Yearwood, editorial director for diversity and culture. 'We couldn't be happier with the 2025 class. It includes impressive emerging journalists who are poised to make important contributions to our profession.' Meet our new fellows: Danny Nguyen most recently covered local and national politics and anchored a newsletter for The Baltimore Banner. He joined the Banner from The Washington Post, where he reported on social issues, transportation and major breaking news, including the Baltimore Bridge collapse and the Microsoft/Crowdstrike outage. He was also a freelance reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, where his reporting on California's plans to scale back broadband service installations in low-income areas prompted Gov. Gavin Newsom to restore funding to a pandemic-era internet expansion program. The San Francisco native graduated from Vanderbilt University with a biology degree in 2022. When he's not in the newsroom, you can usually find Danny weightlifting in the gym. He starts Feb. 4 on the Breaking News desk. Cassandra Dumay has reported on her home state of Massachusetts for the Boston Globe — where she is currently a fellow with the investigative Spotlight team — as well as The MetroWest Daily News and Boston's local NPR station, GBH. She is a senior at Boston University majoring in journalism with a minor in political science. She previously received fellowships from ProPublica's Emerging Reporters Program, the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting and the National Association of Black Journalists. She is a former president of Boston University's Society of Professional Journalists. Cassandra, who recently returned from a summer study-abroad trip in Spain, interned with POLITICO's transportation team last fall. She loves hot wings almost as much as she loves hot scoops. She'll join us after graduation in June. Please join us in congratulating them. John Sudeep Joe
