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Good morning and happy Thursday. Later this morning, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharyya is scheduled to testify before the Senate Appropriations Committee about the agency’s budget. We’ll keep you posted with any news, but for now, let’s start below.
A Surgeon General’s report without a Surgeon General?
The Public Health Directorate yesterday published a report urging families, schools and healthcare providers to reduce children’s screen time. This is not the first time the department has addressed such concerns. During the Biden administration, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for warning labels on social media and issued recommendations regarding potential mental health risks for young people. The new report does not address the previous administration’s warnings. Read more from STAT’s Chelsea Cirruzzo and Daniel Payne.
You may be wondering, “If there is no Senate-confirmed Surgeon General, who made the recommendations?” (We are currently waiting to see if and when the Trump administration’s third nominee for the position will be confirmed.) On Tuesday, Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promoted senior health official Stephanie Haridopoulos to the interim role until the position is officially filled.
“We are not crazy monsters.”
That was Zachary Ziegler, chief technology officer at OpenEvidence, who spoke at Breakthrough Summit West on Tuesday with STAT’s Katie Palmer. The company built a free chatbot for doctors, which became a hot topic and generated revenue.
The company initially targeted its tools at physicians, but is now looking to integrate with larger health systems. When OpenEvidence negotiates with these systems, “they have no idea what to expect because we are an unusual company that was brought to market in a very unusual way,” Ziegler said. “They will understand that we are, in fact, perfectly rational and normal human beings in a way.” Read more.
8 billion dollars
That’s the amount of Supplemental Medicaid funds the federal government is sending to Florida hospitals for care provided last year. The payments were approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services through a mechanism called state-directed payment programs. Since last year, STAT’s Bob Herman and Tara Banau have been tracking these additional Medicaid funds, which providers say are helping them cover “shortfalls” in caring for Medicaid patients. Read more about the latest windfalls and upcoming changes.
Report says the Pentagon needs to better monitor suicide prevention efforts
Since 2011, suicide rates among active-duty military personnel have gradually increased. Over time, the Department of Defense began to pay more attention to the issue, establishing an Office for Suicide Prevention and requiring service members to complete suicide prevention training. But a new report from the Government Accountability Office finds that more needs to be done, especially when it comes to understanding how many people within departments actually complete these trainings.
GAO had 17 recommendations in total, encouraging the Department of Defense to better monitor the completion of suicide prevention training across military branches and to notify relevant leaders when it is not completed. The report concluded that it is important for the Department of Defense to have an interactive process to regularly review suicide prevention programs, especially in light of the Trump administration’s reductions in civilian personnel at the Office of Suicide Prevention and throughout the Department of Defense.
If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. For TTY users: Use your preferred relay service or dial 711 then 988.
Doctors should be aware of the health effects of bullet fragments
Even outside of the military, guns are everywhere in the United States, and approximately 115,000 people are shot and killed each year. This is because many people who survive have bullet fragments remaining in their bodies, which doctors often consider a safer option than removing bullet fragments. But in the long term, those remnants can cause chronic pain, movement disorders and organ damage, writes emergency physician Adeyewunmi Osinubi in a new first-opinion essay.
Patients are often completely unaware of the potential effects that residual bullet fragments can have. Surprisingly, so do many clinicians. Read Osinubi’s article to learn more about how retained debris affects your health and why it’s important for doctors to talk about debris.
what we are reading
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White House resists bringing Ebola doctor back to US, Washington Post
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Jasmine Clark is poised to become the first black woman to earn a Ph.D. 19th Congress of Scientists
- President Kennedy fires two leaders of STAT’s Preventive Services Task Force
- Ebola outbreak opens old wounds over ‘saving Africans’, New York Times
- Scientists track cell destruction that leads to type 1 diabetes (STAT)
