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There was so much news today that I didn’t have the space to write an article about hot tubs as breeding grounds for Legionnaires’ disease. If you’re interested, check out the CDC report.
Where is Kennedy’s “public calendar”?
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Wednesday that his “public calendar” is an example of a commitment to transparency and efforts to thwart adverse publicity. If this calendar exists, I would love to see it.
STAT has been requesting President Kennedy’s calendar from the Department of Health and Human Services for more than a year, including multiple requests for the president’s and Chief of Staff Stephanie Speer’s calendars.
Mr. Kennedy, who came into office promising “radical transparency,” oversaw a department that faced lawsuits over failures to release information, cut staff to process FOIA requests and angered lawmakers whose questions went unanswered. Kennedy even admitted that HHS has blacklisted certain journalists because leaders disagree with their work. Read more from STAT’s Chelsea Cirruzzo and Daniel Payne.
Speaking of promises that couldn’t be fulfilled…
During Kennedy’s 16 months as health secretary, he has tackled a variety of public health challenges and made numerous promises about how to make Americans healthier.
STAT’s Isabella Cueto and Emory Parker are tracking these plans, including President Kennedy’s progress on hospital price transparency, bringing new sunscreens to the United States, increasing nutrition education in medical training, providing healthier diets in hospitals, and repurposing approved drugs to treat a variety of conditions.
But of the 80 pledges Isa and Emory are tracking, about 24 have been kept or are in progress. The rest are abandoned, broken, never started, or their status is unclear based on public information. If you want a complete breakdown, check out the latest update to the RFK Junior Promise Tracker.
Chile provides new data on effectiveness of food warning labels
Chile’s regulations on food packaging, labeling and marketing have been described as “the world’s most ambitious attempt to reshape the country’s food culture and reduce childhood obesity rates”. A new analysis published in The Lancet provides encouraging data on the impact of the first wave of regulations introduced in 2016, which required packaged foods high in sugar, salt, calories and saturated fat to carry black octagonal warning labels.
Just 18 months after the label was introduced, girls aged 4 to 6 had a 2.9% lower risk of being classified as overweight or obese. The risk for boys was 2.4% lower. To put this in context, recent data shows that around a quarter of children in Chile are obese and more than 50% are overweight. The study examined national data on more than 300,000 children and was funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies. (STAT also receives funding from Bloomberg Philanthropies, which has no role in editorial decisions.)
“Even modest weight loss in children who are overweight or obese is likely to have meaningful long-term health benefits,” economist and study co-author Nieves Valdez said in a press release. The researchers also say they expect to see even stronger results after 2018 and 2019, when Chile enacted stricter requirements for warning labels. — Sarah Todd
Diabetes debacle
Regular readers of Morning Rounds may remember that security guards escorted diabetes experts from the American Diabetes Association meeting in New Orleans this past weekend. STAT’s Alex Hogan spoke to Liz Cooney about the altercation, its aftermath, and her experience at the meeting.
CDC confirms what STAT readers already know
New data from the CDC released Wednesday suggests that the prevalence of alcohol use during pregnancy has increased in recent years. According to national survey data, about 15% of pregnant women reported current drinking (drinking in the past 30 days) between 2021 and 2024. This rate was higher than the 13.5% of women who reported the same between 2018 and 2020.
Although drinking during pregnancy is usually thought of as a problem of the past, these numbers show that it continues to be a problem. A recent STAT report on alcohol problems in the United States examined changing attitudes toward drinking during pregnancy and how unchecked alcohol use among women may be contributing to widespread intellectual disability. An analysis of CDC data by STAT showed that alcohol use during pregnancy will decline slightly in 2024, but additional data is needed to know if that is a continuing trend.
The report’s authors say regular testing for alcohol consumption and mental health during pregnancy could be helpful. Similar possibilities include “in-store warning signs and alcohol sales taxes,” they wrote. Read my article for more information on the CDC report. — Isabella Cueto
How does socio-economic status affect brain development?
Analysis of the brain scans of nearly 12,000 children aged 9 and 10 reveals that the main environmental factor influencing brain structure and function is the children’s family’s socio-economic status, according to a new report published yesterday in the journal Science.
Household income, local poverty rates, and other measures of neighborhood-level economic activity accounted for about 16% of the variation in children’s brain function. Because building the brain (all the neural connections that form memories, store language, perceive the world, and control body movement) is a single, energy-intensive act of creation, scientists have long debated which aspects of early childhood most influence neural development.
Researchers suggest that socioeconomic status is primarily a proxy for sleep and stress. Therefore, if you want healthy children, try to feed them hay early and minimize stress. However, some experts caution against jumping to this conclusion. Read more about this interesting study by STAT’s Megan Molteni.
what we are reading
- Cracked coffins, funerals and the search for zero Ebola patients, Reuters
- Nonprofit buys experimental cancer drug to maintain patient access, STAT
- Possible hantavirus infection in San Quentin, urges testing and cleanup, San Francisco Chronicle
- The researcher you didn’t want to know, The New York Times
