Mike Stobbe

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a news conference on the Autism report by the CDC at the Hubert Humphrey Building Auditorium in Washington, Wednesday, April 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Cuts have eliminated more than a dozen US government health-tracking programs

May 4, 2025 at 12:39 p.m.

More than a dozen data-gathering programs that track deaths and disease appear to have been eliminated in the tornado of layoffs and proposed budget cuts rolled out in the Trump...

FILE – A flu vaccine is displayed at a pharmacy in New York, on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (AP Photo/Mary Conlon, File)

CDC reports 216 child deaths this flu season, the most in 15 years

May 2, 2025 at 11:47 a.m.

More U.S. children have died this flu season than at any time since the swine flu pandemic 15 years ago, according to a federal report released Friday.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a press conference about Utah’s new fluoride ban, food additives and SNAP funds legislation, Monday, April 7, 2025, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Melissa Majchrzak)

Why water fluoridation, long considered a public health success story, is under scrutiny

April 8, 2025 at 2:12 p.m.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said he wants communities to stop fluoridating water, and he is setting the gears of government in motion to help make that...

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to appear in Salt Lake City with the EPA administrator and state lawmakers to talk about Utah’s new fluoride ban and food additives legislation, Monday, April 7, 2025, in Salt Lake City, Utah. (AP Photo/Melissa Majchrzak)

RFK Jr. says he plans to tell CDC to stop recommending fluoride in drinking water

April 7, 2025 at 6:06 p.m.

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday said he plans to tell the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention soon to stop recommending fluoridation in communities nationwide. Kennedy...

FILE – In this Sept. 11, 2001 photo, firefighters work beneath destroyed mullions, the vertical struts which once faced the outer walls of the World Trade Center towers, after a terrorist attack on the twin towers in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

Layoffs threaten US firefighter cancer registry, mine research and mask lab

April 5, 2025 at 4:21 p.m.

Government staffing cuts have gutted a small U.S. health agency that aims to protect workers — drawing rebukes from firefighters, coal miners, medical equipment manufacturers and a range of others.

This 2006 electron microscope image provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows Mycobacterium tuberculosis bacteria, which causes the disease tuberculosis. (Janice Carr/CDC via AP)

Tuberculosis cases in the US rose to their highest levels in more than a dozen years

March 21, 2025 at 4:37 p.m.

More than 10,300 cases were reported last year, an 8% increase from 2023 and the highest since 2011, according to preliminary data posted this month by the Centers for Disease...

FILE – Former Congressman Dr. David Weldon speaks in The Villages, Fla., on May 31, 2012. (AP Photo/Brendan Farrington, File)

President Donald Trump administration withdraws CDC director nomination just before Senate hearing

March 13, 2025 at 2:08 p.m.

The White House withdrew the nomination of former Florida congressman Dr. David Weldon to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention because he wasn’t assured of getting enough Republican...

FILE – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is shown Sunday, March 15, 2020, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/John Bazemore, File)

HHS to lose thousands of workers under Trump administration probationary job cuts

February 14, 2025 at 2:39 p.m.

Department of Health and Human Services officials expect most of the agency’s roughly 5,200 probationary employees to be fired Friday under the Trump administration’s move to get rid of nearly...

FILE – This colorized electron microscope image released by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases on March 26, 2024, shows avian influenza A H5N1 virus particles (yellow), grown in Madin-Darby Canine Kidney (MDCK) epithelial cells (blue). (CDC/NIAID via AP, File)

New strain of bird flu is detected in a Nevada dairy worker, CDC says

February 10, 2025 at 4:55 p.m.

A dairy worker in Nevada was infected with a new type of bird flu that’s different from the version that has been spreading in U.S. herds since last year, federal...

Flu season in the US is the most intense it’s been in at least 15 years

February 7, 2025 at 2:04 p.m.

The U.S. winter virus season is in full force, and by one measure is the most intense in 15 years.

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