Public health

Public health

The sweeping proposals - the most significant moves this administration has taken so far to restrict the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgical interventions for transgender children - include cutting off federal Medicaid and Medicare funding from hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to children and prohibiting federal Medicaid dollars from being used to fund such procedures.

"a $100 million scheme to unlawfully provide easy online access to Adderall and other stimulants by targeting drug seekers, engaging in deceptive advertising, and putting profits above patient care."

There's blood everywhere, and the baby's dead,

The Ad Council, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and the Television Bureau of Advertising (TVB), today announced the launch of the 22 nd annual Project Roadblock. Each year, local broadcast TV stations across the country donate airspace to Buzzed Driving Prevention public service advertisements (PSAs) during the holiday season, reminding holiday travelers about the dangers of buzzed driving and encouraging them to plan ahead for a safe ride.

However, one overlooked impact of return-to-work policies is that they do not account for air quality issues in commercial buildings, The Way Commercial Cleaning notes. This trend, dubbed sick building syndrome, can be detrimental to employees' effectiveness once they get back into the swing of sharing office space. Once understood, it explains why indoor air quality services are increasingly in demand.

NHS England must prioritise improving wait times for adult gender dysphoria clinics, an independent 'Cass-style' review has said. The operational review, headed by Dr David Levy, urged the UK's public health service to create an action plan that would reduce wait times for a first appointment in its Adult Gender Identity Clinics (GICs). Patients are reportedly waiting over 15 years to access care according to the review, which said operational issues would likely exacerbate the problem if nothing is done.

Mrs Albino said: "We believe a series of systemic failures contributed to her death and we will not allow her to become just another case and a statistic." She added that her daughter's condition was worsened by anxiety. "As a family, we feel that nobody helped us and others actually worsened Emily's anxiety by not listening to our concerns," she added.

The UK's online gambling landscape changed sharply in September 2025. The new national rules capped online slot stakes at £5 per spin for adults and £2 for anyone under 25. Ministers framed the move as a fairness measure that simply puts online casinos on the same footing as land-based venues, where the same ceiling has existed for years. Operators now follow a rulebook that fixes the upper boundary of a single spin and leaves little room for interpretation.

For a festival with childbirth at its religious heart, it is perverse how much of our traditional Christmas spread isn't recommended for pregnant women. Pre-pregnancy, this was not something I'd clocked. I was the soft cheese supremo, canape queen at my happiest with a smoked trout blini in one hand and a champagne flute in the other. Then one day in October, two blue lines appeared on a test result and everything started to change: my body, my future and most pressingly my Christmas.

Kitchens, even very clean ones, smell like food, and this is a neon welcome sign to a rodent's nose. These creatures don't rely on their eyesight the way humans do. Smell is their dominant sense, and they use it to follow scent signals that mark a rat-safe route or a promising meal. A mouse has over 1,000 odor receptors (whereas people have a measly 350) finely tuned to trace the semiotics of a kitchen, like starches, fats, and other rodents' chemical signatures.

Last Tuesday afternoon, Dean Andrea Baccarelli at the Harvard School of Public Health sent out a brief message announcing that one of the country's most experienced and accomplished public health leaders, Dr Mary T Bassett, would step down as director of the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights. The email struck a polite, bureaucratic tone, thanking her for her service and offering an upbeat rationale for a new focus on children's health.

Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

An intense surge in flu cases driven by a newly dominant virus strain is sweeping across Europe, placing healthcare systems in several countries under severe pressure, the World Health Organization has said. The WHO said on Wednesday that at least 27 of the 38 countries in its European region were reporting high or very high influenza activity, with more than half of patients with flu-like symptoms testing positive in six countries including Ireland, Serbia, Slovenia and the UK.

At a hearing Wednesday morning, U.S. District Judge Maxine M. Chesney gave the government until 4 p.m. on Monday to resolve the issue or file an opposition, according to Tess Borden, a lawyer with the Prison Law Office, which brought the class action lawsuit, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice and Keker, Van Nest & Peters LLP. The judge set a hearing, if needed, for next Tuesday in San Francisco.

More babies are being born by caesarean section in England than delivered naturally - without assistance - for the first time. Latest NHS data for 2024-25 shows that 45% of births were by C-section, compared to 44% which were spontaneous, a term used to describe a natural vaginal birth. Another 11% needed extra support and interventions like forceps. Nearly half of the caesaereans - when the baby is delivered by surgeons cutting into the mother's abdomen and womb - were planned in advance.

Concord, NH - Attorney General John M. Formella and a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general are calling on Meta to better enforce its own policies about pharmaceutical and wellness ads on Instagram and Facebook and take additional measures to prevent AI-generated weight loss content in ads. These ads are likely to see an uptick during the holiday season and the new year, when conversations around weight loss and appearance tend to increase.

The more we dug, the more we realized there was a gap between the procedure's public perception as a routine, normal part of giving birth and what experts were saying. We set out to figure out why. We also wanted to better understand the complexity involved in a procedure that can be life-saving and is also performed around double the rate the World Health Organization says is "ideal" for maternal and infant health.

Toronto is seeing rapidly increasing flu activity particularly among children, with flu season coming early this year, Dr. Michelle Murti said in a statement Tuesday. It's being driven by influenza A, she said, which has affected children more severely. This early surge is leading to more pediatric cases requiring hospital care, underscoring the seriousness of the current season, she said, saying influenza A has also been spreading to adults and people in long-term care.

The US Food and Drug Administration sent warning letters to Target, Walmart, Kroger and Albertsons after some of the stores failed to remove recalled baby formula linked to a large infant botulism outbreak. The FDA said it communicated with the retailers about the recall repeatedly, even sending several emails requesting plans of action to comply with the recall, but none of the companies responded to the request.

Confirmation bias is when people only believe information that reinforces what they already believe. For example, vaccine opponents may only believe information about vaccines being unsafe, and will reject any contrary information or facts. Confirmation bias is one reason people find it hard to let go of their belief in misinformation. Misinformed people often trust virtual or online sources, such as social media or podcasts. However, misinformation is increasingly coming from state and federal government agencies.

I can't remember a time when the NHS was at such risk, he says. Labour has put in more money and staff, productivity and activity has risen a bit, waiting times down a bit, yet waiting lists stay stubbornly high. That's dangerous ammunition for Nigel Farage and the Conservatives, says Hulme, a narrative for people who want to kill the NHS.

Exasperated NHS bosses have urged Wes Streeting and the British Medical Association to agree to independent mediation to end industrial action by resident doctors, who will begin their latest strike on Wednesday. The health secretary and the doctors union have been told to embrace the idea in order to urgently break the deadlock in their increasingly bitter dispute that health service bosses say is making patients collateral damage.

In the age of streaming, television series no longer just entertain: they dictate conversations, shape esthetics, and sometimes even foreshadow headlines. Take Boots (Netflix, 2025), for example. The series follows two young men training at a U.S. Marine Corps recruit center in the 1990s. But what might seem like a nostalgic tale of discipline and military brotherhood becomes with almost imperceptible detail an X-ray of current dilemmas surrounding identity, body, and power.

Without fail, any corporation accused of conspiring against public health will be compared to Big Tobacco. When oil companies downplayed the threat of climate change, they were allegedly following in the footsteps of cigarette manufacturers. The NFL's strategy for disputing the link between football and concussions has similarly been likened to the tobacco industry's actions. The online-gambling industry has supposedly acted like Big Tobacco, as have the tech industry and the plastic industry.

Overall, about one-third of Americans in this age group reported experiencing significant emotional, physical and financial strain. The burden differs by gender: men reported greater financial pressure, while women were more likely to bear the emotional and physical toll of caregiving. The emotional and financial strain of caring for parents and children at the same time is realand growing, Kristen Sieffert, FoA president, said in a statement. Macroeconomic pressures such as inflation have placed increased pressure on sandwich caregivers during their peak earning years.