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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has quietly folded its Climate and Health Program into a branch that studies asthma and expunged the word climate from the name of the newly consolidated office, the agency confirmed on Thursday. An agency spokeswoman, Kathryn Harben, said in a statement that the move was part of a broader reorganization within the agency’s environmental health division that pared eight programs down to four. (Friedman and Kaplan, 12/20)

A new report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights finds that funding levels for Native American tribes are woefully inadequate despite the federal government's responsibility to provide for education, public safety, health care and other services under treaties, laws and other acts. The report made public Thursday is a follow-up to a 2003 report that described the shortfalls as a quiet crisis. Funding has remained mostly flat since then, leaving tribes unable to tackle an epidemic of suicide, high dropout rates, violence against women and climate change, for example, the report said. (Fonseca, 12/20)