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The United States has now recorded more cases of measles in 2026 than in any other year since the virus was declared eliminated in 2000, a grim sign that the country may be headed toward a new era in which the disease regularly sickens thousands every year. On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that there have been 2,318 confirmed cases of measles so far this year. The case count toppled the record set last year, when measles infected more than 2,200 Americans and killed two unvaccinated children. More measles cases have been reported in the United States in the last two years than in all the years from 2000 through 2024 combined. (Rosenbluth, 7/24)

Florida’s top health official called the measles vaccine “effective” Friday, but stopped short of imploring people to get inoculated against the disease. Dr. Joseph Ladapo was in Orlando Friday for an event focused on mental health and kids. (Valente, 7/24)

This spring, two children attended a Portland-area school while infected with measles. Both were exposed at home and were showing symptoms. The kids were contacts of a known measles case that public health officials were monitoring. Adults in the household were told to keep the children home from school if they developed symptoms. But, according to Multnomah County Health Officer Dr. Richard Bruno, that didn’t happen, and the children were sent to school without public health’s knowledge. (Templeton, 7/22)

As the cyclospora outbreak linked to iceberg lettuce spread to nine states, Americans have dubbed the health concern "lettuce-gate" on social media, and they aren't convinced the situation is under control. (Bauman, 7/25)

Taylor Farms released a new statement Friday amid an investigation into the source of a cyclosporiasis outbreak across the U.S. The company, which remains at the center of U.S. health officials' investigation, said it has taken added precautions despite no positive test results involving its product so far. "According to the FDA, there are no confirmed positive sample results for product testing for Cyclospora as of July 19, 2026," Taylor Farms said in its statement. "We are confident in our food and food safety systems and will continue to be transparent as more information becomes available." (Dvorak, 7/24)

Former Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Deputy Commissioner Frank Yiannas, who served under both President Trump and former President Biden, criticized the federal government’s handling of a Cyclospora outbreak that has impacted thousands of Americans. (Davis, 7/24)

As cases of explosive diarrhea continue to rise across the US this summer, health officials are grappling with a longstanding question about the tiny parasite that’s behind all this torment: Just how the heck is poop getting into our food? (Goodman, 7/25)

The U.S. will initiate a “phased reopening” next month of the country’s southern cattle ports, which were closed in May following the detection of a New World Screwworm (NWS) outbreak, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced on Friday. (Davis, 7/25)

The Florida Health Department has reported the state’s first death this year from Vibrio vulnificus, commonly known as “flesh-eating bacteria.” The death was reported in June and involved a Palm Beach County resident who was 80 to 84 years old, according to the agency’s website. It is not known when the death occurred. (Mayer, 7/24)

Reported cases of leprosy in Florida have been rising over the past several years. This year, the state saw 17 cases as of July 18. The total from last year was 36, compared to 20 in 2024, 23 in 2023 and eight in 2022. A local species of armadillo, which carries the bacteria that causes leprosy, may be behind most cases, scientists say. (Riva, 7/27)

The number of people infected with Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has risen to 3,200, according to government data, including at least 1,405 deaths. The data was released on Sunday as medics struggle to contain the DRC’s 17th Ebola outbreak, with infections surging by about 1,000 in just 10 days. (7/27)

Health workers at an Ebola treatment center in eastern Congo went on strike on Saturday, demanding their pay. The walkout disrupted care for patients in the epicenter of the country’s rapidly growing outbreak. (Ngorora and Bagalwa, 7/25)

A Food and Drug Administration advisory committee on Friday recommended allowing two more unproven peptides to be compounded, capping a two-day meeting that raised questions about whether the agency was weakening the guardrails designed to keep untested drugs from reaching patients. (Lovelace Jr., 7/24)

When students return to McGovern Medical School at UT Health Houston this year, they will get to participate in hands-on nutrition experiences, including cooking demonstrations in the teaching kitchen, tours of the campus “holistic garden,” and the opportunity to take a culinary-medicine-focused elective. (Chan, 7/27)

As screens compete for families' attention, children's development is paying the price, top federal health officials warn. Early and excessive screen time can trigger severe neurocognitive delays in young children, impacting attention spans, memory and language skills, according to Dr. Stephanie Haridopolos, interim surgeon general and principal deputy assistant secretary of health. (Quill, 7/26)

The Trump administration’s deadly military strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats have not reduced the amount of cocaine entering the United States, but they’re prompting criminal organizations to develop new strategies and tactics and undermining traditional investigative methods, according to a previously unreported assessment by the Drug Enforcement Administration, a closed-door congressional briefing and interviews with current and former U.S. and foreign officials. (Horton, McCoy, Schmidt and Moriarty, 7/27)

Active-duty U.S. military personnel and veterans suffering from traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and other related ailments could benefit from new federal research programs after the House authorized the creation of the so-called Blast Overpressure Task Force in its annual defense policy bill. ... If approved, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will appoint health experts to the task force who are "involved in research regarding the mitigation and treatment of blast overpressure or blast exposure." (Plummer, 7/24)

Joe Biden’s world has grown smaller. Eighteen months after leaving the White House, the 83-year-old former president moves within a narrowed circle of relatives, old friends and longtime aides as he undergoes treatment for metastatic cancer. The treatment appears to be working, according to five former aides and others close to Biden, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss his health and private life. But the disease — and the toll of treating it — has left him visibly frail. (Wootson Jr., 7/26)

Food-is-medicine programs are gaining more support from insurers, hospitals, states and the Trump administration but the efforts aren’t expected to offset dramatic cuts to federal food assistance. (DeSilva, 7/24)

HCA Healthcare on Friday affirmed its earlier warnings about Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchange subsidies fallout, telling analysts that patients who dropped off marketplace plan coverage due to increased premiums have "migrated almost one for one" to uninsurance. (Gleeson, 7/24)

Uninsured patients, largely those who dropped Affordable Care Act plans, are hitting for-profit hospital operator Community Health Systems’ bottom line harder than anticipated. (Halleman, 7/24)

An Elyria woman accused of carrying out $1,524 in Medicaid fraud. A Cleveland home health aide charged in connection with a $2,411 fraud. A Pennsylvania woman accused of submitting $3,727 in false timecard entries to defraud Medicaid. Federal and state prosecutors trumpeted those small cases and dozens of others across the country in recent weeks as part of a blitz of press conferences, news releases and social media posts spotlighting healthcare fraud prosecutions. (Ferrise, 7/26)

Congress included an exemption in last year’s federal Medicaid work requirement law for people who are “medically frail” — a category that encompasses people with serious or complex medical conditions like cancer, Parkinson’s disease, cystic fibrosis and other illnesses that can make it difficult to maintain employment. The provision was intended to ensure that some of the nation’s sickest Medicaid beneficiaries would not lose their health coverage because they could not meet an 80-hour monthly work requirement. (Baxley, 7/27)

Figuring out who’s offering the best deal on heart surgeries or routine physicals isn’t the most pressing issue for everyday Americans. That hasn’t stopped lawmakers on Capitol Hill from trying to turn that kind of price transparency into their marquee bipartisan health care goal this year. (Levien, 7/26)

A battle between pharmaceutical giants and hospitals is escalating, as two federal agencies consider sweeping changes to a program that has ballooned to $100 billion in discounted drug purchases. Hospital industry officials call one Trump administration move “shocking,” while the drug industry calls it just a start, saying that a bolder overhaul is needed. The discount program, known as 340B, was created in 1992 to support safety-net providers, such as hospitals and clinics that treat many low-income people, by forcing drugmakers to cut the prices of medicines that these providers buy. (Adams, 7/24)

Hundreds of millions of people a week turn to ChatGPT for health advice, and now the platform has a dedicated space for those users. This week, OpenAI rolled out Health in ChatGPT, where users can upload medical records such as lab results and medications, and connect Apple Health to allow the platform access to health and fitness data. (Fichten, 7/25)

���ϳԹ��� News: Trump Administration Demands Hospitals Share Emergency Room Records 

A tiny federal agency tasked with protecting the public from injuries caused by lawn mowers and coffeemakers is demanding that some of the nation’s biggest health systems turn over detailed, personally identifiable medical records of all patients who seek help at their emergency rooms. (Seitz, Rosenfeld and Tahir, 7/27)

State officials have suspended a Chicago plastic surgeon’s license, temporarily barring him from practicing medicine in Illinois, following a Tribune investigation finding the state had not disciplined him despite eight patient deaths. (Gutowski and Pratt, 7/24)

Surgery Partners plans to sell its ownership interest in two Idaho hospitals to Intermountain Health. The proposed transaction, which values the facilities at an estimated $1.15 billion, would include Surgery Partners’ Idaho Falls Community Hospital and Mountain View Hospital, also in Idaho Falls, along with affiliated clinics. (DeSilva, 7/24)

The biggest names in robotic surgery are showing off their newest devices and technologies this week as they compete to shape the future of procedures. A surgical robot with integrated operating table-mounted arms, telesurgery capabilities and artificial intelligence tools for surgical guidance and scenario prediction are among the innovations on display at the Society of Robotic Surgery’s annual meeting in Hollywood, Florida. (Dubinsky, 7/24)

Across the country, states are grappling with how to allocate their portion of funds from the Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) created in 2025. But whether those federal dollars will help keep rural hospitals open is still up for debate. (Carey, 7/26)

���ϳԹ��� News: Tracking State Rural Health Transformation Plans

���ϳԹ��� News is working to collect and post approved plans as more states respond to emails and public records requests for their documents. (7/27)

Anti-abortion activists are launching the next phase of their years-long effort to use environmental protection laws to cut off access to the abortion drug mifepristone, which they see as the main impediment to eliminating abortions after the fall of Roe v. Wade. (Ollstein and Wittenberg, 7/26)

The FDA approved a combination tablet of 325-mg acetaminophen and 110-mg naproxen sodium (Tylenol with Naproxen) for over-the-counter (OTC) pain relief, the agency announced Friday. The opioid-free combination tablet is indicated for the temporary relief of minor aches and pains from headaches, backaches, muscular aches, toothaches, menstrual cramps, and minor arthritis pain in adults and children ages 12 and older. (George, 7/24)

Amgen has submitted a third-party review of avacopan's (Tavneos) pivotal trial data and other analyses to the FDA in a bid to keep the embattled drug for severe anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic autoantibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitis on the market. (Ingram, 7/24)

The FDA approved the first formulation of bevacizumab specifically for the treatment of neovascular (wet) age-related macular degeneration (nAMD), Outlook Therapeutics announced on Friday. (Bankhead, 7/24)

Starting a GLP-1 receptor agonist for type 2 diabetes was associated with a lower risk of fragility fractures in adults 50 and older, including hip and vertebral fractures, according to a large target trial emulation study. (Monaco, 7/25)

School used to be pretty easy for Kate Jarvis when she was a little girl, back in the 1980s. She was a straight-A student, creative, and so organized that she'd even prep her toothbrush with toothpaste each night before school. She says her mother used to call her "bright-eyed and bushy tailed." Then puberty hit, and everything started to fall apart. She found it harder to focus in school, and her grades slipped. "It really hit my self-esteem badly. I felt pretty awful about myself," she says. (Godoy, 7/26)

If you've never before heard of the national vaccine court, you're hardly alone. As we first reported in October, it sits inconspicuously, a few hundred yards from the White House; and stands as a model of effective public policy, balancing the societal good of widespread vaccination with rare individual harm. Founded in the 1980s, the court has, with little fanfare, paid out billions of dollars to Americans who have claimed injury after getting a vaccine. Today, with vaccine skepticism rising and given voice in the highest ranks of government, we wondered: can this singular court block out the noise, withstand the political winds, and stay true to its mission? (Wertheim, 7/26)

One immunization may protect newborns against two serious illnesses, according to a new study from France. An injection called nirsevimab, which dramatically reduces a baby’s risk of being hospitalized with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), also appears to reduce the risk of a life-threatening bacterial infection called invasive pneumococcal disease. (Szabo, 7/24)

Most Americans are uncertain about which vaccines are recommended during pregnancy, according to nationally representative survey findings released yesterday by the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) at the University of Pennsylvania. (Bergeson, 7/24)

Martha Irene Van Egmond was working in her garden in Bolton, Mississippi, when she stumbled and couldn’t get up. The 83-year-old spent hours lying on the ground amid temperatures over 90 degrees, the county coroner said, eventually succumbing to the oppressive heat. (Kaplan, 7/26)

Three people were killed and four others wounded on Sunday in a shooting at a food festival in Seattle, the authorities said. The shooting occurred at Seattle Center, which was hosting the Bite of Seattle food festival and is also home to the Space Needle, the Seattle Police Department said. (Zhuang and Desai, 7/26)

Thirteen children were sickened on Thursday at a Y.M.C.A. summer camp in East Orange, N.J., after eating edibles that looked like candy, according to the Y.M.C.A. and two parents of the children. (MacDonald, 7/25)

Nineteen people were taken to hospitals after experiencing similar but minor symptoms at Capital Guardian Youth Challenge Academy, prompting a mass-casualty response. Fire crews ruled out carbon monoxide and now suspect food. (Curtis, 7/26)

Annelise Camp was found unconscious in a swimming pool in Texas on Memorial Day. She was only 2 years old, and it wasn’t clear how long she had been underwater. Paramedics performed CPR to try to revive her. And finally, a faint heartbeat returned, but not enough to stimulate a pulse in her wrist. She was put on a ventilator at a Houston-area hospital, and doctors overseeing her care thought she was brain-dead. (Salhotra, 7/26)

Vicky Pan’s greatest fear came true last summer when she found a lump in her right breast that turned out to be an aggressive and advanced form of breast cancer. Pan, then 45, was healthy, had no family history of breast cancer, and had just gotten an all-clear on her annual mammogram earlier that year. “I was devastated,” said Pan, who lives in Moraga with her husband and two sons, ages 9 and 11. “It was a combination of fear and, ‘Oh gosh, what are my kids going to do? They’re so young.’” (Ho, 7/26)

���ϳԹ��� News: Journalists Assess Risks Of Tick Bites, Wildfire Smoke, Rising Health Costs 

���ϳԹ��� News senior correspondent Julie Appleby discussed the affordability of Affordable Care Act health insurance plans on Connecticut Public’s The Wheelhouse on July 22. Céline Gounder, ���ϳԹ��� News’ editor-at-large for public health, discussed tick bites on CBS’ CBS Mornings on July 20. She also discussed wildfire smoke and severe heat on CBS’ The Daily Report on July 16. ���ϳԹ��� News senior correspondent Renuka Rayasam discussed the effects of soaring health costs in Georgia on WUGA’s The Georgia Health Report on July 17. (7/25)

In the dimmed light of a hospital room in Nevada, the placenta — blue and shining — has just delivered. I coaxed it gently, spinning the warm, bloody organ and twisting the trailing membranes into a compact coil, leaving nothing behind. Even a small fragment of placenta or membrane can prevent the uterus from contracting properly, failing to squeeze shut the great vessels that have spent 40 weeks surging with blood to feed a growing baby. If those vessels do not abruptly close, blood continues pumping into the empty uterus and a hemorrhage begins. (Mara Evans, 7/27)

Celebrating losing a few pounds because you got sick? As cyclospora cases spread throughout the United States, more people are making jokes about the “benefits” of the intestinal parasite. The toilet humor took a disturbing turn when some people on social media suggested they wanted to contract this infection for its potential weight-loss effects. (Oona Hanson, 7/25)

I spent nearly a decade leading FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. That role convinced me that food safety and nutrition are interdependent in so many ways, and if we want to make our population healthier, we need to support both. (Susan Mayne, 7/24)

Since 2010, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has expanded health insurance to millions, protecting people with pre-existing conditions and strengthening America's healthcare safety net. But one of its lesser-known provisions has yielded unintended consequences. The ACA restricts the creation and expansion of physician-owned hospitals, a policy that stifles innovation, limits patient access to specialty care, and has coincided with growing market power among large hospital systems. (Willie Underwood III, MD, MSc, MPH, 7/26)

When we were children, it wasn’t unusual to hear about a kid wiping out on a bike, skateboard, or roller skates and coming home with scrapes, bruises, and occasionally broken bones that needed to be fixed. While painful, those injuries generally matched the speed and physics of childhood play and rarely led to permanent injuries. (J. Todd R. Lawrence and Madison A. Kesler, 7/27)