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Good morning and happy Thursday. Later this morning, NIH director Jay Bhattacharya will testify on his agency’s budget before the Senate Appropriations Committee. We’ll have the news as it comes, but for now, let’s start with the below.
A surgeon general’s report without a surgeon general?
The Office of the Surgeon General released a report yesterday urging families, schools, and providers to reduce children’s screen time. It isn’t the first time the office has addressed these concerns: During the Biden administration, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for a warning label on social media and released an advisory about potential mental health risks for young people. The new report doesn’t reference the last administration’s warning. Read more from STAT’s Chelsea Cirruzzo and Daniel Payne.
You may be asking: If there isn’t a Senate-confirmed surgeon general, who issued the advisory? (We’re currently waiting to see if and when the third Trump administration nominee for the position will be confirmed.) On Tuesday, health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. elevated senior health official Stephanie Haridopolos to serve as an interim until the position is officially filled.
‘We’re not crazy monsters’
That was OpenEvidence chief technology officer Zachary Ziegler, speaking at the Breakthrough Summit West on Tuesday with STAT’s Katie Palmer. The company has made waves and money after building a free chatbot for doctors.
While the company originally targeted its tool for doctors, it’s now looking to integrate with large health systems. As OpenEvidence negotiates with these systems, “they don’t quite know what to expect, because we are this unusual entity that has gone to market in this very unusual way,” Ziegler said. “They’ll see, actually, that we are totally reasonable, normal human beings in some ways.” Read more.
$8 billion
That’s how much money in supplemental Medicaid funds that the federal government is sending to hospitals in Florida for care delivered last year. The payments were approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services through a mechanism called a state directed payment program. STAT’s Bob Herman and Tara Bannow have been tracking these supplemental Medicaid funds, which providers say help cover “shortfalls” from caring for Medicaid patients, since last year. Read more on the latest windfall and the changes ahead.
Defense Department needs to better monitor suicide prevention efforts, per report
Since 2011, suicide rates among active military service members have been gradually increasing. Over time, the Department of Defense has paid more attention to the issue, establishing an office for suicide prevention and a requirement for service members to complete suicide prevention training. But a new report from the Government Accountability Office found that more work needs to be done, particularly when it comes to understanding how many people within the department are actually completing those trainings.
The GAO had 17 recommendations that, in totality, encourage DOD to better monitor the completion of suicide prevention training across the branches of the military and to notify relevant leadership when they aren’t done. It’s important for the DOD to have an interactive process to regularly review suicide prevention plans, the report concluded, especially in light of the Trump administration’s reductions in civilian staff at the Suicide Prevention office and throughout the DOD.
If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. For TTY users: Use your preferred relay service or dial 711 then 988.
Doctors should know the health impacts of bullet fragments
Even outside the military, guns are everywhere in the U.S. And each year, about 115,000 people are shot. Of those who survive, many are left with bullet fragments in their body, as doctors often consider it a safer choice than removing them. But in the long term, those remnants can lead to chronic pain, mobility issues, and organ damage, emergency physician Adeiyewunmi Osinubi writes in a new First Opinion essay.
Patients are often completely unaware of the potential impact that retained bullet fragments can have. Alarmingly, many clinicians are, too. Read more from Osinubi about the health impacts of retained fragments and why it’s important for doctors to be able to talk about them.
What we’re reading
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White House resisted letting doctor with Ebola return to U.S., Washington Post
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Jasmine Clark is poised to be the first Black woman Ph.D. scientist in Congress, The 19th
- Kennedy fires two leaders on preventive services task force, STAT
- Ebola outbreak opens old wounds about ‘saving Africans,’ New York Times
- Scientists track cellular disruptions that lead to type 1 diabetes, STAT