Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT’s free newsletter Morning Rounds. Sign up here.
Good morning. The season finale of the “First Opinion Podcast” airs today. Sarah Mupo, STAT’s director of editorial operations and lead gal in charge of the style guide, joined Torie Bosch to discuss the decision to keep “health care” two words. Take a listen.
U.S. infant mortality drops in 2025
Infant mortality dropped to a new all-time low last year, according to preliminary CDC data. It sounds small: There were 5.6 infant deaths per 1,000 in 2022 and 2023, 5.5 in 2024, and slightly fewer than 5.4 in 2025. Still, experts say the results are statistically meaningful, translating to hundreds of fewer annual deaths. Read more from the AP.
Trump administration will bring special ed to HHS
As part of the Trump administration’s continued efforts to close the Department of Education, the oversight of special education will now be the purview of HHS, officials announced yesterday.
Project 2025, a policy blueprint for the administration created by the Heritage Foundation, called for the elimination of the Education Department and for HHS to take over responsibilities for administering grants related to disability education.
People with disabilities have fearfully anticipated this decision, as it hands stewardship of disability education over to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has called autism an “epidemic” and historically purported a false link between the condition and vaccines.
FDA approves another OTC nasal naloxone
The FDA yesterday approved Rextovy, a 4-milligram naloxone hydrochloride nasal spray for emergency overdose situations. The move, which the agency touted as part of the president’s Great American Recovery Initiative, comes about three years after the FDA’s first approval of a nasal naloxone over-the-counter.
Adding more over-the-counter options “expands access and market availability, encourages competition that may reduce cost, and offers alternative sourcing options,” an FDA press release stated. But as STAT’s Lev Facher reported back in 2023, over-the-counter status doesn’t automatically ease access. Research shows that in the first year of such availability, over-the-counter sales were limited.
‘I have never been more concerned about those rates of congenital syphilis.’
That’s infectious disease physician and former public health official Jeffrey Klausner, who wrote about his concerns in a new First Opinion essay. He walks through how we got here, beginning with the Great Recession and the defunding of local public health programs. He also recommends a path forward, increasing efforts on already tried-and-true methods.
Read more from Klausner. And if you missed it, revisit Eric Boodman’s story from Monday, which serves as a case study of how even emergency measures to protect babies from congenital syphilis can still fail.
Does alcohol cause pancreatic cancer?
The more alcohol you drink, the higher your risk for pancreatic cancer, according to a review of 37 cohort studies published yesterday in the International Journal of Alcohol and Drug Research. The turning point for significantly increased risk arrives once a person drinks more than 24 grams of alcohol per day — less than two drinks by U.S. standards.
“There has been a growing body of evidence pointing to alcohol consumption as a cause of pancreatic cancer, and this analysis is a significant contribution to that evidence,” Tim Naimi, one of the study authors, said in a press release. (Catch up on STAT’s alcohol series, The Deadliest Drug, here.)
What we’re reading
-
More sanitation workers are getting pricked by used needles, Curbed
-
Dutch children are unusually happy and healthy. Is it because of this walking ritual? Guardian
- A prominent VC explains why she’s against U.S. restrictions on investment in China’s drug industry, STAT
- Children’s Hospital doctors refuse to provide gender-affirming care to trans youth, fearing criminal charges, Colorado Sun
- Opinion: The quiet joy of being an oncologist, STAT