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EVERYTHING
Vaccine Skeptic Dropped from CDC Nomination
What: The Trump nominee to lead the CDC, Dave Weldon, dropped out right before his nomination hearing was set to begin today. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told reporters that she let the White House know that she had problems with Weldon’s vaccine skepticism. Without her vote, he wouldn’t make it out of committee consideration.
Key line: “Weldon, 71, is an Army veteran and internal medicine doctor whose main claim to fame was representing a central Florida district in Congress from 1995 to 2009. He was a leader of a Congressional push for research into autism’s causes, which began around 2000. But Weldon rejected studies that found no causal link between childhood vaccines and autism, and accused the CDC of short-circuiting research that might show otherwise.”
Source: AP
PREGNANCY + POSTPARTUM
App Intervention Tied to Lower PPD Rates
What: A randomized control trial of over 100 pregnant women who were not depressed found those assigned to get virtual education and the ability to ask follow-up questions via What’s App afterwards were less likely to experience postpartum depression.
Key line: “The prevalence of postpartum depression, as measured by the EPDS and PHQ-9, was 7.4% and 3.7% in the intervention group, compared to 46.3% and 27.8% in the control group. These differences were statistically significant between the two groups.”
Source: BMC Psychology
ABORTION ACCESS
The Larger Story to Come on Infant Deaths After Abortion Bans
What: Johns Hopkins interviews Profs. Alison Gemmill and Suzanne Bell, the researchers who found that infant deaths increased after Texas banned abortion. The conversation digs into the nuance of the study’s findings, and what the scientists are looking at next: maternal mortality and severe complications of pregnancy.
Key line: “One thing I want to highlight: With our infant mortality findings, we found an increase in the infant mortality rate due to congenital anomalies. But what struck me was that we also found an increase in deaths due to noncongenital anomalies, caused by things like maternal complications, but also potentially infant accidents and infant suffocation. We were a bit restricted in the way that we could analyze those other causes of death, because it’s such a rare outcome. It’s not just a story about congenital anomalies or defects. There’s a larger story there about negative spillover effects happening to both mothers and their babies—that’s something that we hope to disentangle in the next year.”
Source: Johns Hopkins
MENOPAUSE
CVS Becomes First ‘Menopause Friendly’ Employer
What: CVS announced it is the first US company to be named a “menopause-friendly workplace,” by Midovia, an organization founded in the UK. To get the designation CVS trained their health clinicians on how to treat menopause and increased internal education on menopause in the workplace, among other things.
Key line: “’This is more than just an accreditation — it’s a call to action for companies across the U.S. to prioritize the well-being of midlife employees. CVS Health’s leadership demonstrates that providing support for women experiencing menopause is not just a health imperative — it’s a critical business need for employee retention, well-being and productivity,’ [said April Haberman, Chief Executive Officer,
MiDOViA.]”
Source: CVS Health
ENDOMETRIOSIS
NIH Announces Endometriosis Competition Winners
What: The NIH announced the four winners of an endometriosis diagnostics competition. Each winner will get $100,000 and advance to the final phase of the competition, which focuses on how their tools can be made to scale commerically. Two of the winners use menstrual blood to diagnose endometriosis, while the other two use specialized imaging.
Key line: “The disease affects roughly 10 percent of reproductive-aged women and girls worldwide. While symptoms vary between patients, endometriosis can cause debilitating chronic pain, abnormal uterine bleeding, and infertility. Currently, the only way to confirm an endometriosis diagnosis is to find lesions through laparoscopic surgery, which is invasive, requires recovery time, and is not always accessible.”
Source: NIH
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