Category: Public Health

KHN’s ‘What the Health?’: Wrapping Up Summer’s Health News

President Joe Biden has signed the Inflation Reduction Act and Congress is gone until after Labor Day. But the administration and lawmakers left lots of health policy achievements behind, including new rules to facilitate the sale of over-the-counter hearing aids and a potential reorganization of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Anna Edney of Bloomberg News, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, and Joanne Kenen of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Politico join KHN’s Julie Rovner to discuss these issues and more. Also, for extra credit, the panelists suggest their favorite health policy stories of the week they think you should read, too.

Local Health Officials to Feds: Where’s the Rest of Our Monkeypox Vaccine?

Los Angeles County is getting 60% fewer doses of monkeypox vaccine than officials expected, after the FDA said every vial could be split into five shots.

Monkeypox cases jump 20% in 1 week, WHO finds: 5 updates

Global monkeypox cases have increased by about 20 percent for the second week in a row, with nearly 7,500 new monkeypox cases reported last week, the World Health Organization said in a news conference Aug. 17. 

NYC Health + Hospitals to monitor polio, monkeypox via wastewater surveillance

Next week, NYC Health + Hospitals will expand its wastewater surveillance program to test for polio and monkeypox, alongside COVID-19 and flu,, the New York City-based system said  Aug. 15. 

CDC commits to change after COVID-19 response shortcomings

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, acknowledged the agency failed to effectively respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, and committed to prioritizing future public health responses through a series of changes, The Washington Post reported Aug. 17.

Why a single monkeypox case is raising transmission concerns for researchers

Researchers have raised concern over the potential for modes of monkeypox transmission beyond intimate contact after detailing the case of an infected man with no recent sexual contact whose highest-risk exposure was attending a crowded outdoor event t…

BA.5 climbs to 89% of US cases

The highly transmissible omicron subvariant BA.5 continues to gain dominance in the U.S. and now accounts for nearly 90 percent of all cases nationwide, according to the CDC’s latest variant proportion estimates.

Public Health Agencies Adapt Covid Lessons to Curb Overdoses, STDs, and Gun Violence

Know-how gained through the covid pandemic is seeping into other public health areas. But in a nation that has chronically underfunded its public health system, it’s hard to know which changes will stick.

Shelter Sickness: Migrants See Health Problems Linger and Worsen While Waiting at the Border

U.S. immigration policies, an increasing number of migrants, and the covid-19 pandemic have led to the growth of the Mexican shelter system, in which people are getting sick and medical care is limited.

COVID-19 lessons fall short for monkeypox response, experts say

The nation’s shortcomings in responding to the monkeypox outbreak around messaging and vaccines are strikingly familiar to those of the pandemic, health experts told PBS NewsHour in an Aug. 15 report.