Afternoon Briefing: Illinois schools to offer mental health screenings
Another Chicago hospital has ended gender-affirming pediatric surgery amid threats to its federal funding. But Illinois and 15 other states are fighting back in a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration for 'intimidating providers' into denying such care.
UI Health became the latest hospital today to suspend gender-affirming surgical procedures for adolescents effective immediately, according to an announcement posted on the hospital's website.
Here's what else is happening today. And remember, for the latest breaking news in Chicago, visit chicagotribune.com/latest-headlines and sign up to get our alerts on all your devices.
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The bill, SB 1560, requires all Illinois public schools to offer third through 12th grade students a free, optional mental health screening. The bill passed the Illinois House of Representatives on May 21, and the Senate a month earlier. Read more here.
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The Friendly Confines will host the Midsummer Classic for the first time since 1990, marking the fourth time in the ballpark's history. Read more here.
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For singer-songwriter Tucker Pillsbury, who performs as Role Model, playing Lollapalooza isn't new. His performance yesterday marked his third appearance at the festival, with the first two taking place in 2022 and 2019 when he was known for his alternative bedroom pop music. Read more here.
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The agency responsible for carrying out President Donald Trump's mass deportations agenda says it has made tentative job offers to more than 1,000 people as it ramps up hiring following the passage of legislation earlier this month giving the agency a massive infusion of cash. Read more here.
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Boston Globe
27 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Claiming to fight waste, Trump administration slashes potentially cost-saving research
Harvard researchers had spent five years and some $3.8 million from the National Institutes of Health trying to answer this question when Mueller heard that the study might never yield results. In May, amid a feud with the university, the Trump administration abruptly terminated the grant that was funding it with one year and some $734,000 still to go. Without that time and money, pulmonologist Mary Berlik Rice and her team couldn't collect the final bits of data or analyze what they'd found. The clinical trial needed outcomes from a minimum number of participants to be able to conclude anything with any statistical significance. Advertisement 'It's a waste,' said Mueller — of taxpayer money, of everyone's time, of blood and tissue samples. N. Mueller sat beside the air purifier he was loaned as part of the study, which may or may not be functional. Lucy Lu for STAT That alone might seem to conflict with President Trump's stated goal of fighting 'waste, fraud, and abuse.' But scientists and participants like Mueller see another irony. The entire premise of this sort of study is that it might curb future waste. Advertisement It's a pillar of public health: Healthier people cost less. Figure out what could keep them well, and the government money spent on the discovery may well be dwarfed by the amount saved in hospitalizations and prescriptions averted. One of the most famous examples involves central venous catheters, thin tubes that intensive care doctors put into a patient's neck, chest, or groin to give fluids and medications or to draw blood. Those lines allow access to the bloodstream — but also pose an infection risk, creating a conduit that bacteria can take from the outside world into the veins. Such complications were both scary and common. In the early 2000s, they killed some 28,000 American ICU patients and cost $2.3 billion dollars every year. But then in 2006, a paper came out showing that the infections were avoidable. Led by intensive care specialist Peter Pronovost, a team of researchers tried out a simple solution in Michigan hospitals, instituting a checklist of risk-reducing hacks. These included clinicians washing their hands before inserting central lines; cleaning the patient's skin with a disinfectant called chlorhexidine; wearing sterile hair-coverings, masks, gowns, and gloves; using blood vessels in the neck or chest rather than the groin; and taking out catheters when they were no longer needed. Duh, you might say. But the infection rate fell dramatically. Within 18 months, it was near zero, and the intervention was estimated to have saved $100 million and 1,500 lives. 'I don't know how to describe how jaw-dropping this was,' said Leora Horwitz, a hospitalist in New York who studies how health care can be improved. 'This was like a shockwave of a paper.' Advertisement Pronovost says none of that could have happened without a grant of $500,000 a year for two years from a federal bureau called the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which is dedicated to improving the delivery of medical care to patients and represents about 0.04 percent of the government's spending on health care. 'AHRQ pays for itself over and over again with studies like that,' said Horwitz. But the agency hasn't been spared in the Trump administration's slashing of federal research funding and the employees who administer it. Over a third of its employees were laid off in April, and the administration said it would be merged with another office within the Department of Health and Human Services. The effects of such cutbacks have been felt in the last few weeks. 'As a result of recent reduction in force at HHS, AHRQ's grants management staff were separated from Federal service on July 14, 2025,' one of the agency's directors wrote in an email to recipients of a grant for training new researchers, 'We are currently unable to process grant awards.' Signage for the Department of Health and Human Services headquarters was seen on April 2 in Washington, D.C. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Pronovost, now the chief quality and clinical transformation officer for the University Hospitals Cleveland, worries about the agency's decimation. His landmark 2006 paper can seem almost dull. It was partially about handwashing reminders and antiseptic usage. It was neither rocket science, nor a blockbuster drug. Nor, for that matter, does it sound like the 'edge science.' But it worked. When Pronovost sees package-delivery companies providing nearly flawless services, he knows that doesn't happen by accident; it happens through a management system. Every time there's a breakdown in what's supposed to happen — a box falling off a conveyor belt, say — there's a notification and an action taken, and if an action isn't taken, then there's an escalation. That was how he helped reduce his hospitals' Medicare expenditures by around 30 percent in 2023, a model that might save estimated $250 billion if applied nationwide. Advertisement Duke University hematologist Charity Oyedeji is pursuing research into measuring and hopefully preventing the functional impairment of adults with sickle cell disease. It started when she noticed just how dramatically her patients' biological ages outstripped their chronological ones. A 50-year-old reported difficulty getting on and off the toilet. A 20-something told her it was hard to reach up and get cups from the cupboard. She wondered whether tailored-to-your-ability exercise programs that have been shown to reduce frailty in older adults might help these people, too. It could improve quality of life and save money at the same time. 'We're trying to intervene early so we can improve their health span,' said Oyedeji, who was speaking in her personal capacity and not on behalf of her employer. 'We want to increase the number of good years that they have.' Oyedeji was in the second year of five — and had spent $300,000 of the $750,000 the NIH had allotted her — when her grant was terminated in June, years before she'd be able to reach any helpful conclusions. When asked about the cancellation of Oyedeji's grant, an HHS spokesperson wrote that the study has 'value,' but that 'it was funded under an inappropriate and ideologically driven — rather than scientifically driven — DEI program under the Biden administration.' Advertisement Researchers don't want to see their work — and participants' time — go to waste. Rice, the Harvard pulmonologist, has been able to scrape together enough money from the university to answer only a third of the questions that the NIH funded her to address. Spending $3.8 million to study how air purifiers could improve a specific type of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease might sound like a lot — and yet the illness itself costs some $24 billion a year in the US, which includes $11.9 billion in prescription drug expenses and $6.3 billion in hospital stays. 'We're throwing a lot of drugs at this,' said Rice, 'but I've found in my prior work that this group is especially susceptible to air pollution, and that led me to propose this trial to see if we could prevent some of the noxious exposures that trigger this severe disease.' To Mueller, 65, the idea made sense. Regular oil changes are ultimately cheaper than needing to get your engine replaced. He didn't want his breathing to worsen if he could help it, but that wasn't why he'd signed up for this trial. He hoped that by giving his time and nasal tissue, the benefits might be multiplied, spread out among others with the same disease, such that the scarring in their lungs could be held at bay. Of course, there might not be any benefit. That was the whole point, the reason for the trial, for the $3.8 million and five years of work. The researchers would only know at the end — if there was an end.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
TruBridge Second Quarter 2025 Earnings: EPS Beats Expectations, Revenues Lag
TruBridge (NASDAQ:TBRG) Second Quarter 2025 Results Key Financial Results Revenue: US$85.7m (up 1.2% from 2Q 2024). Net income: US$2.58m (up from US$4.83m loss in 2Q 2024). Profit margin: 3.0% (up from net loss in 2Q 2024). EPS: US$0.18 (up from US$0.34 loss in 2Q 2024). Trump has pledged to "unleash" American oil and gas and these 15 US stocks have developments that are poised to benefit. All figures shown in the chart above are for the trailing 12 month (TTM) period TruBridge EPS Beats Expectations, Revenues Fall Short Revenue missed analyst estimates by 1.1%. Earnings per share (EPS) exceeded analyst estimates. Looking ahead, revenue is forecast to grow 3.9% p.a. on average during the next 3 years, compared to a 10% growth forecast for the Healthcare Services industry in the US. Performance of the American Healthcare Services industry. The company's shares are down 7.9% from a week ago. Valuation Our analysis of TruBridge based on 6 different valuation metrics shows it might be undervalued. To access our thorough examination of analyst consensus click here and discover the expected future direction of the company. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Sign in to access your portfolio
Axios
2 hours ago
- Axios
RFK Jr.'s vaccine pullback stokes fears of lost medical breakthroughs
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s decision to cut federal funding for mRNA vaccine research is the latest in a series of moves that have the potential to crush future medical breakthroughs and accelerate a brain drain. Why it matters: America has historically led the world in scientific innovation — driving economic growth, strengthening national security, and attracting global talent. But scientists, including some who served in Trump's first administration, warn that lead is slipping away. The mRNA divestment "risks stalling progress in some of the most promising areas of modern medicine," Jerome Adams, surgeon general during the first Trump administration and now a professor at Purdue University, told Axios. "Walking away from this technology now would be like pulling funding from antibiotics after penicillin or from computers after the microchip. It's short-sighted and puts us at a disadvantage globally." State of play: Kennedy said last week that HHS's Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority would pull nearly $500 million worth of contracts with universities, drug companies and other labs working on new mRNA vaccines. No new mRNA-based projects will be launched as the administration shifts to "safer, broader vaccine platforms," he added. Scientists refute the implication that mRNA vaccines are unsafe. The technology that brought mRNA COVID vaccines in Trump's first term has been in development for decades. Large scientific trials and real-world data have shown that the vaccines are safe and effective — and capable of training the body's immune system to create antibodies to fight a host of afflictions. HHS, when asked for the research on which Kennedy based this decision, sent Axios a link to a citation collection put together by anti-COVID vaccine advocates, including Steven Hatfill, who promoted the use of the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine to treat the virus before vaccines were available despite reports of safety issues. Friction point: mRNA technology is what allowed the most common COVID vaccines to be deployed so quickly, and it's essential to responding to new viral pandemic threats, said Cynthia Leifer, a professor of immunology at Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine. "When we have a pandemic, we need to act quickly. We don't have time to wait several years or decades to do testing of older platforms the way they were normally done in years past," she said. "The newer technology could allow us to move so much faster to develop and have these vaccines rolled out to protect people when a pandemic is ongoing," Leifer added. Researchers are also studying how mRNA technology could treat or prevent cancer, HIV, and other chronic diseases — and the science so far is promising. Now, they're worried that progress could be lost. "If we stop now, we could delay or even miss the next generation of cures entirely," said Adams, the former surgeon general. Zoom out: Scientists say some of Kennedy's other changes are stifling innovation, too. Kennedy is working to implement massive staff cuts at HHS, reduce funding for research labs' overhead costs and end National Institutes of Health grants for a wide swath of projects. The cuts, along with the broader Trump administration's immigration restrictions, has already started to steer promising international scientific talent away from the country. Kennedy also is reportedly considering overhauling the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, whose independent experts establish care and coverage guidelines to account for advances in medical treatments and new disease trends. Its past work included recommending beginning mammograms at 40, which has been credited with saving thousands of lives. The other side: HHS denies that its changes will stymie medical advances. "Those concerns are unfounded and not supported with facts," HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon told Axios. Kennedy's decision to cut BARDA funding for mRNA work won't affect other government uses involving the technology, HHS said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has endorsed mRNA COVID vaccines for most adults. Between the lines: An independent and bipartisan commission warned Congress in April that China has already pulled ahead of the U.S. in key life sciences areas. The U.S. can stay dominant, but it only has a few years to strengthen its position — and it needs to put significant resources into biotechnology resources, the commission's report said. Reality check: It's impossible to know whether breakthroughs actually won't happen as a result of these policy changes, or which advances we could miss out on. "That is a long-term impact that is hard to measure. What cure wasn't found? What question wasn't asked and investigated?" Richard Besser, CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said. mRNA therapy start-ups are also still raising private investment, which could keep research moving.
