In the News

With more Americans shielded from severe illness through vaccination and infection, COVID-19 has transformed — for now at least — into an unpleasant, inconvenient nuisance for many.
 

Consumers, employers, and just about everyone else interested in health care prices will soon get an unprecedented look at what insurers pay for care, perhaps helping answer a question that has long dogged those who buy insurance: Are we getting the best deal we can?
 

Lawmakers and administration officials have spent much of the past few years talking about "the next pandemic" and what the country will do when it comes. But now that monkeypox is spreading exponentially throughout the United States, public health officials agree on one thing — the government didn't move fast enough.
 

Federal action to make children older than 6 months eligible for vaccines not only affects parents but also day care centers, which have struggled throughout the pandemic.
Rupali Limaye and Crystal Watson are quoted. 

With the end of Roe v. Wade’s abortion protections, there are now millions of Americans who won’t be able to get an abortion if they want one. Although for some who are seeking abortion because of the way a pregnancy is affecting their health, it shouldn’t be a problem, thanks to exceptions for the life of the mother that are common, even in the strictest abortion bans. But the medical professionals, legal experts and researchers say those exceptions are usually vague, creating an environment where patients have to meet some unspoken and arbitrary criteria to get treatment.
 

An advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday recommended the agency push to field new COVID-19 booster shots targeting the highly contagious omicron variant, a move some hope will offer a boost in the fight against the rapidly evolving coronavirus—but the most vulnerable populations shouldn’t wait till the fall to get an updated shot, experts say.
 

U.S. health authorities are facing a critical decision: whether to offer new COVID-19 booster shots this fall that are modified to better match recent changes of the shape-shifting coronavirus.
 

Scientists widely agree that race is a social construct, yet it is often conflated with biology, leaving the impression that a person’s race governs how the body functions.
 

Congress and the Supreme Court took big steps in opposite directions last week, in the country's long standing debate on whether and how to regulate guns.
 

The US effectively banned Juul after the FDA ordered the e-cigarette maker to remove its popular products from the marketplace. Experts have hailed the move as significant. But they are also concerned that such efforts are failing to keep up with a fast-moving vaping industry – one where young people leap quickly from one product to another.
 

The partisan 6-3 decision rules out “any means-end test” in concealed-carry laws, eschewing scientific evidence of the dangers of firearms.
 

Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling that struck down a New York gun law requiring people to demonstrate a particular need for carrying a gun in order to get a license to carry one in public has no immediate impact on other laws, including rules on background checks and age requirements for gun purchases.