Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT’s free newsletter Morning Rounds. Sign up here.
Good morning. If you’re on the East Coast, I hope you’ve been keeping warm and cozy through this winter storm. Send tips and cheap flights to warm locales: [email protected]
Key autism committee is being reshaped
An influential federal committee that advises the health secretary on all things autism held an orientation Thursday for some of its new members, STAT’s O. Rose Broderick has learned.
It was the first gathering of the next iteration of the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, a group that shapes federally funded autism research and support services. The committee recently added multiple members who align with health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s claim that childhood vaccines can cause autism. (As a reminder, decades of scientific research have yet to find any conclusive evidence for such a link). Read more from Rose on what it means.
Flu updates to start the week
There was some encouraging news about flu, but bad news about measles from the CDC on Friday. The latest FluView report, for the week ending Jan. 17, showed that transmission levels are well past the soaring peak of the season that occurred between Christmas and the new year. Might we see an early end to flu season? That’s anyone’s guess. Almost all the illnesses so far have been caused by flu A; you can’t count out the possibility of a surge of flu B infections before winter is over.
The weekly measles update was grim. We’re not a full month into 2026 and already there have been 416 confirmed cases in 14 jurisdictions, 94% of them in people either unvaccinated or with unknown vaccination status. Some context here: There have been more measles cases so far in 2026 than in all but four years out of the past three decades. Measles is back. This was foreseeable. — Helen Branswell
Why should we trust ‘Why Should I Trust You?’?
When a regulatory expert posted online last week crediting STAT with a recent scoop on comments from ACIP’s Kirk Milhoan, one of our reporters had to correct him. The scoop actually came from an interview Milhoan did with the hosts of the “Why Should I Trust You?” podcast, launched last year by Tom W. Johnson and Brinda Adhikari. So far, they’ve moderated more than a dozen conversations between roughly 75 MAHA supporters and practitioners of public health, medicine, and science.
“Despite how it is often portrayed, MAHA is not a fringe movement,” Johnson and Adhikari write in a new First Opinion essay. “From our discussions, it is clear to us this movement is not only here to stay, but engaged in a methodical long game.”
Read more from the hosts about why they think it’s so important to engage in conversations with people they disagree with, and how they respond to criticisms about “platforming” people with certain beliefs.
Can anyone make endometriosis diagnosis easier?
Experts estimate that about one in 10 women suffer from endometriosis, a condition in which tissue usually found inside the uterus grows outside of it, often leading to intense, chronic pelvic pain, fertility problems, and more. Despite the prevalence, it can often take five to 10 years or longer for someone to get a diagnosis.
María Teresa Pérez Zaballos (above) spent five years in pain visiting doctors before she got her own diagnosis for a related endometrial condition. “It was when most people were saying, ‘no, no, no,’ that somebody said it might be endometriosis,” she said. Now, she leads one of at least a dozen biotech companies developing tools to diagnose the condition more easily. Read more from me about when we might see one of these tools hit the market and how it could help people already living with the disease.
How chronic conditions interact with birth outcomes
The more chronic conditions that a pregnant person has, the higher the risk that their baby will suffer from severe health complications or die, according to a study published Friday in JAMA Network Open.
Researchers analyzed data on the births of more than one million babies born in Ontario, Canada, between 2012 and 2021, separated into groups by how many chronic conditions their mothers had: none, one, two, or three plus. Risk increased as the number of chronic conditions did, but the greatest risk was among babies whose mothers had complex or cardiometabolic conditions.
“Chronic conditions” is a broad umbrella — the researchers included 22 in total, including alcohol and substance use disorders, asthma, cancer, hypertension, liver disease, congestive heart failure, diabetes, HIV, migraine, multiple sclerosis, obesity, and more. To the study authors, the results indicate the importance of counseling before families conceive, monitoring in pregnancy for early signs of complications, and more support for newborns.
What we’re reading
Public health giant William Foege, who helped eradicate smallpox, has died at 89, STAT
Trump expands policy banning aid to groups abroad that discuss or provide abortions, NPR
- First Opinion: Shared decision-making on vaccines is not the enemy, STAT
- A pregnant mother in ICE detention says she’s bleeding — and hasn’t seen a doctor in weeks, The 19th
- CDC pauses, then unpauses billions in public health infrastructure grants to states, STAT
What’s the word? Test your knowledge with today’s STAT Mini crossword.
