NEWSROOM

With original reporting in Spanish, Agencia EFE covers the Seven Days in June movement, a grass roots call to make health a priority of US Federal government policy. The movement is rallying support for various actions to highlight cuts to health funding under the Trump Administration and calling for action on the health needs of Americans. DPH Coordinating Committee Member Gregg Gonsalves is quoted on the current environment in US health spending and the need to fund public health programs.

Lenacapavir, an HIV anti-retroviral offered as a twice-yearly injection, has the potential to dramatically reduce new HIV transmissions as both a treatment regimen and a form of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP). Its immense promise to reduce HIV infections in region's hardest hit by the epidemic is being stifled by the drug's manufacturer, Gilead, putting up roadblocks to NGOs trying to acquire it. DPH Coordinating Committee Member Gregg Gonsalves and others comment on how further delays in access to the drug will increase new infections in sub-Sarahan Africa and elsewhere.

U.S. vaccine policy remains in a state of uncertainty after a federal judge froze HHS Secretary Kennedy's recent changes while Kennedy tones down his rhetoric and tries to engineer an end-run around the judge's ruling. DPH Coordinating Committee member Elizabeth Jacobs lends her perspective to this assessment of the current unsettled state of things.

Defend Public Health Coordinating Committee Member Gregg Gonsalves reflects on the hands on, community-oriented approach to HIV/AIDS education during the height of Africa's pandemic and how public health practitioners in the US would benefit from taking a similar approach to strengthen relationships with their local communities.

In this review of the continuous peddling of disinformation and junk science by HHS Secretary RFK Jr. and the people he's placed in key federal health policy positions, DPH member Jessica Malaty Rivera calls out the "word salad" and "doublespeak" Kennedy uses to mislead the public and evade congressional oversight.

In response to what they describe as a period of “malice, neglect and ignorance” within federal health agencies, a grassroots coalition has launched a strategic effort to force candidates to take explicit stands on health policy. The organization, Defend Public Health, recently introduced the “People’s Health Platform,” a set of guiding principles designed to move healthcare access and pandemic preparedness from the margins of campaign literature to the forefront of the national conversation.

As DPH launches the People's Health Platform, Coordinating Committee member Elizabeth Jacobs tells The Guardian, “It doesn’t matter where you are or what party you belong to. What matters is the health of everybody around us... Voters have the right to know which candidates are going to protect their health and which won’t.”

U.S. health officials appear to be shying away from voicing negative views of vaccines in public as November’s midterm elections loom and key polling indicates anti-vaccine views are a liability. But DPH Coordinating Committee member Elizabeth Jacobs and other experts warn readers to be wary, with Jacobs reminding that in the past year, Kennedy and his allies "just broke everything.”