NEWSROOM

This wrap-up of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s several days of "combative, defensive" testimony (we might use less polite terms) includes comments from several critics, including DPH Coordinating Committee member Elizabeth Jacobs blasting Kennedy's mass firing of scientists: “The estimates are it’s going to take a decade or a generation to rebuild the massive medical science juggernaut that we once had.”

DPH member Perry Halkitis argues public health must improve, writing, "We have trained generations of practitioners to track viruses, but not to understand fear or to model how behavior (whether illogical and self-pleasing or essential to their very existence) fuels transmission. We have been less effective in engaging with people on how to navigate misinformation and mitigate mistrust. In short, we have not been effective in meeting people where they are."

The Bay Area Reporter provides a profile of Defend Public Health and Coordinating Committee Members Gregg Gonsalves and Bruce Mirken, highlighting some of DPH's early successes including derailing the nomination of Dave Weldon to chair the CDC and challenging the potential appointment of Casey Means as Surgeon General. The outlet also covers DPH's People’s Health Platform and how it is beginning to shape policy conversations among prospective candidates for California's 11th congressional district.

Coordinating Committee members Elizabeth Jacobs and Bruce Mirken lay out the hypocrisy in RFK Jr.'s lectures about "eating real food" while the administration cuts food assistance for low-income families, and explain the need for public health advocates to not just oppose bad policies but also to advocate for the sort of positive agenda laid out in DPH's People's Health Platform. "A serious public health agenda," they write, "must recognize that telling people how to stay healthy means nothing unless we ensure they have the means to do it."

Someday the Trump administration will leave office, but the damage he and his appointees have done to scientific and public health agencies will linger. Coordinating Committee member Gregg Gonsalves explains that the process of repairing the damage will be long, difficult, and involve far more than just restoring some cut appropriations -- and why there must be accountability for those who deliberately sabotaged public health and research.

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.