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As controversy grows over proposed rules that would exert political control over federal research funding and other grants, the western Massachusetts NPR affiliate quotes DPH member and Harvard researcher Nancy Krieger: “This will stifle American science and ingenuity. It will stifle American scholarship. It will affect Americans’ health. It will affect the well-being of communities. It is a recipe for disaster.”

Dr. Aimee Pugh Bernard delivers a critical talk about why training in communication is critical to science education.

In this analysis piece about insurers' decision to keep paying for vaccines, Newsweek editors note, "in this fight, it’s the cynicism of the marketplace that leads to vaccination." Along the way, they quote Coordinating Committee member Elizabeth Jacobs on how insurance companies have crunched the numbers and know that vaccination reduces illness -- and thus, their costs.

U.S. health insurers announce they'll continue covering routine childhood vaccinations through 2027, and DPH Coordinating Committee member Elizabeth Jacobs comments, “They understand that there is a benefit there to people being vaccinated, especially kids, and I’m sure they’ve run the numbers and they know that it will cost them a heck of a lot more to treat kids with measles who are hospitalized than it is to pay for vaccines.”

A week in the hospital taught DPH Coordinating Committee member Gregg Gonsalves that American healthcare is "fundamentally broken," forcing patients to scramble and fight for what they need. And amid all this dysfunction, "no one in power pays any attention to these deep structural flaws in our system." (And don't worry, Gregg is out of the hospital and doing fine.)

In a shortened version of a piece originally written for our website, DPH member Mary K. Canales connects the dots between voting rights and public health, and why communities with more control over their own futures tend to be healthier.

DPH Coordinating Committee member Miranda Yaver addresses a proposed Medicaid rule from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services -- a rule that, she writes, "doesn’t simply codify Congress’ historic cuts to Medicaid. It expands on them. Quite apart from rooting out fraud and waste, it is yet another step to roll back healthcare access for our nation’s most vulnerable."

This roundup of appalled reactions to the recent OMB announcement of new regulations gutting peer review and giving political appointees authority over federal grants -- with a mandate to block anything not aligned with the administration's idea of "American values" -- quotes a variety of scientific and other experts, including DPH Coordinating Committee member Gregg Gonsalves, who comments, “These rules declare war on honest science.”

In a roundup of the day's health-related news, the Post quotes DPH Coordinating Committee member Gregg Gonsalves from our recent statement condemning new OMB rules eviscerating the peer-review process in favor of political control over federal research (and other) grants. (Scroll down to see the item).