Slashed Federal Funding Cancels Vaccine Clinics Amid Measles Surge
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More than a dozen vaccination clinics were canceled in Pima County, Arizona.
So was a media blitz to bring low-income children in Washoe County, Nevada, up to date on their shots.
Planned clinics were also scuttled in Texas, Minnesota, and Washington, among other places.
Immunization efforts across the country were upended after the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention abruptly canceled $11.4 billion in covid-related funds for state and local health departments in late March.
A federal judge temporarily blocked the cuts last week, but many of the organizations that receive the funds said they must proceed as though they’re gone, raising concerns amid a resurgence of measles, a rise in vaccine hesitancy, and growing distrust of public health agencies.
“I’m particularly concerned about the accessibility of vaccines for vulnerable populations,” former U.S. surgeon general Jerome Adams told KFF Health News. Adams served in President Donald Trump’s first administration. “Without high vaccination rates, we are setting those populations and communities up for preventable harm.”
The Department of Health and Human Services, which houses the CDC, does not comment on ongoing litigation, spokesperson Vianca Rodriguez Feliciano said. But she sent a statement on the original action, saying that HHS made the cuts because the covid-19 pandemic is over: “HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago.”
Still, clinics have also used the money to address other preventable diseases such as flu, mpox, and measles. More than 500 cases of measles so far in a Texas outbreak have led to 57 hospitalizations and the deaths of two school-age children.
In Pima County, Arizona, officials learned that one of its vaccination programs would have to end early because the federal government took away its remaining $1 million in grant money. The county had to cancel about 20 vaccine events offering covid and flu shots that it had already scheduled, said Theresa Cullen, director of the county health department. And it isn’t able to plan any more, she said.
The county is home to Tucson, the second-largest city in Arizona. But it also has sprawling rural areas, including part of the Tohono O’odham Nation, that are far from many health clinics and pharmacies, she said.
The county used the federal grant to offer free vaccines in mostly rural areas, usually on the weekends or after usual work hours on weekdays, Cullen said. The programs are held at community organizations, during fairs and other events, or inside buses turned into mobile health clinics.
Canceling vaccine-related grants has an impact beyond immunization rates, Cullen said. Vaccination events are also a chance to offer health education, connect people with other resources they may need, and build trust between communities and public health systems, she said.
County leaders knew the funding would run out at the end of June, but Cullen said the health department had been in talks with local communities to find a way to continue the events. Now “we’ve said, ‘Sorry, we had a commitment to you and we’re not able to honor it,’” she said.
Cullen said the health department won’t restart the events even though a judge temporarily blocked the funding cuts.
“The vaccine equity grant is a grant that goes from the CDC to the state to us,” she said. “The state is who gave us a stop work order.”
The full effect of the CDC cuts is not yet clear in many places. California Department of Public Health officials estimated that grant terminations would result in at least $840 million in federal funding losses for its state, including $330 million used for virus monitoring, testing, childhood vaccines, and addressing health disparities.
“We are working to evaluate the impact of these actions,” said California Department of Public Health Director Erica Pan.
In Washoe County, Nevada, the surprise cuts in federal funding mean the loss of two contract staffers who set up and advertise vaccination events, including state-mandated back-to-school immunizations for illnesses such as measles.
“Our core team can’t be in two places at once,” said Lisa Lottritz, division director for community and clinical health services at Northern Nevada Public Health.
She expected to retain the contractors through June, when the grants were scheduled to sunset. The health district scrambled to find money to keep the two workers for a few more weeks. They found enough to pay them only through May.
Lottritz immediately canceled a publicity blitz focused on getting children on government insurance up to date on their shots. Vaccine events at the public health clinic will go on, but are “very scaled back” with fewer staff members, she said. Nurses offering shots out and about at churches, senior centers, and food banks will stop in May, when the money to pay the workers runs out.
“The staff have other responsibilities. They do compliance visits, they’re running our clinic, so I won’t have the resources to put on events like that,” Lottritz said.
The effect of the cancellations will reverberate for a long time, said Chad Kingsley, district health officer for Northern Nevada Public Health, and it might take years for the full scope of decreasing vaccinations to be felt.
“Our society doesn’t have a collective knowledge of those diseases and what they did,” he said.
Measles is top of mind in Missouri, where a conference on strengthening immunization efforts statewide was abruptly canceled due to the cuts.
The Missouri Immunization Coalition, which organized the event for April 24-25, also had to lay off half its staff, according to board president Lynelle Phillips. The coalition, which coordinates immunization advocacy and education across the state, must now find alternative funding to stay open.
“It’s just cruel and unthinkably wrong to do this in the midst of a measles resurgence in the country,” Phillips said.
Dana Eby, of the health department in New Madrid County, Missouri, had planned to share tips about building trust for vaccines in rural communities at the conference, including using school nurses and the Vaccines for Children program, funded by the CDC.
New Madrid has one of the highest childhood vaccination rates in the state, despite being part of the largely rural “Bootheel” region that is often noted for its poor health outcomes. Over 98% of kindergartners in the county received the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella in 2023-24 compared with the state average of about 91%, and rates in some other counties as low as 61%.
“I will say I think measles will be a problem before I retire,” Eby, 42, said.
Also slated to speak at the Missouri event was former surgeon general Adams, who said he had planned to emphasize the need for community collaboration and the importance of vaccinations in protecting public health and reducing preventable diseases. He said the timing was especially pertinent given the explosion in measles cases in Texas and the rise in whooping cough cases and deaths in Louisiana.
“We can’t make America healthy again by going backwards on our historically high U.S. vaccination rates,” Adams said. “You can’t die from chronic diseases when you’re 50 if you’ve already died from measles or polio or whooping cough when you’re 5.”
California correspondent Christine Mai-Duc contributed to this article.
We’d like to speak with current and former personnel from the Department of Health and Human Services or its component agencies who believe the public should understand the impact of what’s happening within the federal health bureaucracy. Please message KFF Health News on Signal at (415) 519-8778 or get in touch here.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
Subscribe to KFF Health News’ free Morning Briefing.
This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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The Forgotten Exercise That Could Save Your Health After 50
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A lot depends on this:
Your heart is also a “use it or lose it” muscle
It’s well-known that muscles in general require maintenance (by regular exertion thereof), or they will atrophy and weaken. However, this is not only true of our skeletal muscles (the ones people think about when they say “muscles”), but also muscles like the heart.
Now, of course, we are all using our heart all the time, every day. One might be tempted to think it’ll be fine. It won’t; the body will not maintain anything beyond necessity. Thus, the prescription here is to regularly get our heart out of “zone 1”, its regular resting rate, which is usually about 50% or so of its maximum rate, and into “zone 2”, in which it beats at 60–70% of its maximum rate.
To find your maximum rate: as a general rule of thumb, 220 minus your age will usually give a fairly accurate estimate, unless you are unusually fit or unusually unfit.
Alternatively, if you have a fitness tracker, it can probably give you a number based on actual observation of your heartrate.
The benefits of doing so, as mentioned in this video:
- Improves heart health, circulation, and lowers blood pressure.
- Burns belly fat by using stored fat as energy*
- Boosts aerobic capacity, making daily activities easier.
- Enhances insulin sensitivity, mental health, and sleep.
- Helps manage arthritis, osteoporosis, and high cholesterol.
*note that this won’t happen in zone 1, and if you spend more than a little time in zone 3, it will happen but your body will do a metabolic slump afterwards to compensate, while doing its best to replenish the fat reserves. So, zone 2 is really the goal for this one, unless you want to do HIIT, which is beyond the scope of today’s article.
He recommends activities like brisk walking, cycling, or swimming. You don’t have to become a triathlon competitor if you don’t want to, but just pick what you like and do it at a fair pace. If it’s the brisk walking or cycling*, then (unless it’s very hot/humid where you are), if you break a sweat, you probably broke out of zone 2 and into zone 3. Which is fine, but wasn’t what you were aiming for, so it’s a sign you can go a little easier than that if you want.
*of course the same statement is also true of swimming, but you’ll not notice sweating in a pool 😉
As for how much and how often, averaging 20 minutes per day is good; if you want to condense that into 40 minutes 2–3 times per week, that’s fine too.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!
Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
The Doctor Who Wants Us To Exercise Less & Move More
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Your Skin Microbiome & The Sun
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Should we soak up the sun for its health benefits, protect our skin from it at all costs? Is sunscreen the one skincare product that everyone truly needs, or is it just adding chemicals to our skin? What’s the truth in a world full of conflicting information?
We’ve tackled some of these questions before, diving into the science of the pros and cons, including:
…and:
And now, today, we’re going to be talking about some entirely new science!
An extra layer of protection
Who would win:
- a 4,600,000,000-year-old ongoing nuclear fusion event whose superheated plasma is held in place by its own immense gravity well, or
- some single-celled organisms that were born a few minutes ago?
The answer is that the latter can, in fact, help to protect us against the former.
Re “born a few minutes ago”: if you’ll pardon the rhetorical device (per “born yesterday” etc), what we mean here is that the life cycle of such microbes is very short, so while your microbiome is as old as you are (albeit in ship of Theseus sort of way), any individual living microbes will not be more than some minutes old.
We mention this not as a matter of mere interesting trivia, but rather because it has practical implications: when it comes to our microbiome (or microbiomes, depending on whether we want to count different sites on/in our body separately, as is often useful, even if technically they all do interact with each other thus they could be considered one big diverse microbiome too), it is a living community that needs to be given the right circumstances to perpetuate and favorably mutate itself constantly.
It’s not something that can be optimized and then just taken for granted. Because sure, given good conditions, an optimized microbiome will then continue to self-perpetuate, mutate as it goes, and by virtue of natural selection, continue to persist against threats. But if not given good conditions? You could wreak havoc with it and take weeks or more for it to recover. And if those bad conditions are chronic, it might never recover.
So, more on healthy microbiome curation later, but first, the exciting new science!
Teaser:
❝This pivotal study shows that microbial communities are not passive victims of environmental stress but dynamic regulators of immune responses, capable of metabolizing UV-induced skin products such as cis-urocanic acid. This newly uncovered role of microbial metabolism in modulating UV tolerance reshapes our understanding of the skin barrier — not just as a structural shield but as a metabolically active, microbially regulated interface. With increasing concerns about UV exposure, skin aging, and cancer, a deeper understanding of this axis offers promising avenues for therapy and prevention.❞
~ Dr. Anna Di Nardo (not one of the study authors, just a physician-scientist expert in the field)
In few words: researchers have discovered that certain bacteria on our skin help protect us from sun damage and also play a role in controlling our immune system.
How this works: when sunlight (especially UVB rays) hits our skin, it changes a natural chemical there (namely: trans-urocanic acid) into a dangerous form (namely: cis-urocanic acid), which also incidentally weakens the immune system. Some skin bacteria can break down this harmful chemical with an enzyme they produce (namely: urocanase). This enables the skin to better manage its skin exposure; specifically, controlling responses to UV exposure.
This is exciting, because it’s the first evidence of a direct link between UV rays, a skin molecule, and microbial activity affecting health outcomes, not just passively, but through active metabolism.
You can read the paper itself here:
Great! How can we make use of this information?
Per the researchers’ conclusions, these insights could change how we think about sun protection, immune-related skin diseases, skin cancer, and more. The note also that future sun care could include microbiome-aware treatments that adjust bacterial metabolism to improve skin health after sun exposure.
And in the meantime? Generally speaking when it comes to microbiome health (any microbiome; gut, oral, skin, etc), a good rule of thumb is “if in doubt, just leave it alone and let it do its thing”.
This might sound like passive “do-nothing” advice, and in a way it is, but a lot of people don’t do nothing, and when it comes to the skin microbiome in particular, it’s very common for people to invest a lot of time and energy into killing everything that moves, so the advice here is “stop doing that”.
Which doesn’t mean you mustn’t wash; by all means, feel free to wash, but gently.
We’ve written a bit about this before:
And if you already have sun-damaged skin…
Undo The Sun’s Damage To Your Skin
Take care!
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The Procrastination Cure – by Jeffery Combs
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Why do we procrastinate? It’s not usually because we are lazy, and in fact we can often make ourselves very busy while procrastinating. And at some point, the bad feelings about procrastinating become worse than the experience of actually doing the thing. And still we often procrastinate. So, why?
Jeffery Combs notes that the reasons can vary, but generally fall into six mostly-distinct categories. He calls them:
- The neurotic perfectionist
- The big deal chaser
- The chronic worrier
- The rebellious rebel
- The drama addict
- The angry giver
These may overlap somewhat, but the differences are important when it comes to differences of tackling them.
Giving many illustrative examples, Combs gives the reader all we’ll need to know which category (or categories!) we fall into.
Then, he draws heavily on the work of Dr. Albert Ellis to find ways to change the feelings that we have that are holding us back.
Those feelings might be fear, shame, resentment, overwhelm, or something else entirely, but the tools are in this book.
A particular strength of this book is that it takes an approach that’s essentially Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) repackaged for a less clinically-inclined audience (Combs’ own background is in marketing, not pyschology). Thus, for many readers, this will tend to make the ideas more relatable, and the implementations more accessible.
Bottom line: if you’ve been meaning to figure out how to beat your procrastination, but have been putting it off, now’s the time to do it.
Click here to check out The Procrastination Cure sooner rather than later!
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Why scrapping the term ‘long COVID’ would be harmful for people with the condition
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The assertion from Queensland’s chief health officer John Gerrard that it’s time to stop using the term “long COVID” has made waves in Australian and international media over recent days.
Gerrard’s comments were related to new research from his team finding long-term symptoms of COVID are similar to the ongoing symptoms following other viral infections.
But there are limitations in this research, and problems with Gerrard’s argument we should drop the term “long COVID”. Here’s why.
A bit about the research
The study involved texting a survey to 5,112 Queensland adults who had experienced respiratory symptoms and had sought a PCR test in 2022. Respondents were contacted 12 months after the PCR test. Some had tested positive to COVID, while others had tested positive to influenza or had not tested positive to either disease.
Survey respondents were asked if they had experienced ongoing symptoms or any functional impairment over the previous year.
The study found people with respiratory symptoms can suffer long-term symptoms and impairment, regardless of whether they had COVID, influenza or another respiratory disease. These symptoms are often referred to as “post-viral”, as they linger after a viral infection.
Gerrard’s research will be presented in April at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. It hasn’t been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
After the research was publicised last Friday, some experts highlighted flaws in the study design. For example, Steven Faux, a long COVID clinician interviewed on ABC’s television news, said the study excluded people who were hospitalised with COVID (therefore leaving out people who had the most severe symptoms). He also noted differing levels of vaccination against COVID and influenza may have influenced the findings.
In addition, Faux pointed out the survey would have excluded many older people who may not use smartphones.
The authors of the research have acknowledged some of these and other limitations in their study.
Ditching the term ‘long COVID’
Based on the research findings, Gerrard said in a press release:
We believe it is time to stop using terms like ‘long COVID’. They wrongly imply there is something unique and exceptional about longer term symptoms associated with this virus. This terminology can cause unnecessary fear, and in some cases, hypervigilance to longer symptoms that can impede recovery.
But Gerrard and his team’s findings cannot substantiate these assertions. Their survey only documented symptoms and impairment after respiratory infections. It didn’t ask people how fearful they were, or whether a term such as long COVID made them especially vigilant, for example.
Tens of thousands of Australians, and millions of people worldwide, have long COVID.
New Africa/ShutterstockIn discussing Gerrard’s conclusions about the terminology, Faux noted that even if only 3% of people develop long COVID (the survey found 3% of people had functional limitations after a year), this would equate to some 150,000 Queenslanders with the condition. He said:
To suggest that by not calling it long COVID you would be […] somehow helping those people not to focus on their symptoms is a curious conclusion from that study.
Another clinician and researcher, Philip Britton, criticised Gerrard’s conclusion about the language as “overstated and potentially unhelpful”. He noted the term “long COVID” is recognised by the World Health Organization as a valid description of the condition.
A cruel irony
An ever-growing body of research continues to show how COVID can cause harm to the body across organ systems and cells.
We know from the experiences shared by people with long COVID that the condition can be highly disabling, preventing them from engaging in study or paid work. It can also harm relationships with their friends, family members, and even their partners.
Despite all this, people with long COVID have often felt gaslit and unheard. When seeking treatment from health-care professionals, many people with long COVID report they have been dismissed or turned away.
Last Friday – the day Gerrard’s comments were made public – was actually International Long COVID Awareness Day, organised by activists to draw attention to the condition.
The response from people with long COVID was immediate. They shared their anger on social media about Gerrard’s comments, especially their timing, on a day designed to generate greater recognition for their illness.
Since the start of the COVID pandemic, patient communities have fought for recognition of the long-term symptoms many people faced.
The term “long COVID” was in fact coined by people suffering persistent symptoms after a COVID infection, who were seeking words to describe what they were going through.
The role people with long COVID have played in defining their condition and bringing medical and public attention to it demonstrates the possibilities of patient-led expertise. For decades, people with invisible or “silent” conditions such as ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome) have had to fight ignorance from health-care professionals and stigma from others in their lives. They have often been told their disabling symptoms are psychosomatic.
Gerrard’s comments, and the media’s amplification of them, repudiates the term “long COVID” that community members have chosen to give their condition an identity and support each other. This is likely to cause distress and exacerbate feelings of abandonment.
Terminology matters
The words we use to describe illnesses and conditions are incredibly powerful. Naming a new condition is a step towards better recognition of people’s suffering, and hopefully, better diagnosis, health care, treatment and acceptance by others.
The term “long COVID” provides an easily understandable label to convey patients’ experiences to others. It is well known to the public. It has been routinely used in news media reporting and and in many reputable medical journal articles.
Most importantly, scrapping the label would further marginalise a large group of people with a chronic illness who have often been left to struggle behind closed doors.
Deborah Lupton, SHARP Professor, Vitalities Lab, Centre for Social Research in Health and Social Policy Centre, and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, UNSW Sydney
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Asparagus vs Cabbage – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing asparagus to cabbage, we picked the asparagus.
Why?
In terms of macros, these are the same, or rather, close enough that the margin of variation is mostly overlapping. So, a tie in this category.
In the category of vitamins, asparagus has more of vitamins A, B1, B2, B4, B5, B9, E, and choline, while cabbage has more of vitamins B6, C, and K. Therefore, a clear win for asparagus here.
When it comes to minerals, asparagus has more copper, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc, while cabbage has more calcium. Another win for asparagus!
Looking at polyphenols, asparagus has more, mostly quercetin. One more win for asparagus.
Adding up the sections makes for a clear overall win for asparagus, but by all means enjoy either or both; diversity is good!
Want to learn more?
You might like:
Fight Inflammation & Protect Your Brain, With Quercetin
Enjoy!
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Feta or Parmesan – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing feta to parmesan, we picked the parmesan.
Why?
It’s close! Looking at the macros, parmesan has more protein and slightly less fat. Of the fat content, parmesan also has slightly less saturated fat, but neither of them are doing great in this category. Still, a relative win for parmesan.
In the category of vitamins, feta is a veritable vitamin-B-fest with more of vitamins B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, and B9. On the other hand, parmesan has more of vitamins A, B12, and choline. By strength of numbers, this is a win for feta.
Minerals tell a different story; parmesan has a lot more calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorus, potassium, selenium, and zinc. Meanwhile, feta is not higher in any minerals. A clear win for parmesan.
Both cheeses offer gut-healthy benefits (if consumed regularly in small portions), while neither are great for the heart.
On balance, we say parmesan wins the day.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Feta Cheese vs Mozzarella – Which is Healthier?
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