The new Trump administration could be coming for your snacks.

For years, the federal government has steered clear of regulating junk food, fast food, and ultra-processed food.

The push to reform the American diet is being driven largely by conservatives who have taken up the cause that has long been a darling of the left. Trump supporters such as Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose controversial nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services still faces Senate confirmation, are embracing a concept that champions natural foods and alternative medicine. It’s a movement they’ve dubbed “MAHA,” or Make America Healthy Again. Their interest has created momentum because their goals have fairly broad bipartisan support even amid a bitterly divided Congress in which lawmakers from both sides of the aisle focused on the issue last year.

It’s likely to be a pitched battle because the food industry wields immense political influence and has successfully thwarted previous efforts to regulate its products or marketing. The category of “food processing and sales companies,” which includes Tyson Foods and Nestle SA, tallied $26.7 million in spending on lobbying in 2024, according to OpenSecrets. That’s up from almost $10 million in 1998.

“They have been absolutely instrumental and highly, highly successful at delaying any regulatory effectiveness in America,” said Laura Schmidt, a health policy professor at the University of California-San Francisco. “It really does feel like there needs to be a moment of reckoning here where people start asking the question, ‘Why do we have to live like this?’”

“Ultra-processed food” is a widely used term that means different things to different people and is used to describe items ranging from sodas to many frozen meals. These products often contain added fats, starches, and sugars, among other things. Researchers say consumption of ultra-processed foods is linked — in varying levels of intensity — to chronic conditions like diabetes, cancer, mental health problems, and early death.

Nutrition and health leaders are optimistic that a reckoning is already underway. Kennedy has pledged to remove processed foods from school lunches, restrict certain food additives such as dyes in cereal, and shift federal agricultural subsidies away from commodity crops widely used in ultra-processed foods.

The intensifying focus in Washington has triggered a new level of interest on the legal front as lawyers explore cases to take on major foodmakers for selling products they say result in chronic disease.

Bryce Martinez, now 18, filed a lawsuit in December against almost a dozen foodmakers such as Kraft Heinz, The Coca-Cola Co., and Nestle USA. He developed diabetes and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease by age 16, and is seeking to hold them accountable for his illnesses. According to the suit, filed in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, the companies knew or should have known ultra-processed foods were harmful and addictive.

The lawsuit noted that Martinez grew up eating heavily advertised, brand-name foods that are staples of the American diet — sugary soft drinks, Cheerios and Lucky Charms, Skittles and Snickers, frozen and packaged dinners, just to name a few.

Nestle, Coca-Cola, and Kraft Heinz didn’t return emails seeking comment for this article. The Consumer Brands Association, a trade association for makers of consumer packaged goods, disputed the allegations.

“Attempting to classify foods as unhealthy simply because they are processed, or demonizing food by ignoring its full nutrient content, misleads consumers and exacerbates health disparities,” said Sarah Gallo, senior vice president of product policy, in a statement.

Other law firms are on the hunt for children or adults who believe they were harmed by consuming ultra-processed foods, increasing the likelihood of lawsuits.

One Indiana personal injury firm says on its website that “we are actively investigating ultra processed food (UPF) cases.” Trial attorneys in Texas also are looking into possible legal action against the federal regulators they say have failed to police ultra-processed foods.

“If you or your child have suffered health problems that your doctor has linked directly to the consumption of ultra-processed foods, we want to hear your story,” they say on their website.

Meanwhile, the FDA on Jan. 14 announced it is proposing to require a front-of-package label to appear on most packaged foods to make information about a food’s saturated fat, sodium, and added sugar content easily visible to consumers.

And on Capitol Hill, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) are sounding the alarm over ultra-processed food. Sanders introduced legislation in 2024 that could lead to a federal ban on junk food advertising to children, a national education campaign, and labels on ultra-processed foods that say the products aren’t recommended for children. Booker cosigned the legislation along with Sens. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.).

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions held a December hearing examining links between ultra-processed food and chronic disease during which FDA Commissioner Robert Califf called for more funding for research.

Food companies have tapped into “the same neural circuits that are involved in opioid addiction,” Califf said at the hearing.

Sanders, who presided over the hearing, said there’s “growing evidence” that “these foods are deliberately designed to be addictive,” and he asserted that ultra-processed foods have driven epidemics of diabetes and obesity, and hundreds of billions of dollars in medical expenses.

Research on food and addiction “has accumulated to the point where it’s reached a critical mass,” said Kelly Brownell, an emeritus professor at Stanford who is one of the editors of a scholarly handbook on the subject.

Attacks from three sides — lawyers, Congress, and the incoming Trump administration, all seemingly interested in taking up the fight — could lead to enough pressure to challenge Big Food and possibly spur better health outcomes in the U.S., which has the lowest life expectancy among high-income countries.

“Maybe getting rid of highly processed foods in some things could actually flip the switch pretty quickly in changing the percentage of the American public that are obese,” said Robert Redfield, a virologist who led the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the previous Trump administration, in remarks at a December event hosted by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

Claims that Big Food knowingly manufactured and sold addictive and harmful products resemble the claims leveled against Big Tobacco before the landmark $206 billion settlement was reached in 1998.

“These companies allegedly use the tobacco industry’s playbook to target children, especially Black and Hispanic children, with integrated marketing tie-ins with cartoons, toys, and games, along with social media advertising,” Rene Rocha, one of the lawyers at Morgan & Morgan representing Martinez, told KFF Health News.

The 148-page Martinez lawsuit against foodmakers draws from documents made public in litigation against tobacco companies that owned some of the biggest brands in the food industry.

Similar allegations were made against opioid manufacturers, distributors, and retailers before they agreed to pay tens of billions of dollars in a 2021 settlement with states.

The FDA ultimately put restrictions on the labeling and marketing of tobacco, and the opioid epidemic led to legislation that increased access to lifesaving medications to treat addiction.

But the Trump administration’s zeal in taking on Big Food may face unique challenges.

The ability of the FDA to impose regulation is hampered in part by funding. While the agency’s drug division collects industry user fees, its division of food relies on a more limited budget determined by Congress.

Change can take time because the agency moves at what some critics call a glacial pace. Last year, the FDA revoked a regulation allowing brominated vegetable oil in food products. The agency determined in 1970 that the additive was not generally recognized as safe.

Efforts to curtail the marketing of ultra-processed food could spur lawsuits alleging that any restrictions violate commercial speech protected by the First Amendment. And Kennedy — if he is confirmed as HHS secretary — may struggle to get support from a Republican-led Congress that champions less federal regulation and a president-elect who during his previous term served fast food in the White House.

“The question is, will RFK be able to make a difference?” said David L. Katz, a doctor who founded True Health Initiative, a nonprofit group that combats public health misinformation. “No prior administration has done much in this space, and RFK is linked to a particularly anti-regulatory administration.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. population is recognized as among the most obese in the world and has the highest rate of people with multiple chronic conditions among high-income countries.

“There is a big grassroots effort out there because of how sick we are,” said Jerold Mande, who served as deputy undersecretary for food safety at the Department of Agriculture from 2009 to 2011. “A big part of it is people shouldn’t be this sick this young in their lives. You’re lucky if you get to 18 without a chronic disease. It’s remarkable.”

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump used one of the flurry of executive actions that he issued on his first day back in the White House to begin the process of withdrawing the U.S. from the World Health Organization for the second time in less than five years — a move many scientists fear could roll back decadeslong gains made in fighting diseases like AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

Experts have also cautioned that withdrawing from the organization could weaken the world’s defenses against new outbreaks capable of triggering pandemics.

Here’s a look at what Trump’s decision means:

What happened?

During the first Oval Office appearance of his second term, Trump signed an executive order detailing how the withdrawal process might begin.

“Ooh,” Trump exclaimed as he was handed the action to sign. “That’s a big one!”

His move calls for pausing the future transfer of U.S. government funds to the organization, recalling and reassigning federal personnel and contractors working with WHO and calls on officials to “identify credible and transparent United States and international partners to assume necessary activities previously undertaken by” WHO.

This isn’t the first time Trump has tried to sever ties with WHO. In July 2020, several months after WHO declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic and as cases surged globally, Trump’s administration officially notified U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that the U.S. was planning to pull out of WHO, suspending funding to the agency.

President Joe Biden reversed Trump’s decision on his first day in office in January 2021 — only to have Trump essentially revive it on his first day back at the White House.

What is WHO and does this really matter?

It is the U.N.’s specialized health agency and is mandated to coordinate the world’s response to global health threats, including outbreaks of mpox, Ebola and polio. It also provides technical assistance to poorer countries, helps distribute scarce vaccines, supplies and treatments and sets guidelines for hundreds of health conditions, including mental health and cancer.

“A U.S. withdrawal from WHO would make the world far less healthy and safe,” said Lawrence Gostin, director of the WHO Collaborating Center on Global Health Law at Georgetown University. He said in an email that losing American resources would devastate WHO’s global surveillance and epidemic response efforts.

New Zealand’s former prime minister Helen Clark said it wasn’t in American interests to pull out of the agency now, particularly given the “ghastly proposition” that the increased spread of bird flu there might turn into a pandemic.

She described Trump as “a disruptor” and said the loss of American funding to WHO would cause “quite a substantial dent” to the agency.

Can Trump really withdraw the US from WHO?

Yes, as long as he gets the approval of Congress and the U.S. meets its financial obligations to WHO for the current fiscal year. The U.S. joined WHO via a 1948 joint resolution passed by both chambers of Congress, which has subsequently been supported by all administrations. The resolution requires the U.S. to provide a one-year notice period should it decide to leave WHO.

What does this mean for WHO?

It’s extremely bad. The U.S. has historically been among WHO’s biggest donors, providing the U.N. health agency not only with hundreds of millions of dollars, but also hundreds of staffers with specialized public health expertise.

American agencies that work with WHO would also suffer, including the CDC. Leaving WHO would exclude the U.S. from WHO-coordinated initiatives, like determining the yearly composition of flu vaccines and quick access to genetic databases run by WHO, which could stall attempts to produce immunizations and medicines.

Why is Trump withdrawing the US from WHO?

At a September campaign rally, Trump said he would “take on the corruption” at WHO and other public health institutions that he said were “dominated” by corporate power and China.

His executive order Monday said the U.S. was withdrawing from WHO “due to the organization’s mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that arose out of Wuhan, China and other global health crises” and cited the agency’s “failure to adopt urgently needed reforms” and its “inability to demonstrate independence from the inappropriate political influence of WHO member states.”

WHO made several costly mistakes during the pandemic, including advising people against wearing masks and asserting that COVID-19 was not airborne. The agency only officially acknowledged last year that the virus is indeed spread in the air.

During its efforts to stop COVID-19, WHO also dealt with the biggest sexual abuse scandal in its history, when media reports revealed that dozens of Congolese women had been sexually harassed or assaulted by health responders working to contain Ebola. The AP found senior managers were informed of some instances of sexual abuse when they occurred in 2019 but did little to stop them or punish perpetrators.

What has WHO said?

In a statement Tuesday, WHO said it “regrets” Trump’s announcement.

“We hope the United States will reconsider and we look forward to engaging in constructive dialogue to maintain the partnership between the USA and WHO,” the organization said.

“For over seven decades, WHO and the USA have saved countless lives and protected Americans and all people from health threats. Together, we ended smallpox, and together we have brought polio to the brink of eradication,” WHO said.

At a Geneva news briefing on Tuesday, WHO spokesperson Tarik Jasarevic said the U.S. contributed 18% of WHO’s budget in 2023, making it the single biggest donor that year. He declined to say what the U.S. withdrawal might mean for WHO.

Cheng reported from Toronto. Geir Moulson in Berlin and Jamey Keaten in Davos, Switzerland contributed to this report.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The measure would also empower the state — through eminent domain — to assume control of hospitals that are at risk of closure because of financial instability.

Sen. Saud Anwar, a South Windsor Democrat who is co-chair of the Public Health Committee, said he raised the proposal after researching what authority other states had to intervene in dire situations.

CT officials vow 3 hospitals in bankruptcy won’t close

Rhode Island has a policy that permits hospital receivership, and state officials in Massachusetts can seize hospitals through eminent domain, as was recently done in the case of St. Elizabeth Medical Center, a Steward Health Care-operated facility. Steward has also filed for bankruptcy.

Earlier this month, Prospect Medical sought Chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Northern Texas. The chief executive officer of Prospect’s three Connecticut hospitals — Manchester, Rockville and Waterbury — said payroll continues to be met and Gov. Ned Lamont vowed that the hospitals would remain open.

But it’s unclear what the filing will mean for the pending agreement Prospect signed in 2022 to sell its three Connecticut hospitals to Yale New Haven Health.

Attorney General William Tong recently commented on the need for stronger state authority to intervene when hospitals confront financial hardship.

“We need stronger power and authority to step in when situations like this happen,” Tong said at a press conference last week. “The Rhode Island Attorney General, for example, has receivership power that I don’t have, and he exercised that power in Rhode Island. … As I look at the legislators over here, we’re going to have the conversation about what we need to do in Connecticut.”

New wrinkle in sale of three struggling CT hospitals. ‘We are watching this closely’: state official

The language of Anwar’s bill says lawmakers are trying to “prevent abrupt service interruptions and ensure the continuity of health care services at hospitals,” as well as “allow the state to coordinate long-term solutions when a hospital is in financial distress or experiencing an operational crisis.”

Tong said he supports the measure.

“We are aware of the proposal and would support an expansion of the state’s authority to intervene in these types of situations, including receivership which is not currently an option in Connecticut,” he said in a statement. “More broadly, we remain concerned by the growing influence of private equity over health care, and the challenges posed by consolidation of health care delivery in Connecticut. There needs to be greater oversight and transparency regarding these transactions and acquisitions.”

Nicole Rall, a spokeswoman for the Connecticut Hospital Association, said receivership and eminent domain don’t solve issues of financial distress.

“CHA looks forward to continuing conversations with lawmakers related to what would be helpful in preserving patient care and protecting jobs during a time of crisis, but we also must recognize that receivership and eminent domain do not solve the problems that cause financial hardship in the first place,” Rall said. “Important questions need to be answered about defining financial hardship, how receivership would be used, and why eminent domain for this use should even be considered. We look forward to continuing to work collaboratively on solutions.”

A spokesperson for Prospect Medical did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.

The Connecticut Mirror wrote about the lack of a receivership law in Connecticut last year as Prospect was dealing with financial difficulties and hospital officials were sounding the alarm about deteriorating conditions at the facilities.

The CT Mirror obtained emails that showed a top Lamont adviser raised concerns about the absence of a receivership policy.

“Other states [like Rhode Island] have clear authority to put a hospital into receivership, we do not,” Matthew Brokman, then a senior aide and now chief of staff, wrote in an email.

A spokeswoman for Lamont said Monday the governor plans to also put forward measures that would bolster state oversight of health care.

“We’ve yet to review [Anwar’s] proposal but the governor plans to re-introduce legislation this session that would strengthen the state’s oversight of financial transactions involving hospitals and other health care institutions,” spokeswoman Julia Bergman said.

Although bills that would regulate private equity investment in health care failed to win passage last year, Anwar said he’s optimistic the receivership bill will have good support this legislative session, especially in light of the bankruptcy filing.

“Unfortunately, because of some of the bad actors in private equity, we are seeing hospitals go through significant financial trouble,” Anwar said. “As a last resort, if things do not work out, the state has to [be able to] intervene. I feel like this is life insurance for health care system.”

A Yale New Haven Health spokesperson has said, “Prospect’s decision to file for bankruptcy is much larger than just the state of Connecticut – this is a national matter and of grave concern to many hospitals around the country.

“Yale New Haven Health raised the alarm about this inevitability in the lawsuit we filed last year, recognizing Prospect’s lack of investment and mismanagement of the Connecticut Prospect hospitals,” the spokesperson said recently. “The situation was further exacerbated by their lack of payment to the pension plans and growing debt to the state, local governments and vendors. Many of these same issues were referenced in lawsuits filed by the states of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island regarding Prospect’s mismanagement of their hospitals in those states. We will closely monitor the proceedings and determine what steps, if any, YNHHS will take as part of this process.”

Jenna Carlesso and Dave Altimari are reporters for The Connecticut Mirror (https://ctmirror.org/ ). Copyright 2025 © The Connecticut Mirror.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called the Food and Drug Administration a “corrupt system” that is waging “war on public health.” He has pledged to eliminate “entire departments” at the agency charged with ensuring the safety of the foods Americans eat and the medicines we take, warning the more than 18,000 people who work there to “pack your bags.”

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated Kennedy to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. If he is confirmed by the Senate, Kennedy will have the opportunity to “go wild” on health, foods and medicines, as Trump put it during the campaign.

Remaking the FDA may not be as straightforward — or as desirable — as it seems from the outside, says Dr. Robert Califf. He’s in a position to know: His second stint as the agency’s commissioner came to an end Monday.

Califf’s career has spanned academia, large health systems, the biotech industry, Silicon Valley and the highest echelons of the federal government. His colleagues at the FDA “work just as hard and are at least as smart” as people he’s worked with anywhere else, he said. Public criticism comes with the territory, but things look different when you’re on the inside trying to ensure access to infant formula, make tobacco products less addictive and help consumers understand what’s in their groceries.

Califf spoke to a group of reporters last week on his last day in the FDA’s White Oak campus in Silver Spring, Md. Here’s his advice to those who will take over public health roles in the incoming Trump administration. His comments have been edited for length and clarity.

What do you wish people understood about your job?

This is a job that has a lot of bosses and a lot of constraints. When you’re in the commissioner’s office at FDA, you report to the executive branch. But Congress also thinks it’s your boss. It’s not unheard of for FDA to want to do something and get a message from an important appropriator that, “If you do this, we’re going to cut your budget somewhere else.”

It’s really interesting to me that people think the FDA can just declare this and that. It usually can’t. It usually has to go through a systematic approach. The minute you step beyond the legal boundaries of what the rule book says, you’re going to end up in court. That will get reined in fairly quickly.

How do you expect the new administration to change the FDA?

I have no idea. Right now we have rhetoric, and the rhetoric is contradictory. We just have to wait and see.

Some of the people who have been nominated to positions have been very critical, implying that there are nefarious motives of people working in public heath agencies. It feels a lot different when you have to make the decision and be accountable for it as opposed to criticizing the decision.

I have a copy of [President Theodore] Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena” speech above my desk at home to remind myself every day that you get all this criticism from people who are not actually doing the work. It’s better to be in the arena trying to do the best that you can do.

Kennedy says he wants to get rid of certain departments within FDA. Are there areas you’re most worried about?

I’m worried about every part of the FDA. I don’t think you’ll find people at FDA doing work that no one cares about.

If you look at the food side of the FDA and the inspectorate, it’s massively underfunded. If you cut that — especially if you’re also saying we need to radically change the food system — that would be a problem.

Kennedy wants to see big changes in the food and health industries. Is that realistic?

Slogans are easy, and they sound really tough, but it’s a little different when you get into the to-and-fro. The lobbies that have very much created this food system are powerful. Maybe they can be overcome. There’s a possibility that things could be done for public health that couldn’t be done before.

The other part of this is if you really want to change the food system, you’d better have a 10- or 20-year plan. If you pronounced today, “No ultra-processed foods in SNAP or other federally assisted programs,” the farming industry would crash. I’m not saying that’s a reason to keep it the way it is. What I am saying is you’d better have a very carefully thought-out plan which sustains the economy, not just a bunch of slogans.

Trump said he would investigate claims about vaccines and autism. How should the FDA respond?

Anyone that investigates this will find that the risks and benefits are already delineated. There are dozens of studies that show no relationship between vaccination and autism. It wouldn’t be where I would spend my time, but if he wanted to do it, I think he’ll find that things are already well-documented.

That doesn’t mean that post-market surveillance couldn’t be better. It’s not a great way to have things that every time a question needs to be answered for public health, you need to get permission from every state and territory.

But I don’t think people are going to find any surprises. It’s all out there. For there to be any kind of conspiracy, it would take a whole lot of people outside of government deciding to work together. I’ve lived in America my whole life. It’s hard to get anybody to work together on things.

You’ve called misinformation a leading cause of death. Is it getting better or worse?

We’re losing the battle on misinformation. I’m not talking specifically about FDA. I’m talking about all of us.

To me it’s very clear that a lot of people died who would not have died had they just gotten a free COVID vaccine, and had they not been misled or been made to feel doubtful by people peddling incorrect information.

Often people who are experts in one area have opinions about another area, then when someone disagrees they call it misinformation. It’s a lot easier to put out a slogan or to make something up than it is to worry about whether you’ve got it right and take the time and effort to go to sources and get the right information.

We’re losing the battle right now because of this intersection of social media and cultural changes that have happened. It threatens a lot of the basis for public health. We’ve got to create networks of people who are dedicated to the truth.

What advice do you have for the new health leadership?

Change doesn’t come so easily in government. If we move at least five people, it has to get a congressional review. This makes it really hard.

When possible, use evidence for decision-making. I’ve heard a lot of tweets and short social media things saying, “We’re going to do this, we’re going to do that.” Let’s see the evidence about what an effective treatment is, and then if it’s good, go with it.

Those are my two main pieces of advice.

©2025 Los Angeles Times. Visit at latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nothing doctors prescribed controlled Michael Garrity’s dangerously high blood pressure — until they zapped away some nerves on his kidneys.

If that sounds weird, well, kidneys help regulate blood pressure in part through signals from certain nerves. The new treatment disrupts overactive renal nerves.

“My blood pressure would spike and I’d run out of breath and feel tired, and that doesn’t happen anymore,” said Garrity, 62, of Needham, Massachusetts. He still takes medicine but at lower doses, his blood pressure normal for the first time in years. “I’m thrilled.”

About half of U.S. adults have high blood pressure, a major risk for heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure, even dementia. Many people don’t even realize they have hypertension until it’s done serious damage.

“Know your blood pressure, know the numbers,” stressed Dr. Randy Zusman of Massachusetts General Hospital, who specializes in the hardest-to-treat cases and advises people who think they’re fine to at least get a yearly check.

And only a fraction of patients have their hypertension well-controlled, meaning there’s a need for novel strategies. The Food and Drug Administration approved that “renal denervation” option about a year ago, based on studies showing a modest benefit in patients whose blood pressure remains high despite multiple medicines.

Now, after the American Heart Association recently deemed it promising, some hospitals including Mass General Brigham are cautiously offering it as they work out who are good candidates — and whether their insurance will cover a minimally invasive procedure costing thousands of dollars.

What is high blood pressure?

Two numbers describe blood pressure. The top, “systolic” pressure, is the force blood puts on the walls of arteries as its pumped out of the heart. The bottom “diastolic” number measures that same pressure but between heartbeats.

Normal is less than 120 over 80. Blood pressure naturally fluctuates throughout the day, higher when you’re physically active or stressed. But when it stays high — consistently 130 over 80 or higher, according to the most recent guidelines — it stiffens arteries and makes the heart work harder.

How to measure blood pressure

It doesn’t take a doctor’s visit. Pharmacies and sometimes even libraries offer screening, and people can use at-home monitors.

To avoid falsely high readings, the American Medical Association has tips: Sit quietly with feet on the floor, legs not crossed. Place the cuff on a bare arm, not over clothing. Don’t dangle the arm — rest it on a table.

Drugs aren’t the only way to treat high blood pressure

Lifestyle changes are the first step, especially for otherwise healthy people. Guidelines urge losing weight, exercise, eating more fruits and vegetables, limiting salt and alcohol, and taking steps to handle stress.

Medicine is a must once hypertension reaches 140 over 90. The average patient requires two or three drugs, sometimes more, along with healthier living, Zusman said.

But the hypertension Garrity has struggled with since his late 20s is treatment-resistant. Despite taking four to six drugs plus a strict diet and exercise, his blood pressure regularly reached 150 over 100 or worse.

What is renal denervation?

Doctors thread a small catheter, or tube, through blood vessels to reach the kidneys, and then beam in ultrasound or radiofrequency energy. Those pulses pass through the renal arteries to selectively target surrounding nerves, said Dr. Joseph Garasic, a Mass General interventional cardiologist who performed Garrity’s procedure. It takes about an hour.

Although already used in other countries, a key U.S. trial of renal denervation failed about a decade ago, prompting changes before researchers tried again. In November 2023, the FDA approved two catheter systems, from Recor Medical and Medtronic.

It’s not a cure – and some patients get no benefit. But Garasic said multiple studies show on average an 8 to 10-point drop in blood pressure, a modest but important improvement. Some like Garrity see a bigger drop, enough to gradually scale back medications.

The FDA deemed the procedure safe for carefully chosen patients — it wasn’t tested in those with kidney disease or narrowed arteries, for example. And studies have lasted only a few years, not long enough to tell if the nerves might eventually regenerate.

Guidance from the American Heart Association urges would-be patients and experienced doctors to have “thoughtful and informed discussions” to decide who’s a good candidate.

—

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

More than 60 infants younger than 4 months were hospitalized in the state. One died.

Whooping cough, or pertussis, is just the most stark example of what happens when vaccination rates decline. But it is far from the only one.

How measles, whooping cough, and worse could roar back on RFK Jr.’s watch

The pandemic interrupted childhood immunizations across the country, and rates have not yet recovered. As a result, hundreds of thousands of children are increasingly vulnerable to diseases once largely relegated to history books.

Most of them predominantly affect young children, like measles, mumps and rubella. But if immunizations continue to fall over the next few years — because of rising distrust, or more restrictive federal policies — preventable infectious diseases will resurface in all age groups, experts say.

“It might take a year or two, but there’s no question,” said Pejman Rohani, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Georgia.

“We will have outbreaks,” he said.

It’s not just the unvaccinated who will have to worry. Even adults who were vaccinated decades ago may find themselves vulnerable to what are now considered childhood diseases.

Most people have forgotten the dangers of childhood diseases, said Dr. Alex Richter, a clinical immunologist at the University of Birmingham in Britain, where there are worrying upticks in measles and mumps.

Just a few decades ago, many children younger than 5 died from infectious illnesses. Now children are more threatened by traffic accidents, drug overdoses and gun violence while disease has faded as a concern.

“That could all change if we don’t continue with vaccine policies,” Richter said.

High vaccination rates in a community protect not just the vaccinated, but also people who cannot receive some vaccines or who may not respond to them because of certain medical conditions, their age or weakened immune systems.

If fewer people are vaccinated, “we are making an active decision to make the world a less safe place for a significant proportion of the population,” Richter said.

For example, rubella, or German measles, can be dangerous for pregnant women and their babies. Yet pregnant women cannot be immunized against the disease because the vaccine contains a weakened live virus.

These days, they are typically not at risk, because there are fewer than a dozen rubella cases in the United States each year. That may change if vaccination rates drop. Worldwide, rubella is the leading vaccine-preventable cause of birth defects.

“If you’ve got nonimmune mothers catching rubella, then you have the lifelong complications of blindness and deafness and everything else,” Richter said.

Elsa Sjunneson knows that only too well. Her mother was infected with rubella during an outbreak in New York City in 1985 when she was pregnant, and Sjunneson was born with congenital rubella syndrome, or CRS.

In her case, that meant thick cataracts, hearing loss and a heart defect.

Before her first birthday, she had two surgeries that mostly fixed the heart defect, and seven eye surgeries that did not entirely restore her vision. She is blind in her right eye, has limited vision in the left and still needs hearing aids.

“I actually was really lucky — a lot of people who were born with CRS didn’t survive,” said Sjunneson, who is a disability advocate and champions vaccination for rubella. “People don’t deserve to be exposed to diseases that can kill them.”

Anti-vaccine campaigns have often targeted the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella. Experts tend to worry most about a resurgence of measles.

The virus is extraordinarily contagious, lingering in the air for up to two hours after an infected person has left the room. Each infected person can spread the virus to as many as 18 others.

The past offers a preview: In the late 1980s, budget cuts by the Reagan administration brought down vaccination rates, particularly among low-income Black and Hispanic children.

The fallout was swift. From 1989 through 1991, measles infected more than 55,000 Americans and killed 166.

Vaccines for low income children lag behind, CDC study finds

Before the first measles vaccine was introduced in the 1960s, the disease killed an estimated 2.6 million people worldwide each year. The virus cripples immune defenses, leaving the body vulnerable to other pathogens.

A 2015 study estimated that before widespread vaccination, measles may have accounted for as many as half of all infectious disease deaths in children. Even now, the consequences can be serious. About 40% of people infected last year were hospitalized, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Before the pandemic, immunization rates for MMR and for pertussis held steady at roughly 95%, in part because of requirements for admission to public schools.

A drop during the pandemic was not surprising. But even as society has returned to normal, vaccination rates have continued to decline, dipping below 93% nationwide for the 2023-24 school year.

That means about 280,000 schoolchildren remain susceptible to these diseases, raising the risk of outbreaks in schools and other public spaces.

Unvaccinated adults are at risk, of course, but so are those who do not mount an adequate immune response to vaccines or who received only a single dose.

And there is another unexpected consequence to declining vaccination rates.

The immunity induced by some vaccines can wear off over the decades. The decline means that if outbreaks were to occur more often, even vaccinated adults might be vulnerable to certain illnesses.

In rare cases, for example, immunity gained from the measles vaccine may wane. Of the 284 measles cases recorded among Americans last year, 11% were in people who had received one or two doses of the vaccine.

That may help explain why 27% of cases were adults older than 20.

“We’ve now moved away from a time when measles was only in children,” said Alexis Robert, a research fellow in infectious disease modeling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Immunity against mumps also may decline. Although vaccination overall has decreased the number of mumps cases 99%, there have been outbreaks in schools and universities, where students have close, prolonged contact.

Mumps is often a mild condition in children, but it can sometimes cause fertility problems in boys and severe complications in adults.

But whooping cough may be the illness that even vaccinated children and adults should worry most about.

The illness may be mistaken for a typical respiratory infection at first, but it can bloom into a painful, full-body “100-day cough.” Each bout of coughing ends with a whooping sound, and may result in vomiting, cracked ribs and difficulty breathing.

Decades ago, the vaccine relied on whole cells from the bacteria that cause whooping cough. It was potent but harsh, often setting off high fevers and seizures.

“There’s no way, I mean absolutely no way, that parents would tolerate that sort of reaction currently,” said Dr. Kathryn Edwards, a vaccine expert who has studied pertussis for 40 years.

A newer version of the vaccine, introduced in the 1990s, is much easier on the body. In most people, this formulation provides decades of protection against severe disease.

But the new pertussis vaccines do not fully prevent infection, and sometimes, the protection wears off.

Experts now believe this is one reason that more adolescents than young children have become infected with whooping cough during outbreaks in recent years.

“That was really the first hint” of declining vaccine immunity, Edwards said. The CDC now recommends a booster dose for adolescents.

If the vaccination rates were to fall to 75% in the next few years, older adults who received the original vaccine might still be protected.

But people who were never immunized or adults who received the newer vaccine as children might be susceptible.

According to epidemiological modeling by Rohani and his colleagues, cases would rise most drastically in infants — who are too young to be fully vaccinated — and in children ages 5-15.

School-aged children tend to have the most contacts, so they are the “core transmission groups,” Rohani said.

He and other experts said they hoped vaccination rates would not tumble sharply, and worried about the consequences of even modest declines.

Vaccines are always a tougher sell than treatments, because they are given to healthy individuals, Richter said.

In the extremely rare cases when someone experiences a serious side effect, it can be catastrophic.

“All you need is one or two of those stories to have a massive impact on vaccine takeup,” she said. “This is where you have a tension between community and individual.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

In fact, the researchers found, the shift to teletherapy has exacerbated existing disparities.

The increase in psychotherapy has occurred among groups that already enjoyed more access: people in higher-income brackets, living in cities, with steady employment and more education, researchers found in a series of studies, the most recent of which was published last week in The American Journal of Psychiatry.

Among those who have not benefited from the boom, the team found, are children from low-income families, Black children and adolescents, and adults with “serious psychological distress.”

“I think that the whole system of care — and maybe the internet delivery is a piece of this — appears to be pivoting away from those in greatest need,” said Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and the lead author of the studies on access to care.

“We’re seeing that those with the greatest distress are losing ground, in terms of their likelihood of being treated, and that to me is a very important and disconcerting trend,” he added.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. In the 1990s, teletherapy was championed as a way to reach disadvantaged patients living in remote locations where there were few psychiatrists. A decade later, it was presented as a more accessible alternative to face-to-face sessions, one that could radically lower barriers to care.

“Telehealth did not live up to the hype,” said C. Vaile Wright, senior director of the office of health care innovation at the American Psychological Association. The reasons, she added, are no surprise: Many Americans lack access to reliable broadband, and insurers do not adequately reimburse providers, who, in turn, choose to treat privately paying clients.

“If you can’t afford it, no matter the modality, you just can’t afford it,” Wright said. It may be, she added, that weekly therapy sessions are simply not scalable to a broad population and the field should explore light-touch alternatives, like single-session interventions and digital therapeutics.

As telehealth platforms grow, they may be attracting clinicians from community settings with the promise of flexible hours and better conditions, said Dr. Jane M. Zhu, an associate professor of medicine at Oregon Health and Science University who studies the accessibility of mental health services.

Selecting from a large patient pool, they may opt to treat patients with milder conditions and more ability to pay. “It’s certainly something we should know,” Zhu said. “There should be light around this. Who are these companies serving? And what does this mean for patients who are most in need?”

The percentage of Americans receiving psychotherapy remained relatively steady, at 3% to 4%, for decades before beginning a gradual rise, said Olfson.

Then two factors — the pandemic and the explosion of teletherapy — contributed to a sharp increase, with the number of adults receiving psychotherapy rising to 8.5% in 2021 from 6.5% in 2018. (By comparison, the annual percentage of adults taking psychotropic medication remained stable, at around 17.5%.)

Olfson said he was surprised by the magnitude of the increase. “We haven’t had something like COVID before, and we haven’t had this technology before,” Olfson said. “There was a lot of social isolation, a lot of loneliness. And those are things that psychotherapy is designed to address, in a way that medication can’t.”

The findings are based on the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, which is conducted by the federal government and measures how American civilians use and pay for health care. The survey does not include those in the military, incarcerated or in nursing homes, hospitals or homeless shelters.

Previous studies, based on insurance data, showed that Americans’ mental health spending increased by 54% from 2020 to 2022, amid a tenfold increase in the use of teletherapy.

The new studies flesh out which Americans are receiving the care. An analysis of 89,619 adults published in JAMA Psychiatry last month found psychotherapy use grew most among the youngest respondents, among the most educated and among those in the highest two income brackets.

An analysis of the use of telehealth by children and adolescents from 2,445 households reached similar conclusions. The study found that children from wealthier families, using private insurance, were far more likely to use teletherapy. Children in urban areas were nearly three times as likely to use it as their rural counterparts.

During the years of the pandemic, the use of mental health services by Black children and adolescents decreased, falling to 4% in 2021 from 9.2% in 2019. In the same period, the use of mental health care among white children rose, to 18.4% from 15.1%, the team found in another study.

“What we find is that it does appear to be just exacerbating existing disparities,” Olfson said. “I think there’s a real need to try to address that.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Bill Hall, 71, has been fighting for his life for 38 years. These days, he’s feeling worn out.

But that’s only part of what Hall, a gay man, has dealt with. Hall was born into the Tlingit tribe in a small fishing village in Alaska. He was separated from his family at age 9 and sent to a government boarding school. There, he told me, he endured years of bullying and sexual abuse that “killed my spirit.”

Because of the trauma, Hall said, he’s never been able to form an intimate relationship. He contracted HIV from anonymous sex at bath houses he used to visit. He lives alone in Seattle and has been on his own throughout his adult life.

“It’s really difficult to maintain a positive attitude when you’re going through so much,” said Hall, who works with Native American community organizations. “You become mentally exhausted.”

It’s a sentiment shared by many older LGBTQ+ adults — most of whom, like Hall, are trying to manage on their own.

Of the 3 million Americans over age 50 who identify as gay, bisexual, or transgender, about twice as many are single and living alone when compared with their heterosexual counterparts, according to the National Resource Center on LGBTQ+ Aging.

This slice of the older population is expanding rapidly. By 2030, the number of LGBTQ+ seniors is expected to double. Many won’t have partners and most won’t have children or grandchildren to help care for them, AARP research indicates.

They face a daunting array of problems, including higher-than-usual rates of anxiety and depression, chronic stress, disability, and chronic illnesses such as heart disease, according to numerous research studies. High rates of smoking, alcohol use, and drug use — all ways people try to cope with stress — contribute to poor health.

Keep in mind, this generation grew up at a time when every state outlawed same-sex relations and when the American Psychiatric Association identified homosexuality as a psychiatric disorder. Many were rejected by their families and their churches when they came out. Then, they endured the horrifying impact of the AIDS crisis.

“Dozens of people were dying every day,” Hall said. “Your life becomes going to support groups, going to visit friends in the hospital, going to funerals.”

It’s no wonder that LGBTQ+ seniors often withdraw socially and experience isolation more commonly than other older adults. “There was too much grief, too much anger, too much trauma — too many people were dying,” said Vincent Crisostomo, director of aging services for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. “It was just too much to bear.”

In an AARP survey of 2,200 LGBTQ+ adults 45 or older this year, 48% said they felt isolated from others and 45% reported lacking companionship. Almost 80% reported being concerned about having adequate social support as they grow older.

Embracing aging isn’t easy for anyone, but it can be especially difficult for LGBTQ+ seniors who are long-term HIV survivors like Hall.

Of 1.2 million people living with HIV in the United States, about half are over age 50. By 2030, that’s estimated to rise to 70%.

Christopher Christensen, 72, of Palm Springs, California, has been HIV-positive since May 1981 and is deeply involved with local organizations serving HIV survivors. “A lot of people living with HIV never thought they’d grow old — or planned for it — because they thought they would die quickly,” Christensen said.

Jeff Berry is executive director of the Reunion Project, an alliance of long-term HIV survivors. “Here people are who survived the AIDS epidemic, and all these years later their health issues are getting worse and they’re losing their peers again,” Berry said. “And it’s triggering this post-traumatic stress that’s been underlying for many, many years. Yes, it’s part of getting older. But it’s very, very hard.”

Being on their own, without people who understand how the past is informing current challenges, can magnify those difficulties.

“Not having access to supports and services that are both LGBTQ-friendly and age-friendly is a real hardship for many,” said Christina DaCosta, chief experience officer at SAGE, the nation’s largest and oldest organization for older LGBTQ+ adults.

Diedra Nottingham, a 74-year-old gay woman, lives alone in a one-bedroom apartment in Stonewall House, an LGBTQ+-friendly elder housing complex in New York City. “I just don’t trust people,“ she said. “And I don’t want to get hurt, either, by the way people attack gay people.”

When I first spoke to Nottingham in 2022, she described a post-traumatic-stress-type reaction to so many people dying of covid-19 and the fear of becoming infected. This was a common reaction among older people who are gay, bisexual, or transgender and who bear psychological scars from the AIDS epidemic.

Nottingham was kicked out of her house by her mother at age 14 and spent the next four years on the streets. The only sibling she talks with regularly lives across the country in Seattle. Four partners whom she’d remained close with died in short order in 1999 and 2000, and her last partner passed away in 2003.

When I talked to her in September, Nottingham said she was benefiting from weekly therapy sessions and time spent with a volunteer “friendly visitor” arranged by SAGE. Yet she acknowledged: “I don’t like being by myself all the time the way I am. I’m lonely.”

Donald Bell, a 74-year-old gay Black man who is co-chair of the Illinois Commission on LGBTQ Aging, lives alone in a studio apartment in subsidized LGBTQ+-friendly senior housing in Chicago. He spent 30 years caring for two elderly parents who had serious health issues, while he was also a single father, raising two sons he adopted from a niece.

Bell has very little money, he said, because he left work as a higher-education administrator to care for his parents. “The cost of health care bankrupted us,” he said. (According to SAGE, one-third of older LGBTQ+ adults live at or below 200% of the federal poverty level.) He has hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, and nerve damage in his feet. These days, he walks with a cane.

To his great regret, Bell told me, he’s never had a long-term relationship. But he has several good friends in his building and in the city.

“Of course I experience loneliness,” Bell said when we spoke in June. “But the fact that I am a Black man who has lived to 74, that I have not been destroyed, that I have the sanctity of my own life and my own person is a victory and something for which I am grateful.”

Now he wants to be a model to younger gay men and accept aging rather than feeling stuck in the past. “My past is over,” Bell said, “and I must move on.”

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Throughout her childhood, Julia Lo Cascio dreamed of becoming a pediatrician. So, when applying to medical school, she was thrilled to discover a new, small school founded specifically to train primary care doctors: NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine.

Lo Cascio, 24, said her three-year accelerated program nurtured her goal of becoming a pediatrician. Could other medical schools do more to promote primary care? The question could not be more urgent. The Association of American Medical Colleges projects a shortage of 20,200 to 40,400 primary care doctors by 2036. This means many Americans will lose out on the benefits of primary care, which research shows improves health, leading to fewer hospital visits and less chronic illness.

Many medical students start out expressing interest in primary care. Then they end up at schools based in academic medical centers, where students become enthralled by complex cases in hospitals, while witnessing little primary care.

The driving force is often money, said Andrew Bazemore, a physician and a senior vice president at the American Board of Family Medicine. “Subspecialties tend to generate a lot of wealth, not only for the individual specialists, but for the whole system in the hospital,” he said.

A department’s cache of federal and pharmaceutical-company grants often determines its size and prestige, he said. And at least 12 medical schools, including Harvard, Yale, and Johns Hopkins, don’t even have full-fledged family medicine departments. Students at these schools can study internal medicine, but many of those graduates end up choosing subspecialties like gastroenterology or cardiology.

One potential solution: eliminate tuition, in the hope that debt-free students will base their career choice on passion rather than paycheck. In 2024, two elite medical schools — the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine — announced that charitable donations are enabling them to waive tuition, joining a handful of other tuition-free schools.

But the contrast between the school Lo Cascio attends and the institution that founded it starkly illustrates the limitations of this approach. Neither charges tuition.

In 2024, two-thirds of students graduating from her Long Island school chose residencies in primary care. Lo Cascio said the tuition waiver wasn’t a deciding factor in choosing pediatrics, among the lowest-paid specialties, with an average annual income of $260,000, according to Medscape.

At the sister school, the Manhattan-based NYU Grossman School of Medicine, the majority of its 2024 graduates chose specialties like orthopedics (averaging $558,000 a year) or dermatology ($479,000).

Primary care typically gets little respect. Professors and peers alike admonish students: If you’re so smart, why would you choose primary care? Anand Chukka, 27, said he has heard that refrain regularly throughout his years as a student at Harvard Medical School. Even his parents, both PhD scientists, wondered if he was wasting his education by pursuing primary care.

Seemingly minor issues can influence students’ decisions, Chukka said. He recalls envying the students on hospital rotations who routinely were served lunch, while those in primary care settings had to fetch their own.

Despite such headwinds, Chukka, now in his final year, remains enthusiastic about primary care. He has long wanted to care for poor and other underserved people, and a one-year clerkship at a community practice serving low-income patients reinforced that plan.

When students look to the future, especially if they haven’t had such exposure, primary care can seem grim, burdened with time-consuming administrative tasks, such as seeking prior authorizations from insurers and grappling with electronic medical records.

While specialists may also face bureaucracy, primary care practices have it much worse: They have more patients and less money to hire help amid burgeoning paperwork requirements, said Caroline Richardson, chair of family medicine at Brown University’s Warren Alpert Medical School.

“It’s not the medical schools that are the problem; it’s the job,” Richardson said. “The job is too toxic.”

Kevin Grumbach, a professor of family and community medicine at the University of California-San Francisco, spent decades trying to boost the share of students choosing primary care, only to conclude: “There’s really very little that we can do in medical school to change people’s career trajectories.”

Instead, he said, the U.S. health care system must address the low pay and lack of support.

And yet, some schools find a way to produce significant proportions of primary care doctors — through recruitment and programs that provide positive experiences and mentors.

U.S. News & World Report recently ranked 168 medical schools by the percentage of graduates who were practicing primary care six to eight years after graduation.

The top 10 schools are all osteopathic medical schools, with 41% to 47% of their students still practicing primary care. Unlike allopathic medical schools, which award MD degrees, osteopathic schools, which award DO degrees, have a history of focusing on primary care and are graduating a growing share of the nation’s primary care physicians.

At the bottom of the U.S. News list is Yale, with 10.7% of its graduates finding lasting careers in primary care. Other elite schools have similar rates: Johns Hopkins, 13.1%; Harvard, 13.7%.

In contrast, public universities that have made it a mission to promote primary care have much higher numbers.

The University of Washington — No. 18 in the ranking, with 36.9% of graduates working in primary care — has a decades-old program placing students in remote parts of Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. UW recruits students from those areas, and many go back to practice there, with more than 20% of graduates settling in rural communities, according to Joshua Jauregui, assistant dean for clinical curriculum.

Likewise, the University of California-Davis (No. 22, with 36.3% of graduates in primary care) increased the percentage of students choosing family medicine from 12% in 2009 to 18% in 2023, even as it ranks high in specialty training. Programs such as an accelerated three-year primary care “pathway,” which enrolls primarily first-generation college students, help sustain interest in non-specialty medical fields.

The effort starts with recruitment, looking beyond test scores to the life experiences that forge the compassionate, humanistic doctors most needed in primary care, said Mark Henderson, associate dean for admissions and outreach. Most of the students have families who struggle to get primary care, he said. “So they care a lot about it, and it’s not just an intellectual, abstract sense.”

Establishing schools dedicated to primary care, like the one on Long Island, is not a solution in the eyes of some advocates, who consider primary care the backbone of medicine and not a separate discipline. Toyese Oyeyemi Jr., executive director of the Social Mission Alliance at the Fitzhugh Mullan Institute of Health Workforce Equity, worries that establishing such schools might let others “off the hook.”

Still, attending a medical school created to produce primary care doctors worked out well for Lo Cascio. Although she underwent the usual specialty rotations, her passion for pediatrics never flagged — owing to her 23 classmates, two mentors, and her first-year clerkship shadowing a community pediatrician. Now, she’s applying for pediatric residencies.

Lo Cascio also has deep personal reasons: Throughout her experience with a congenital heart condition, her pediatrician was a “guiding light.”

“No matter what else has happened in school, in life, in the world, and medically, your pediatrician is the person that you can come back to,” she said. “What a beautiful opportunity it would be to be that for someone else.”

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A handful of states, including Massachusetts and New Jersey, have either begun — or intend to begin — stockpiling mifepristone to facilitate access to the drug in the wake of threats to curb its availability. Connecticut had considered doing the same, but ultimately, the Lamont administration decided against it because of concerns about cost, Rep. Jillian Gilchrest, D-West Hartford, said at the State Capitol.

“There were calls from the governor’s office and others in this building to stockpile mifepristone, and when presented with two viable options, we were met with a hesitation to put the money up,” said Gilchrest, who was spearheading the efforts and serves as co-chair of the Human Services Committee.

The two options, presented to the governor’s staff in early December, included a plan to have UConn Health stockpile the drug, which would have cost roughly $1.2 million, and another to have Planned Parenthood do so, which would have cost around $850,000, according to Gilchrest. The price tag for the Planned Parenthood option was lower because the organization purchases mifepristone at a reduced rate and already has a purchasing process in place, Gilchrest said.

The governor’s office confirmed Thursday that the state has no plans to amass and store the drug. “The Governor has a strong record of protecting and strengthening access to reproductive healthcare in Connecticut,” Julia Bergman, a spokesperson for the governor, wrote in an email. “We’ve consulted family planning advocacy organizations and healthcare providers. The state does not currently have any plans to stockpile mifepristone.”

Bergman added that the state will “continue to respond to” the needs of and “partner with” family planning advocacy organizations and health care providers.

Mifepristone is taken along with another drug, misoprostol, to end a pregnancy. The combined treatment is known as the “abortion pill” or medication abortion. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration first approved mifepristone in 2000.

Data from a 2023 study found that medication abortion is used in well over half of abortions in the United States, with the numbers increasing since 2020. In 2021, there were 9,562 abortions performed in Connecticut. Of those, nearly 64% were medication abortion using mifepristone.

Following President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in November, Connecticut Senate Democratic leadership sent a letter to Lamont urging him to work with the legislature to prepare for the incoming administration and praising him for action he’d already taken, including a plan to stockpile mifepristone.

“We appreciate the efforts of your administration, the Department of Public Health, UConn, legislators, and others who are currently developing a plan to stockpile doses of mifepristone. States such as Massachusetts, Washington, and New York have already taken similar actions, and we are pleased that Connecticut plans to follow their lead,” Sen. Martin Looney, D-New Haven, and Sen. Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, wrote in the letter.

A spokesperson for Sens. Looney and Duff did not respond to requests for comment last week.

Several states, including Massachusetts, began stockpiling the drug after a federal court ruling in Texas blocked the FDA’s approval of mifepristone in April 2023. Last June, the Supreme Court dismissed that case based on legal standing, preserving access for now.

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced Tuesday that the state would join others and begin stockpiling the drug ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration today, on Monday.

Stockpiling mifepristone would help to guard against an effort outlined in Project 2025, the conservative governing plan developed by the Heritage Foundation with assistance from many officials connected to Trump’s first term. The plan makes calls to invoke the 150-year-old federal Comstock Act in order to prosecute providers who send mifepristone by mail. Project 2025 also proposes revoking FDA approval of the drug.

“I am disappointed that at this point in time, we have yet to do anything to stockpile mifepristone in the case of a change to the Comstock Act,” Gilchrest said.

Connecticut is generally considered a “safe haven” for reproductive rights, with some of the strongest protections around the country.

Legislation passed in 2022 made Connecticut a legal “safe harbor” for those who travel here from another state to receive an abortion and for the clinicians who perform them. It also expanded the type of providers who can perform first-trimester abortions to include nurse midwives, advanced practice registered nurses and physician assistants. In 2023, lawmakers passed a bill protecting medical providers in Connecticut who face disciplinary action in other states for performing abortions.

At the recommendation of the governor, the Appropriations and Human Services Committees last week approved an additional $500,000 in federal funding for Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, under what’s known as the Social Services Block Grant, to help support the increased demand for services. The funds will go towards annual exams, cancer screenings, birth control and other family planning services.

Planned Parenthood of Southern New England President Amanda Skinner said in the two weeks following the November 5 election the organization saw a 39% increase in its number of weekly average appointments for “long-acting reversible contraceptives.”

“People in Connecticut are scared about what this means for their ability to get the care they need,” Skinner stated.

However, because the block grant funding comes from the federal government, it cannot go towards abortion-related services, which includes stockpiling mifepristone.

Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, co-chair of the Appropriations Committee, said there could be legislative proposals this year seeking to allocate funds towards stockpiling the drug. But she said she questions their chances of success if they were to make it to her committee’s desk.

“I’m not certain where we would be on that,” Osten said. “We have a lot of asks and we are not putting any one thing in front of any other thing.”

Katy Golvala is reporter for the Connecticut Mirror. Copyright 2025 @ CT Mirror (ctmirror.org).