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Good morning. We’re midway through the last week of August. In the newsroom yesterday, the televisions flashed CNN chyrons about Taylor Swift’s engagement to Travis Kelce all day. I read another thing about screwworms.
What we know about bruised hands, for no reason
Okay, for this reason: President Trump has been spotted multiple times with a bruise on his hand, most recently in photographs taken during a couple meetings on Monday. STAT’s cardiovascular health reporter Liz Cooney breaks down what could be causing the bruises and what isn’t a likely culprit.
In July, after photos of the President’s swollen ankles went viral, the White House disclosed Trump’s diagnosis with a common condition called chronic venous insufficiency, or CVI for short. By some estimates, approximately 2.5 million people in the U.S. may live with its signature symptom of swollen legs, whether they’ve received a diagnosis or not. It’s unlikely that this is the cause of the bruised hands, but a certain treatment for other vascular-related issues could be involved. Read more from Liz.
Med schools are less diverse after SCOTUS affirmative action decision
Two years ago, the Supreme Court effectively ended affirmative action and race-conscious admissions in higher education. Now, a study published in JAMA Network Open shows that in 2024, there was a significant decrease in medical school acceptance rates for people from racial and ethnic backgrounds that are underrepresented in medicine. And that decrease was particularly concentrated in states where there wasn’t already a state-level ban on affirmative action, suggesting to the authors a direct association with the SCOTUS ruling.
Researchers analyzed data from the five years before the SCOTUS decision (2019-2023) and 2024, the first year afterward. On average, underrepresented students (including American Indian and Alaska Native, Black, and Hispanic students) made up more than 24% of incoming medical students between 2019 and 2023. But in 2024, they were less than 21% of all incoming classes. Overall, that’s 503 fewer students from underrepresented backgrounds.
The data builds on a January report from the Association of American Medical Colleges, which found a steep drop in enrollment of Black and Hispanic medical students between 2023 to 2024. Shortly after that data was released, experts told former STAT legend Usha Lee McFarling that medical schools were overreacting to the SCOTUS decision by halting strategies to diversify classes that were still legally permitted.
Dem senator to investigate private methadone clinics
Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) is demanding information about revenue, patient volumes, and employee numbers from three major methadone clinic chains, STAT’s Lev Facher reports in an exclusive story. In the opioid crisis, the methadone clinics have come under fire for restrictive policies that the clinics categorize as safety measures, but that patient advocates say can discourage people from seeking treatment to begin with.
As an addiction treatment, methadone is only available at around 2,000 specialized clinics across the country, which often impose stringent requirements for patients like mandated counseling, urine drugs test supervised by cameras or staff members, and in many cases, a requirement to physically go to the clinic to receive each dose. The three clinics identified by Hassan make up about 18% of the nation’s clinics. Read more from Lev on what it all means.
A major childhood brain cancer network is ending
The National Cancer Institute is phasing out the Pediatric Brain Tumor Consortium, a prominent clinical trial network that the agency supported for 26 years. The move caused alarm among cancer patient advocates and scientists, who feared that the loss of the PBTC could jeopardize ongoing and planned trials for pediatric brain cancer.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Health and Human Services told STAT that these trials would be completed with other clinical trial networks, notably the Children’s Oncology Group Pediatric Early Phase Clinical Trials Network. “Strengthening PEP-CTN will streamline trial development and enhance capacity for pediatric brain tumor studies,” the Trump administration spokesperson told STAT in an email. “Importantly, we do not anticipate any funding gap for pediatric brain tumor research.”
The lead researchers with PBTC, along with advocates, are hoping for a smooth transition, but told STAT that they remain wary of the process.
“Our hope is that we can find a process and a new home for at least some of the ongoing studies,” said Ira Dunkel, a pediatric oncologist and chair of the PBTC in an interview last week. “There’s a lot of uncertainty right at this moment, but I think everybody agrees that we don’t want to disrupt treatment for any patient.” — Angus Chen and Jason Mast
Filling — then emptying? — the 10/90 gap
For decades, researchers have bemoaned this disparity called the 10/90 gap — meaning that about 10% of global health funding is dedicated to conditions that cause 90% of the world’s disease burden. This imbalance is mainly driven by the way that high income countries dedicate more resources to chronic diseases rather than communicable ones that are more common in developing countries. Now, it looks like that gap is narrowing, but funding cuts to international aid and changing policies on international research collaborations could jeopardize those gains, STAT’s Anil Oza reports.
Researchers analyzed 8.6 million papers published between 1999 and 2021, finding that if the U.S. reduces its funding over the next twenty years, it could undo half the progress made over the last twenty. Read more from Anil on what’s at stake.
How to bring patient voices to medical AI
It’s not hard to see how generative AI has begun making an impact in health care and public health. Clinics are leveraging AI tools to draft clinical notes and messages to patients. The CDC has used social media data to monitor school closures to detect potential emerging outbreaks and forecast overdose trends. But at the same time, harm has already been done. One widely used algorithm in health care underestimated the need for follow-up care for Black patients while overestimating medical need for white patients.
That’s why decision-making about AI in health must include communities affected by those systems, argue physician Oni Blackstock and advocate Akinfe Fatou in a new First Opinion essay. “We propose that generative AI be conceived and developed from the ground up, not from the top down, as is currently the case,” they write. Read more about what this could look like in practice.
What we’re reading
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A teen was suicidal. ChatGPT was the friend he confided in, New York Times
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A mom draws what it’s like to have intrusive thoughts — and how to cope, NPR
- From the archives: How one medical school became remarkably diverse — without considering race in admissions, STAT
- Harvard funding cuts threaten program that aims to help children with rare, undiagnosed diseases, Boston Globe