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Good morning. As a reminder, STAT’s Isabella Cueto and J. Emory Parker are keeping track of every promise made by health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about reworking American health care. They just updated their tracker with information about new opioid labeling, forthcoming dietary guidelines, autism announcements, and more. Check it out after you read the great new profile of Kennedy from some of my other colleagues.
This app wants to help truckers get healthy
Out of 3.5 million truckers working in the U.S., more than two thirds have obesity. Truck drivers are twice as likely to have type 2 diabetes compared to the general population, and on average, they die at just 61 years old.
Offshift, a digital health app and coaching program, is hoping to change that. The advice is tailored to truckers, building eating tips around the sort of food available roadside and exercise routines that accommodate tight space and limited breaks. It’s one of a broad group of programs that help users build a healthy lifestyle to prevent or manage chronic disease.
Steve Jones and his wife Gina, above, have recently started working with a coach through the company. One of Gina’s hacks: Using an exercise step inside the truck while Steve fuels up. “The truck’s rocking and the antennas are moving,” she told STAT’s Katie Palmer, “and I’m sure they’re thinking, ‘What’s going on!?’” Read more from Katie about why most truckers struggle to improve their health and what business hurdles Offshift has yet to clear.
74,000
NIH funding cuts have affected more than 74,000 people who were enrolled in experiments, according to a report published yesterday in JAMA Internal Medicine. Between the end of February and mid-August, 383 studies lost funding. They were testing treatments for conditions like cancer, heart disease, and brain disease. Read more.
Why vaccine makers are worried about removing aluminum
Leaders in the Trump administration are determined to reshape American vaccine policy. Right now, they are weighing two main proposals, both of which go against evidence on safety and efficacy. The first is to break up the measles-mumps-rubella combination shot into three separate ones. The other is to remove aluminum from any vaccine that currently contains it.
If policymakers follow through on these ideas, vaccine makers would have to develop alternatives to several key vaccines, a process that can take a decade or more and cost upwards of $1 billion, employees of vaccine makers told STAT’s Daniel Payne. And the changes would impact a substantial share of the shots on the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule. Read more from Daniel, who spoke with seven people inside two major vaccine makers about the fallout that could come from federal action.
Inside Kennedy’s rise at HHS
In his first hours as health secretary, Kennedy signaled to his staff that there would be no easing into things. He pulled out a white board and scribbled his priorities for shaking up federal policy, unleashing wide-ranging changes that have thrilled supporters and horrified critics. In the nine months since his confirmation, Kennedy has emerged as a surprisingly singular force in the Trump administration.
Three STAT reporters interviewed dozens of people — including nine directly in Kennedy’s orbit — to turn up never-before-reported details on his management style, work habits, relationship with the president, and motivations in leading a monumental overhaul of the nation’s health and science agencies. Finding so many people in Kennedy’s circle was an incredibly difficult task. “The people in his orbit are loyal and close-knit, but also seem to share his aversion to speaking to media outside of the conservative outlets that Kennedy regularly speaks to,” lead reporter Chelsea Cirruzzo told me.
Read the story to learn why his aides sit on the ground as he takes his near-daily calls with the president, and which D.C. gym locations he favors for calisthenics and pull-ups.
A case study on cravings and a GLP-1
Scientists have long hoped that GLP-1 medications could eventually treat all sorts of conditions involving impulse control and addiction. In a case study published yesterday in Nature Medicine, researchers found that tirzepatide (Mounjaro/Zepbound) can temporarily suppress signaling in the brain’s reward center.
The patient, a 60-year-old woman, often had obsessive thoughts about food, and would eat both sweet and salty snacks until she was uncomfortably full. Bariatric surgery, behavioral therapy, and dulaglutide did not help her quiet the food noise or lose weight. She enrolled in a trial at Penn Medicine testing deep brain stimulation as a way to stop cravings before they start. Before the electrodes were surgically implanted, the doctors put her on tirzepatide, and she stayed on it afterward. Once the patient reached the full dose, she went months without any food noise — a change that was reflected in the brain’s biomarkers. (Other participants, who weren’t on the drug, had persistent episodes of food noise as expected.) But five to seven months later, both her severe food noise and the accompanying biomarkers in her brain’s reward center returned.
The research is still in its early phases — it’s rare to get such a close look at real brain activity — but anecdotal evidence abounds. “It’s like having a decision angel on my shoulder,” as one Wegovy user described it to STAT’s Megan Molteni in 2023 for a story about how these drugs are revolutionizing our understanding of desire.
What we’re reading
As abortion opponents target IVF, they’re promoting fertility clinics like this one, The 19th
Dementia housing without locked wards? It’s a small but growing movement, NPR
FDA clears spinal cord stimulator for home use, STAT
Once a patient’s in custody, ICE can be at hospital bedsides — but detainees have rights, KFF Health News
Many poor countries where experimental drugs are tested fail to benefit after approval, analysis finds, STAT
