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Tag: Health

  • Target to stop selling cereals with certified synthetic colors by end of May

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    NEW YORK — Target will stop selling its entire assortment of cereal with certified synthetic colors by the end of May.

    The move, announced Friday, underscores the acknowledgment that American consumers and the U.S. government under President Donald Trump are paying attention to what goes into packaged foods.

    The Minneapolis-based discounter said it had been phasing out synthetic colors in cereals for several years, and currently nearly 85% of its cereal sales already come from products made without certified synthetic dyes. Some of the artificial food dyes detailed by Target are being reviewed by U.S. Food and Drug Administration like Red No. 40, Yellow No. 5 and 6 and Blue No. 1.

    Target said that it has worked with national brands and its private brands to reformulate products as needed. Some cereals will have updated formulations, and many others already meet its new cereal assortment standard for no certified synthetic colors, the retailer said.

    “We know consumers are increasingly prioritizing healthier lifestyles, and we’re moving quickly to evolve our offerings to meet their needs,” said Cara Sylvester, Target’s executive vice president and chief merchandising officer, in a statement.

    Target said that reformulating its cereal line builds on the foundation Target established in 2019 with the launch of its store label food brand Good & Gather, which is made without artificial flavors and sweeteners, synthetic colors or high fructose corn syrup. The brand has more than 2,500 products across dairy, produce, ready made pastas meat as well as baby and toddler food.

    In recent months, major food companies such as Kraft Heinz, Nestle and Conagra Brands have pledged to eliminate petroleum-based synthetic dyes in coming years.

    General Mills also announced last year that it plans to remove artificial dyes from all of its U.S. cereals and all foods served in K-12 schools by the summer of 2026. It is also looking to eliminate the dyes from its full U.S. retail portfolio by the end of 2027.

    Last October,Walmart said it plans to remove synthetic food dyes and 30 other ingredients, including some preservatives, artificial sweeteners and fat substitutes, from its store brands sold in the United States by January 2027.

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  • Can Dreams Help You Solve Problems?

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    In a dark room, in the middle of the night, a woman lies dreaming. Suddenly, her eyes beneath their lids dart crisply left-right, left-right. The eye signal means she knows she’s dreaming.

    Lucid dreamers are people who can recognize that they are dreaming and, in some cases, control the content of their dreams. For scientists, they have proven a crucial link to this nightly hallucinatory state. In a new paper in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness, researchers asked dreamers, both lucid and otherwise, to dream about solving a specific puzzle they’d failed to solve before falling asleep. While the study was small, the team saw signs that dreaming about a puzzle was linked to being able to solve it the following morning–although, intriguingly, normal dreamers were more successful than lucid ones.

    A mysterious landscape

    For many years, dreaming was seen as more or less impossible to study scientifically, says Robert Stickgold, a professor at MIT who studies dreaming and memory. The verbal reports of people who’ve just woken up are not strictly speaking an unbiased source of information—you’re just going on their say-so that they dreamt, and what they dreamt about.

    Still, scientists have devised clever ways to investigate how sleep and dreams can affect us. Studies have looked at whether playing sounds or providing other prompts during different stages of sleep can influence what people are capable of when they wake up. One recent study found that providing cues to remind people during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, when most dreams are thought to happen, about a process they had been learning led to better performance later. 

    As well, in recent years, researchers have found ways to influence dreams by communicating with people while they are in a lucid state. In 2021, Ken Paller and Karen Konkoly of Northwestern University and their colleagues reported that they had established two-way communication with lucid dreamers, tapping their hands in a specific pattern and having them signal back with eye movements. The sleeping subjects received math questions and dreamed about the solutions, relaying them to the experimenter. This work opened the door to someday, perhaps, asking people in real time what they are dreaming about.

    It is still unclear however, whether dreams might have some benefit for us, such as helping us work through issues we encounter during the day. It certainly feels that way—but proving it is far more difficult.

    “How do dreams contribute to our creativity and problem solving abilities in the waking state?” asks Paller. “You could ask that by giving people problems before they go to sleep, and see if they come up with the answers when they wake up. But then, you’ll never know if it was because of what they were thinking about before they went to sleep, or as they were going to sleep, or any other time period–not their dreams.”  

    Dreaming of solutions

    In this new study, to explore whether explicitly dreaming about a problem can help people find solutions to it, Paller, Konkoly, and their colleagues had 20 subjects work on a set of logic puzzles. Each puzzle had a separate soundtrack that played while they worked on it. Then, as the subjects got ready to sleep in the lab, researchers explained that the soundtrack for a randomly selected puzzle they hadn’t been able to solve would play once they reached REM sleep. This was their cue to keep working on the puzzle in a dream. 

    No one knew ahead of time which puzzle they’d be asked to solve. That meant the researchers could see whether dreaming of the specific puzzle was linked to solving it later. If dreamers found themselves lucid, the researchers asked them to announce the fact with an eye signal. In the morning, subjects reported their dreams to the researchers and had another chance to work on the puzzles. 

    Some people dreamed of puzzles, some didn’t, some were lucid, some were not. Interpreting the data proved tricky, but one thing did come clear, says Konkoly. People who dreamed of the puzzles did tend to be more successful at solving them in the morning. 

    Contrary to what Konkoly expected to see, “we had a lower solving rate for puzzles incorporated into lucid dreams,” she says. You’d think that being aware of dreaming and being able to control events would lead to better problem solving. But that doesn’t seem to be the case.

    “One theory of creative problem solving is that during wake, you become fixated on an incorrect solution path, and then you forget that during sleep,” Konkoly says. That allows your mind to find the right answer, without interference. Asking people to bring deliberate focus to solving a puzzle during a lucid dream might prevent that forgetting, she speculates. 

    Another theory is that lucid dreams might be too much like waking consciousness to help with solving problems. “Your unconscious mind has all this plurality of simultaneously thinking about 10 things at once…It’s not limited by a single track,” Paller muses. “And maybe that’s more creative, in a sense. Maybe lucidity is therefore antagonistic, because you want to not just focus on one thing, but focus on a whole bunch of things.”

    The results tally with findings from other work on dreaming and creativity, says MIT’s Stickgold, who was not involved in the study. He points to a 2023 study from his group, led by Adam Horowitz, in which subjects were asked before sleeping to dream of trees. Upon waking, they were presented with tests of creativity around the theme of trees. While the study couldn’t control for what people were thinking about before they went to sleep, the way Paller and Konkoly’s study does, “the more references they had to trees in their dreams, the more creative they were,” Stickgold says. That suggests that priming people to dream about a subject can change how they think about it later.

    The way forward

    Regardless, Konkoly points out that the goal of this research is to understand what dreams might be doing for us. It’s not to enable us to manipulate dreams for our benefit, at least not yet.

    “I think this idea of dream engineering, where you can work with dreams and interact with them, is really important for moving dream science forward,” she says. But “it’s good to keep in mind…that without understanding exactly what dreams are for, we shouldn’t try to co-opt all of them for our waking life goals.” 

    Indeed, dreams have an odd staying power. Stickgold recalls that after the tree study, “Adam got notes and text messages from people a week later saying, ‘I’m still dreaming about trees.’” Stickgold wonders whether the effects might last longer than one might think.

    “I would like to look at that–that dream induction leading to creativity–and really make clear whether this is a creativity that lasts for half an hour or a day or a week,” he says. “It might have a long-term effect.” 

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    Veronique Greenwood

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  • Importance of exercise for heart disease patients

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    CLEVELAND — Exercise being good for your health is common knowledge, but for some, no amount of exercise can prevent heart disease.

    But doctors say that’s no reason to stop.

    What You Need To Know

    • Exercise cannot always prevent disease but it’s still beneficial for those with heart disease

    • People who exercised before heart surgery have much better recovery

    • Two years after heart surgery, man is competing in state swim championship

    Duane Grassell has been swimming competitively since he was a teenager.

    “I got top 10 for the 200 fly when the year I turned 64,” he said.

    But that stopped three years ago when he started having chest discomfort in the pool. Grassell was starting to slow down, and he didn’t know why.

    “I was a heart attack waiting to happen,” Grassell said.

    He had clogged arteries and needed open heart surgery. He was told to stop swimming until it was fixed.

    “There are some things that are outside of your control… family history, your genetics is very strong,’’ Dr. Joseph Lahorra, cardiothoracic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic.

    He performed a quintuple bypass on Grassell. He said for some, no amount of eating right, exercise or healthy lifestyle can prevent heart disease.

    He said even though exercise may not always prevent heart disease, it is still beneficial.

    “Patients who have a baseline of exercise, they bounce back much quicker. You do it to try to prevent these problems, but maybe as important, maybe more important is that when you do have this problem, you are fit and ready to go,” Lahorra said.

    Lahorra said exercise doesn’t have to be at a competitive level, even walking is sufficient. But that wasn’t enough for Grassell.

    “It was very depressing. Because I’m not a couch potato, but I had to become one for a few months,” Grassell said.

    It’s been two years since Grassell had heart surgery. He is now 68-years-old.

    “I don’t measure myself against other people. I measure against the clock,” said Grassell, who swims at least 40 laps every other day and will be competing in the U.S. masters state championship in March.

    His next goal is to compete at a national event at age 70.

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    Kimberly Perez

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  • What to Know About the ‘Anti-Aging’ Peptide Shots Flooding Social Media

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    Droves of wellness enthusiasts, biohackers, social-media influencers, and celebrities are injecting experimental “anti-aging” peptides in the hopes of boosting energy, losing weight, sleeping better, healing injuries, enhancing libido, and even getting tanned. 

    Most of these therapies haven’t been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and many people in the U.S. are buying them online off the unregulated “gray market,” often from suppliers in China. For most of these drugs, there is little clinical evidence of their effectiveness and safety, and many doctors warn of their potential risks. “There isn’t any meaningful data on these peptides,” says Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist, longevity expert, and director of Scripps Research Translational Institute. “People are taking them on blind faith.” 

    Still, the popularity of these drugs is surging.

    Tens of thousands of people on TikTok, Reddit, and Instagram swear by their transformative effects and are swapping stories of the “stacks,” or combinations of peptides, that they are experimenting with. Celebrities including Jennifer Aniston and Gwyneth Paltrow, and influential podcasters Joe Rogan, Andrew Huberman, and Dr. Mark Hyman, have waxed lyrical about their potential health-boosting benefits. Another fan is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, who has vowed to end the FDA’s “aggressive suppression” of peptide therapies. 

    Here’s what you need to know about peptides, and what the science actually says about them. 

    What are peptides? 

    Peptides are short chains of amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. In the body, they play a key role in many biological processes, including immune function and hormone production. 

    Peptides can be found in skincare products that are consumed or slathered on the skin, such as collagen supplements and creams. There are also dozens of FDA-approved peptide drugs, most of them injectable: Insulin and GLP-1 drugs (the “P” stands for peptide) for diabetes and obesity are among the best known.

    But there are a slew of other injectable peptides that haven’t been approved by the FDA and haven’t undergone rigorous testing in people, but have nonetheless attracted the interest of longevity chasers, health enthusiasts, athletes, and others. Many of these peptides have hard-to-remember names like BPC-157 (which people are using for injury recovery and to improve athletic performance); TB-500 (which purportedly boosts muscle growth and reduces inflammation); CJC-1295 (which proponents say can promote fat loss and better sleep); and GHK-Cu (which supposedly promotes healthy skin and hair). 

    People are also experimenting with a handful of peptides that have been FDA-approved for narrow indications but that they are using “off-label”—in other words, taking them for a different purpose than what the FDA authorized them for. Tesamorelin, for example, is a drug that was approved by the FDA to treat HIV-related lipodystrophy, or abnormal fat redistribution, that is being used off-label by some people to lose fat and boost muscle mass. 

    Read More: Can I Tell Someone They Need Therapy?

    “Here is a drug shown to work in people with a very rare condition, and people are now taking it to get rid of abdominal fat to get a six-pack. It’s crazy,” Topol says. “There’s no data to support that.” 

    People on social media describe experimenting with multiple peptides at once—either as stacks, which have names like “Wolverine” and “Fountain of Youth,” or as blends, which are multiple peptides mixed together in the same vial. 

    Some peptide enthusiasts claim they are safe since they naturally occur in the body. But that assumption is dangerously inaccurate, says John Fetse, assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences at Binghamton University in New York. “Peptides could potentially be very potent and very toxic,” he says. Toxins in many animal venoms, for example, are peptides.

    When did the unapproved peptide boom begin?

    Unapproved peptides were once confined to niche bodybuilder communities, but are rapidly “becoming mainstream,” says Luke Turnock, a researcher at the University of Lincoln in the U.K. who has been studying the rise of the drugs. 

    Turnock says he first learned about peptides such as BPC-157 and GHRP-2, which stimulates the release of growth hormone in the body, around 2010 from bodybuilders and powerlifters steeped in “hardcore gym cultures” who were experimenting with the drugs to build muscle and strength. These athletes—usually men—bought the drugs, often alongside steroids, from “really obscure” and underground places, Turnock says. 

    Fast forward about a decade to 2020, and Turnock says he started hearing of everyday people taking the same peptides to improve their health and amplify their looks. A study he published in 2025 described how, based on discussions on a popular online fitness forum, people of all ages were starting to dabble in peptides. “We found that a lot of older men, but also some women, were taking peptides to feel younger, to recover, to have more energy,” Turnock says. 

    Read More: Why You Can’t Remember Being a Toddler

    There has also been an explosion of interest among younger men in recent years—the same men who “might be susceptible to taking steroids,” Turnock says, but who are turning to peptides instead to get the muscle-bound physiques they want. 

    Steroids used for muscle growth are compounds that mimic the effects of hormones like testosterone. Peptides used for the same purpose are different in that they encourage the body to produce hormones such as testosterone and growth hormone.

    “There’s a certain stigma attached to steroids that peptides don’t have,” Turnock says. 

    Are these peptides legal? How are people buying them? 

    People in the U.K. and U.S. typically turn to the gray market—sources outside of regulated pharmaceutical channels—to obtain unapproved peptides, Turnock says. A search on Google turns up many websites, some masquerading as online pharmacies, that purport to sell the drugs. Influencers on TikTok and Instagram advertise links through which peptides can be purchased. Most of these drugs are shipped from China, Turnock says, adding that many users buy syringes on Amazon to administer the peptide shots and watch videos on YouTube and TikTok about how to inject themselves.

    These unapproved peptides are often labeled as products “for research purposes only” and that are “not for human consumption,” which allows sellers to bypass regulatory oversight, says Fetse, whose lab is developing therapeutic peptides. “By labeling it this way, suppliers could potentially absolve themselves of liability. The liability is on you, the consumer,” he says. 

    People in the U.S. had previously been able to purchase some unapproved peptides from compounding pharmacies—businesses regulated by states and are subject to inspection by the FDA that can create customized medications for patients. But in 2023, the FDA deemed many popular peptides to lack sufficient data to support their safe use and restricted compounding pharmacies from making them.

    Read More: Scientists Are Finding Out Just How Toxic Your Stuff Is

    “What the FDA crackdown on peptides did was create this gray market,” says Jordan Glenn, head of science at SuppCo, an app that allows users to manage and learn more about their health supplements. “We moved from a—I’m not going to call it regulated, but safer—model, to this ‘trust me, bro’ kind of situation. I could go online right now and buy these peptides, but I wouldn’t know what their quality is or what their purity is.” 

    Glenn says SuppCo will be launching a peptides tracker at the end of March in response to rising demand for the feature. A recent survey sent out to SuppCo’s 640,000 users found that almost 90% of respondents were interested in being able to track peptides on the app, the company says. 

    “People want these peptides, and if you don’t give them a safe way to get them, they’re going to go and find an alternative route,” Glenn says.

    The FDA still permits some peptides to be made by compounding pharmacies. Joshua Fritzler, chief financial officer at U.S. compounding pharmacies Olympia Pharmaceuticals and Wesley Pharmaceuticals, said demand for some of these products has skyrocketed over the past three years.

    Interest in two products in particular has sharply increased, Fritzler said: sermorelin, a drug that was previously approved by the FDA to treat children with growth hormone deficiency, and NAD+, which isn’t technically a peptide but is often marketed as one. People are taking sermorelin for muscle growth and fat loss, and proponents claim NAD+, a molecule found in the body that is central for metabolism, has anti-aging and energy-boosting properties. 

    “We used to do 3,000 to 4,000 vials a week of these two products. We do 20 times that now,” Fritzler says.

    Why are peptides so popular? 

    “Social media has really been driving this,” says Chris Mendias, a rehabilitation clinician-scientist and co-founder of Performance Medicine Institute, an integrative sports medicine practice in Phoenix. “People always want to look better and perform better, and if they see someone on TikTok who is where they want to be and they’re pushing a peptide, they might think it’ll work for them too.”

    Mendias says about half of his clinic’s patients have expressed interest in peptides. “This interest spans all demographics,” he says, adding that the popularity—and proven effectiveness—of GLP-1 drugs has spurred some of this enthusiasm.

    The endorsement of high-profile influencers and celebrities have also helped fuel the peptide craze. Actor and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow has called peptide shots one of her “biggest wellness tools;” podcaster Joe Rogan said BPC-157 helped heal an injury he had struggled with; and American mixed-martial artist Derrick Lewis recently claimed that the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) had “provided me with some great peptides.” 

    Read More: Can Creatine Keep Your Brain Sharp?

    “I’ve been taking it every day, and I’ve been feeling a difference,” said Lewis on a January podcast episode. (UFC leadership promptly pushed back, saying Lewis had “misspoke” and that the organization doesn’t provide peptides, most of which are banned in the UFC, to its fighters.)

    Kennedy, currently America’s top health official, has also expressed support for peptides. Speaking to Gary Brecka, a popular biohacker who promotes peptides, on a podcast last May, Kennedy promised to “end the war at FDA against alternative medicine—the war on stem cells, the war on chelating drugs, the war on peptides.” 

    Do peptides work?

    Unapproved peptides haven’t undergone the rigorous clinical trials that would be needed to prove their effectiveness. For some of these peptides, such as BPC-157, limited animal studies have been conducted that suggest potential therapeutic effects, such as injury repair, but without robust follow-up studies in people, these benefits haven’t been validated. 

    As for people online who claim peptides have worked wonders for them, the placebo effect is a possible explanation, says Mendias, the rehabilitation expert. 

    “I have yet to find a gray-market peptide that is as safe and effective as something that is currently FDA-approved,” says Mendias, who in December published a paper on the safety and efficacy of many unapproved peptides. The paper, which hasn’t been formally peer reviewed, concluded that “clinical trials and robust safety data are needed now more than ever to bridge the widening chasm between myths perpetuated online and actual science.” 

    Are unapproved peptides safe? 

    Until clinical trials are conducted, the safety of unapproved peptides also remains unknown. 

    Several popular peptides work by enhancing the body’s response to growth hormone, which doctors say could have an unintended consequence of promoting tumor growth. 

    The fact that people are experimenting with multiple peptides at once is also a concern as it isn’t clear how these drugs may interact with one another, says Topol, the longevity expert who has written about the risks of peptides. 

    An added worry is the legitimacy of products that people are purchasing off the gray market, Topol says. “They don’t know what they are getting. It could be saline, it may not even be sterile. They could get an infection. Who knows?” he says.

    At least 20% of unapproved peptides tested since October by BTLabs, a drug-testing company, were found to be mislabeled, says Rina Dukor, a chemist and the company’s co-founder. For example, “the vial will say retatrutide,” an experimental obesity drug being developed by pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, “but it’s actually semaglutide,” a GLP-1 drug, Dukor says. “Or it’ll say Glow, but it’s actually Klow, or vice versa,” she adds, referring to different peptide blends. 

    BTLabs is among a growing number of companies that are providing peptide testing for people who want to verify the quality of the drugs they are buying online. BTLabs partnered with a peptide-testing start-up called Finnrick last year to test peptides for suppliers and consumers. People can send Finnrick samples of peptides they have purchased online to be tested. Finnrick says it works with several labs and testing companies, including BTLabs, to test the samples. It has a database on its website that lists the test results of peptides from different suppliers.

    Dukor says BTLabs has tested thousands of unapproved peptide samples to date. In some cases, samples have been contaminated. In most vials, the concentration of the peptide on the label hasn’t matched what is in the container, Dukor says.

    There have been reports of people suffering adverse effects from taking peptides. At an anti-aging conference last year, two women were hospitalized in critical condition after receiving peptide injections at a booth run by a doctor specializing in “age reversal” therapies, ProPublica reported. 

    On social media, people describe suffering from a range of side effects after experimenting with unapproved peptides, including migraines, weakness, depression, nausea and vomiting, and anhedonia, a condition in which people stop being able to experience joy or pleasure. Mendias says he has seen patients who have dealt with adverse reactions that appear to be connected to their unapproved peptide use, including one person who “started peeing blood” after taking BPC-157. 

    “I would exercise extreme caution—caution with a capital C—when taking these drugs,” Topol says. “Just because your friend or your influencer told you that it worked doesn’t mean anything.” 

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    Dominique Mosbergen

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  • Pennsylvania ramps up efforts to fight avian flu after millions of birds affected

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    On Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, Gov. Josh Shapiro and Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding will visit the Lancaster County Rapid Response Center to host a roundtable with poultry producers and industry leaders regarding the ongoing surge of bird flu. The discussion will be streamed live at 11:30 a.m. in the player above.

    The fight against highly pathogenic avian influenza, also known as bird flu or avian flu, is ramping up in Pennsylvania.

    Governor Josh Shapiro has expanded the state’s response by deploying more personnel, increasing testing capacity, and coordinating with the USDA and industry partners to limit the spread of the virus to protect the state’s $7.1 billion poultry industry.

    Since the outbreak began in February 2022, officials said more than 14.3 million birds in Pennsylvania have died.

    State officials also report that since early 2026, 7.2 million birds have been affected by the virus.

    Last week, Shapiro deployed 42 USDA employees and six Commonwealth workers to support veterinarians, Penn State Extension experts, and National Guard members in containing the virus.

    “I know farmers are worried given the recent increase in cases, but I want them to know that my Administration is standing with them and continuing our aggressive response to protect Pennsylvania flocks,” Shapiro said in a statement.

    On Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, Shapiro, along with Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding, will visit the Lancaster County Rapid Response Center to host a roundtable discussion with poultry producers and industry leaders on the ongoing surge. You can watch the discussion live at 11:30 a.m. in the player above.

    To learn more about how Pennsylvania is handling the bird flu, visit www.pa.gov/agencies/pda.

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    Cherise Lynch

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  • ‘Scrubs’ Revival Brings Back the Old Goofy Gang, but Now They’re, Gulp, in Charge

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Early in the first episode of the “Scrubs” revival, Dr. John Dorian jumps onto Dr. Christopher Turk for a piggyback ride down the corridor of Sacred Heart Hospital like nothing’s changed in over a decade. But a lot has.

    For one, Turk, now a father of four, suffers from sciatica, cutting the tomfoolery short as they tumble to the ground. And, two, Dorian needs reading glasses. Turns out plenty has changed in the 17 years since “Scrubs” last ended its run.

    “They’re still 12 years old every time they’re together, but they’re also still both leading very big, responsible adult lives,” says Bill Lawrence, the show’s creator who has returned for the revival. “It just felt like it was time to revisit the old gang.”

    “Scrubs” — whose first two episodes premiere back-to-back Wednesday on ABC and stream next day on Hulu — picks up with the same characters all these years later, but this time, in addition to some physical wear and tear, the one-time interns are the teachers to a group of rookie doctors.

    “We were new and we were scared as interns and scared in this new element of medicine and insecure and unsure of what we were doing,” says Sarah Chalke, who plays Dr. Elliot Reid. “So to get to come back, we really have grown and really become great leaders and great teachers.”


    Back to reality for “Scrubs”

    The revival retains Lawrence’s voice for “Scrubs” — pop culture-hyper-aware and surreal but always with sentiment. The cast admits the show became a little too cartoonish in later seasons, with an ostrich wearing a Kangol hat and J.D. stuffed into a backpack to sneak into a movie theater.

    “Bill Lawrence would be the first to say that what he really wanted to do was sort of ground it again and start back with the based-in-reality thing that we had in the first couple years of the show,” says Zach Braff, who plays Dr. Dorian. “We still have a mix of drama and comedy, but reset to based completely in reality.”

    One thing that had to change was Dr. Perry Cox, the head of medicine played by John C. McGinley with stone-faced rage and fiery contempt. Back in the old days, he could humiliate and berate his interns.

    That won’t fly in 2026: “I can’t work them crazy hours or even abuse them anymore,” Cox complains in the revival, calling the new interns “fragile little Christmas ornaments.” One of the new interns says to him: “You’re giving mean football coach vibes.”

    Lawrence in anticipation of the relaunch consulted medical residents to find out how hospitals and medicine had changed over the years and was told that administrators would have no patience with a brutal Cox in 2026.

    “All the residents we talked about told us that Dr. Cox would be fired immediately nowadays,” says Lawrence. He also added Vanessa Bayer to the cast, playing an HR officer quick to suggest sensitivity training.

    The first seven seasons of “Scrubs” originally aired on NBC, but after Season 7 — which was shortened due to a writers strike — the series moved to ABC for Season 8. A ninth season with J.D., Turk, and Cox was called “Scrubs: Med School.”

    Braff and Faison — real friends offscreen — kept the show in fans’ minds with a string of T-Mobile commercials and a podcast that explored the episodes, Fake Doctors, Real Friends.

    The end of Season 8 — the following season is not considered “Scrubs” cannon — had J.D. having all his fantasies come true — marrying Elliot, having children and keeping up his friendship with Turk, who is married to head nurse Carla. That neat bow had to be jettisoned for 2026.

    “We knew from the start that we couldn’t live in a world that all of his fantasies had come true,” says Lawrence. “Life throws you some blows and throws you to some victories. You drift from people you care about. Sometimes your world gets smaller. Sometimes things get harder and there still have to be mountains to overcome. So we really wanted to thematically show that journey of what the second stage of life looks like.”


    The central bromance of “Scrubs”

    Central to the success of “Scrubs” is the bromance between J.D. and Turk, which doesn’t end when the cameras are turned off. The revival arrives as the topic of male loneliness and friendship is being debated.

    “It’s a half hour comedy, but it takes head on the idea of the joy that you can still find in being silly and having love in your life that isn’t just your romantic love — the joy and love you have with your friends as a man in 2026,” says Braff.

    Faison adds: “I value my friendship. I don’t have many of them, but he’s the one friendship that I do have that I know I can count on, at least right now. Maybe in 10 years, he might change his mind on how he feels about me.”

    “We’ll see how you behave,” Braff jokes.

    Lawrence says he often writes about male friendships because he grew up in a family that wasn’t very demonstrative emotionally. His other current titles include “Shrinking” and “Ted Lasso,” which also explore bonding and mentoring.

    “I started very young writing about friendships and, maybe on some level, the wish fulfillment of how personal I truly hoped they could be,” he says. “I crave those friendships and I craved that mentorship so I maybe write about them too much.”

    Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – Feb. 2026

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    Associated Press

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  • Lindsey Vonn Says Surgery Saved Her From Having Her Left Leg Amputated Following Olympic Crash

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    Vonn revealed in an Instagram post on Monday that her injuries went far beyond the complex tibia fracture in the leg she initially hurt after clipping a gate and sailing off course just 13 seconds into her run on Feb. 8.

    The 41-year-old Vonn said the trauma from the crash led to compartment syndrome in her leg. Compartment syndrome involves excessive pressure building up inside a muscle, either from bleeding or swelling. High pressure restricts blood flow and can lead to permanent injury if not treated quickly.

    “When you have so much trauma to one area of your body so that there’s too much blood and it gets stuck and it basically crushes everything,” Vonn said.

    Vonn credited Dr. Tom Hackett, an orthopedic surgeon who works for Vonn and Team USA, for conducting a fasciotomy to salvage her leg.

    “He filleted it open (and) let it breathe, and he saved me,” she said.

    Vonn noted that Hackett was only in Cortina because she was competing after tearing the ACL in her left knee shortly before the Olympics.

    “If I hadn’t had done that, Tom wouldn’t have been there (and he) wouldn’t have been able to save my leg,” she said.

    Vonn, who said she has been discharged from the hospital, also broke her right ankle in the crash.

    Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – Feb. 2026

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  • Op-Ed | How we’re fighting a leading cause of death for New Yorkers | amNewYork

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    As the head of our state’s leading public health agency, I track a seemingly endless list of threats to the health, safety and wellbeing of New Yorkers. Some come from out of nowhere – disease outbreaks or distant wildfires that threaten our air quality – but some are stubbornly persistent. Every February we renew our focus on one of those areas as we mark American Heart Month.

    This year, that comes as our State happens to be celebrating a major milestone: February 19th is the 125th anniversary of the creation of the New York State Department of Health. By creating one of the nation’s first state health departments, lawmakers and elected officials in 1901 were taking a leadership role in public health that continues to this day.

    Take the issue of heart health: Just last month, Governor Hochul unveiled a budget proposal that makes major investments in our fight against cardiovascular disease. Healthy hearts start with healthy diets, which is why Governor Hochul included over $100 million for nutrition programs, food banks and food pantries in the Executive Budget.

    We also want to be ready when the worst happens. That’s why the Governor’s budget includes proposals to strengthen cardiac emergency readiness across New York State – like $3.2 million to establish regional training hubs and ensure communities know how to use Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) and support new, scalable approaches to cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) education; and New York’s first statewide AED registry with the precise location of every AED across the state, enabling emergency dispatchers to direct individuals to the nearest device, saving critical time during cardiac events.

    To be sure, over the last 125 years we have made major progress. While the percentage of adults who report having a stroke, heart attack or coronary heart disease has remained relatively unchanged over the past decade, investments in public health means cardiovascular disease is no longer a death sentence.

    Moreover, we know the risk of developing cardiovascular disease can be reduced with certain lifestyle changes – like never starting to smoke or quitting smoking, not drinking or reducing alcohol intake, increasing physical activity and eating well. It’s also important to manage blood pressure and cholesterol levels and maintain routine visits with a primary care provider. Successful public health campaigns have tackled all of these issues.

    But our work is not done.

    Cardiovascular disease remains a leading cause of death around the world and here at home in New York. Our research shows that over 1.25 million adults in New York State report that they have cardiovascular disease, meaning they have experienced a heart attack, angina, coronary heart disease or stroke, and an estimated 4.2 million adult New Yorkers report being told by a health professional they have high blood pressure, a leading cause of cardiovascular disease.

    Social drivers of health such as lack of access to healthy food, lack of safe places for physical activity, lack of access to affordable medical care, and lack of housing stability contribute to disparities in the burden of high blood pressure and cardiovascular risk. High blood pressure is more prevalent among American Indian/Alaska Native and Black, non-Hispanic adults.

    Data shows we are on the right track – rates of high blood pressure control among adults in New York are higher compared to the national average. Ensuring those suffering from these conditions continue to have access to treatment will be vital to continue this progress.

    With the support of Governor Hochul, we are working with our health care partners across the state to ensure every New Yorker has the ability to protect themselves and their family from cardiovascular disease.

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    By State Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald

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  • ‘It’s hidden’: Female genital mutilation and the secret shame of Minnesota’s Somalis

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    NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!

    More than half a million women and girls in the United States are living with the physical and psychological scars of female genital mutilation — including many in Minnesota, home to a large Somali community from a country where roughly 98% of women have undergone the procedure, according to United Nations data.

    Yet despite a state law that makes performing the procedures a felony, Minnesota has never secured a single criminal prosecution under its law — raising questions about enforcement, and whether cases could be going on undetected.

    Female genital mutilation, or FGM, involves the cutting or removal of parts of a female’s genital organs, typically for cultural rather than medical reasons. The practice is irreversible.

    “It’s hidden — it’s a cultural practice, and who is doing the cutting could be a family member or a doctor who is also in that same culture,” Minnesota Republican state Rep. Mary Franson told Fox News Digital, noting it may be carried out within tight-knit communities. She said the secrecy surrounding the practice makes it exceptionally difficult to detect and confront.

    MINNESOTA ‘ON THE CLOCK’ AS HHS THREATENS PENALTIES OVER CHILDCARE FRAUD SCANDAL

    Razor blades often used before carrying out female genital mutilation. (REUTERS/James Akena)

    For some within Minnesota’s Somali community, the issue is less about public crime statistics and more about private silence — a practice survivors say is carried in secrecy, shame and fear.

    The lack of prosecutions comes amid broader scrutiny of how Minnesota agencies handle oversight failures, including high-profile welfare and daycare fraud cases in which prosecutors allege billions of taxpayer dollars were siphoned off while warning signs went unaddressed. Investigators and watchdogs later concluded that officials were reluctant to probe deeply in culturally sensitive contexts — a reluctance, critics say, allowed large-scale violations to persist in plain sight.

    The estimate of more than half a million survivors in the United States comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent national analysis, published in 2016.

    Together, the scale of the issue and the difficulty of detection have raised questions about whether Minnesota’s ban on FGM is being effectively enforced when the crime is often carried out in secrecy.

    Ayaan Hirsi Ali headshot

    Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born activist and author who survived FGM, recalled the harm the practice has had on her and the need for accountability. ((Photo by Leonardo Cendamo/Getty Images))

    Survivor warns of lasting harm

    Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born activist and author who survived FGM, described the lasting physical and psychological damage she endured and called for legal accountability.

    “Female genital mutilation is violence against the most vulnerable — children,” Hirsi Ali told Fox News Digital. “It causes infection, incontinence, unbearable pain during childbirth and deep physical and emotional scars that never heal. Religious or cultural practices that deliberately and cruelly harm children must be confronted. No tradition can ever justify torture.”

    Hirsi Ali, who founded the AHA Foundation as a means to end FGM, said that the pressure placed on parents in these groups to enforce the practice poses an overwhelming risk to girls.

    “Only legal accountability can help reduce that risk,” Hirsi Ali said. “I survived female genital mutilation and I carry its scars with me. But I refuse to accept that another girl in America must endure what I did in Somalia.”

    ‘I remember being held down’

    Zahra Abdalla, a Minnesota-based Somali survivor of female genital mutilation, told Fox News Digital that the practice survives in secrecy, shielded by family pressure and silence.

    Abdalla, who spoke to Fox News Digital on camera but asked that her face be blurred, said she was between six and seven years old when she was forcibly restrained in a refugee camp in Kenya while adult women in her community carried out the procedure without anesthesia, using a razor blade.

    “They tied my hands and my legs,” Abdalla said. “I remember being held down. I remember the pain — and knowing I could not escape.”

    Abdalla said she was “lucky” because she fought back during the procedure, kicking one of the women who was pregnant at the time. The disruption, she said, caused the cutting to stop before it was fully completed. She said the wound was later washed with salt water. 

    “That pain — I thought I was going to pass out,” she said.

    Medical instruments, gloves and cotton used in medicalised female genital mutilation procedures.

    Tools used to perform medicalized female genital mutilation (FGM) procedures are displayed in Kisii, Kenya in 2023. (Simon Maina/AFP)

    The damage followed her into adulthood, she said, later requiring surgery and, in her view, contributing to multiple miscarriages. She also said intercourse was very difficult. 

    She said the practice is often driven by marriage expectations, adding that in some communities men are reluctant to marry women who have not undergone the procedure.

    “It’s tied to dowry. It’s tied to marriage,” she said, referring to the financial and social expectations placed on families when arranging marriages. “It’s tied to what men expect,” she said. “Families believe it protects a girl’s value.”

    She said silence remains one of the biggest barriers to enforcement. She is the executive director of the nonprofit Somaliweyn Relief Agency (SRA), which seeks to raise awareness about the practice.

    “You don’t talk about it,” she said. “You’re told to stay quiet.”

    While she said she cannot confirm specific cases inside Minnesota, she said she believes some families take girls back to Somalia during school breaks to have the procedure performed.

    No prosecutions despite felony law

    Her warning mirrors how some of the only known U.S. cases have surfaced.

    In a high-profile federal case in Michigan in 2017, prosecutors alleged that two young girls were taken from Minnesota to undergo female genital mutilation. The case later collapsed because the judge ruled that Congress did not clearly have the constitutional authority, at the time, which expanded federal jurisdiction in cases involving interstate or international travel.

    That ruling prompted Congress to strengthen the statute, a change signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2021 under the Stop FGM Act, which expanded federal jurisdiction in cases involving interstate or international travel.

    Two women wearing traditional Muslim clothing walking on a sidewalk in Minneapolis.

    Women wearing traditional Muslim clothing walk along a sidewalk in Minneapolis. The city is home to a large Muslim population. (Michael Dorgan/Fox News Digital) (Michael Dorgan/Fox News Digital)

    However, a Fox News Digital review of publicly available Minnesota court records, enforcement announcements and professional licensing disciplinary records found no documented prosecutions or sanctions tied to FGM. The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office said prosecutions for state crimes like female genital mutilation are handled by county attorneys and did not identify any FGM cases. County prosecutors contacted for this story also did not identify any prosecutions.

    Those provisions, however, have not resulted in documented criminal prosecutions.

    Minnesota criminalized female genital mutilation in 1994, classifying the practice as a felony.

    The Minnesota Department of Health told Fox News Digital that it does not track specific data on female genital mutilation, underscoring how difficult the practice is to monitor or enforce.

    Global context, local uncertainty

    Around the world, FGM is most prevalent in parts of Africa and the Middle East.

    Somalia has among the highest prevalence rates in the world, with United Nations data estimating roughly 98% of women ages 15 to 49 there have undergone the procedure. The United Nations, World Health Organization and UNICEF classify FGM as a human rights violation rooted in efforts to control female sexuality and enforce gender inequality, and the UN observes an annual day of awareness in February to combat the practice globally.

    Those figures describe conditions in Somalia and are not proof the procedure is occurring in Minnesota, but they help explain why risk is acknowledged even as the practice remains difficult to detect.

    Medical experts say the procedure can cause chronic pain, severe bleeding, infections, urinary problems, sexual dysfunction, childbirth complications and, in some cases, death. Because it permanently alters genital tissue, the harm cannot be undone. Survivors often require repeated medical care and carry lasting psychological trauma.

    Critics say the gap between the law and enforcement is fueled by silence. 

    Survivors often do not report the practice out of fear, stigma, family pressure or concern about involving authorities — even when mandatory reporting laws exist. Medical professionals, particularly OB-GYNs, are often the first to encounter adult survivors, placing clinicians near the center of any enforcement effort that has yet to materialize.

    MINNESOTA FRAUD WHISTLEBLOWER SAYS ‘LACK OF GUARDRAILS WAS PRETTY SHOCKING’

    The CDC has not released a newer national estimate, and there is no data on the number of people in Minnesota who are victims. However, a CDC-supported Women’s Health Needs Study conducted from 2019 to 2021 included Minneapolis as one of four U.S. metro areas documenting a significant survivor population.

    The study did not track where procedures occurred or whether anyone was charged, underscoring how little the public knows about enforcement.

    Fox News Digital also contacted multiple Minnesota clinics that provide reproductive and women’s health services asking whether clinicians encounter patients with physical evidence of female genital mutilation. None responded.

    President Donald Trump

    The AHA Foundation said it is pushing for President Donald Trump to sign an executive order to make combating female genital mutilation a national priority. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

    Lawmakers push task force amid accountability questions

    Some Minnesota state lawmakers have introduced legislation this session to establish a “task force on prevention of female genital mutilation” — a step that Rep. Mary Franson said reflects concerns raised by women in the community that the practice may be occurring or going undetected in Minnesota.

    Franson said the legislation was prompted by concerns raised by women in the Somali community. The bill’s chief author is Rep. Huldah Momanyi-Hiltsley, a Democrat of Kenyan heritage, and it is co-sponsored by Franson along with Democratic Reps. Kristin Bahner, Kristi Pursell and Anquam Mahamoud, who is Somali-American. None of them responded to multiple Fox News Digital requests for comment. 

    Franson said she became a focal point of opposition once she became publicly associated with the bill.

    “The bill was brought forward by women in the Somali community. I was the chief author, but then Democrats told one of the DFL women that if I carried the bill, they would not support it,” Franson said. “Of course, it’s because they believe I am a racist.”

    Franson, who is white, first introduced FGM-related legislation in 2017 that would have classified the practice as child abuse and clarified parental accountability. That effort stalled and never became law.

    CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

    At the federal level, Congress criminalized female genital mutilation in 1996 and later expanded federal jurisdiction in 2018 under legislation signed by then-President Donald Trump, explicitly covering cases involving interstate or international travel.

    Even so, prosecutions nationwide have remained rare, with the only widely cited state-level conviction occurring in Georgia in 2006, where a woman was convicted under Georgia state law for performing FGM on a minor.

    In Minnesota, where the practice has been a felony since 1994, there is no public record of a single criminal prosecution — raising an unavoidable question: with laws on the books and a documented survivor population, who is responsible for enforcing the ban, and why have prosecutions not followed?

    Michael Dorgan is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business.

    You can send tips to michael.dorgan@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @M_Dorgan.

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  • Advocates in Tampa Bay push to close racial gap in organ donation

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    ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — When it comes to organ donations and those in need of a transplant, numbers show there are some serious racial disparities.

    What You Need To Know

    • Some local donor advocates are sharing their stories to encourage more people to consider live-saving and life-changing options

    • According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Black Americans make up 27% of candidates on the transplant waiting list, and only about 13% of organ donors are Black

    • Experts say a more diverse donor pool can help when it comes to finding the right match


    It’s a gap in life-saving health care that experts say, many times, is rooted in mistrust and misinformation, and it’s affecting the Black community in record numbers.

    Some local donor advocates are sharing their stories to encourage more people to consider life-saving and life-changing options.

    Jacquez Welch, 18, was the picture of perfect health, until he wasn’t.

    “Perfectly healthy. No health issues,” his mother, Marcia, said. “One day at a football game, Friday night lights, he collapsed on the field, and he had a stroke. Got him to the hospital, did tests and found out he had AVM.”

    It was an arteriovenous malformation, a tangled web of blood vessels in the brain that can burst without warning. Marcia said her son was in good health his entire life. So when she watched him collapse at the game, she was shocked. She said there were no warning signs.

    “Me, I thought he was just cramping because a lot of time he cramps. But when he didn’t get up and the coach signaled me down, I knew it was serious then,” she said.

    She learned the condition could’ve taken her son’s life at any time.

    “It’s basically veins in your brain that develops when you’re born and then they tangle up and then they burst and have a stroke,” she said. “What he has is not genetic. It’s not genetic at all. That was my first thing. What if my other kids have it because they all played football? Even my girls. They say it’s nothing genetic. It’s just something that happened while he developed in my stomach while I was pregnant.”

    Marcia said she got educated quickly about her son’s condition. After a few days on life support and learning there was no chance of survival, she had to make a difficult decision. She is grateful Jaquez had already made his wishes clear.

    “We decided to donate his organs when he was 16,” she said. “We went to the DMV to get his driver’s license. And they asked him, and he looked at me and was like, ‘Mom, what does that mean?’ I said that means when you’re gone, you pass away, and somebody takes your organs you can’t use anyway.

    “And he looked at me and said, ‘Sure, why not.’”

    Marcia lost her son, but she says he was able to save the lives of four people and donate tissue to more than 70 patients.

    “He gave his heart, liver, both of his kidneys, pancreas,” she said. “I know it was seven organs.”

    It’s the kind of giving people like the Rev. Kenny Irby are counting on. He has a genetic disorder that he learned he was living with years ago, and over time he learned how it affected his family for decades.

    “I was diagnosed with polycystic kidneys,” Irby said. “My family migrated from Newberry, South Carolina, to Washington D.C. because my grandmother had what was called then, the disease. And the doctors in South Carolina told my great grandmother, ‘You have to get her to the north. The hospitals here can’t treat her.’”

    Reverand Ibry is known for his work with the nonprofit, Men in the Making, and his work as the Faith in Community Justice Liaison with the city of St. Pete. He’s also the former pastor of one of the area’s oldest Black churches. But even that couldn’t prepare him for this.

    “I was diagnosed in 2022 with prostate cancer,” he said. “My wife had breast cancer in 2023, and so we went through 2024, and as soon as we got through that, I got the diagnosis on the renal failure.”

    Irby said the chemo from his prostate cancer treatment worsened his kidney condition. Now, the man of faith, known for his giving, is in need of a gift himself. He needs a kidney donation.

    “I actually did have two brothers that I’ve worked with over the years that said, I’d give you a kidney, but I’ve only got one. Because folks don’t even realize at that level you can live a functional and healthy life,” he said.

    But finding a match can be harder, especially for Black patients.

    According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Black Americans make up 27% of candidates on the transplant waiting list, and only about 13% of organ donors are Black. It’s a gap that has widened over time, leading to longer wait times.

    Experts say a more diverse donor pool can help when it comes to finding the right match.

    “It’s not that the donor and the recipient have to be the same race or the same ethnicity. But by having genetic variables in common, it helps to increase compatibility,” said LifeLink Florida Associate Medical Director and Recovery Surgeon, Dr. Jacentha Buggs.

    LifeLink is an organ procurement organization.

    “Our team here at LifeLink can’t even approach a family to talk to them about organ donation until one of two things have happened. The patient has been legally declared brain dead, or their injuries are so severe that they’re having conversations about withdrawal of care,” Buggs said.

    She agrees that a history and hesitation to even be listed as an organ donor has created barriers for the Black community.

    “There are valid reasons that people of color would distrust the medical system. Especially when you think about things that happened with the Tuskegee experiment and so forth. But what I think we have to do is meet people where they are,” she said.

    Dr. Buggs said education and building trust are key to saving more lives.

    For Reverend Irby, it’s going to take those efforts and a whole lot of faith. 

    “Certainly at the metaphysical level, when you think about it, when you’re gone, you’re not gonna need it. And if you can be a blessing and your organs and tissues can be a blessing to individuals and medical research, then I think you want to do that as a part of your legacy,” Irby said.

    It’s a plan Marcia’s son made long before she learned to find purpose through her pain.

    “Imagine your child needing a heart, a liver, imagine if it was your parent, a grandparent. Imagine you losing a child and all you have left is to give something to someone else,” Marcia said.

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    Saundra Weathers

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  • Ohio State opens new University Hospital, moves several patients

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    COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio State University announced the opening of the new Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center on Feb. 22.

    What You Need To Know

    • Over 400 patients have already been moved into over 800 private rooms at the 520 W. 10th Ave. location in Columbus

    • The hospital will offer care across a range of specialities, including surgery, neurology, neurosurgery, critical care and adult organ transplant

    • It the 10th largest building in Columbus

    Over 400 patients have already been moved into over 800 private rooms at the 520 W. 10th Ave. location in Columbus.

    The hospital will offer care across a range of specialities, including surgery, neurology, neurosurgery, critical care and adult organ transplant.

    “Thousands of people have been working diligently for years to turn our vision for a transformational hospital that improves lives across Ohio, the nation and the world into a reality,” said Ohio State president Walter “Ted” Carter Jr. “Today is about so much more than opening a building. It’s about honoring our land-grant mission by delivering life-changing patient care, advancing innovative research and providing high-quality education for generations to come.”

    The hospital is the largest facility constructed by Ohio State and the largest single-facility project opening in the U.S. in 2026. It is 1.9 million square feet and 26 stories, making it the 10th largest building in Columbus.

    “Medicine today and in the future is about teamwork and collaboration, and our hospital design reinforces our efforts to coalesce as a team around patients and their loved ones, prioritizing their needs and optimizing their health care journey,” said John J. Warner, MD, CEO of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and executive vice president at Ohio State. “University Hospital is a place where innovation and transformation will enable caregivers, researchers and educators to drive high-impact discoveries that translate to improvements in patient care, while also providing outstanding clinical education to the next generation of health care professionals.”

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    Ryan Johnston

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  • A Long-Acting HIV Drug Arrives in Zimbabwe for Some at Highest Risk

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    HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Young women, mothers holding babies and some men lined up in a dusty field on the outskirts of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare. They came for injections of a new HIV prevention drug launched in the country on Thursday, one that only needs to be administered twice a year.

    Zimbabwe, where HIV has led to tens of thousands of deaths over the past two decades, is one of the first countries to roll out lenacapavir, a long-acting drug that authorities hope will slow new infections.

    With clinical studies demonstrating near-total protection, the drug has been described by some health officials as a turning point for high-risk groups. Others warn that turning scientific promise into broad impact will require overcoming funding constraints, infrastructure gaps and the challenge of keeping patients engaged.

    At the Zimbabwe launch, Constance Mukoloka stepped out of a mobile clinic, beaming with relief after receiving one of the first doses.

    “I am safe, I can work with confidence now,” said the 27-year-old sex worker, describing how daily preventive preexposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, pills often created tension with clients and proved difficult to take consistently — putting her and others at risk.


    Could reshape HIV prevention strategies

    Mukoloka is among the first beneficiaries of a donor-supported rollout of lenacapavir across 10 African countries. Health officials and advocates say the drug could reshape HIV prevention strategies if governments can navigate barriers of cost and fragile health systems.

    Developed by California-based Gilead Sciences, lenacapavir’s introduction in selected high-risk countries is being supported through the United States President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, in partnership with the Global Fund.

    The injection is offered for free in Zimbabwe to high-risk people such as sex workers, adolescent girls and young women, gay men and pregnant and breastfeeding women.

    For Mukoloka, the drug represents more than convenience.

    “When I took tablets, customers would see a container of pills and leave. They would never return due to fear,” she said. “They couldn’t tell the difference between PrEP and treatment drugs. With the work we do, that stigma costs you money.”

    Daily oral PrEP has long been available in Zimbabwe alongside condoms, vaginal rings and shorter-acting injectables. Yet adherence has remained a challenge, particularly for people facing stigma or unpredictable schedules.

    “I work in beer halls looking for clients. Sometimes I would get drunk and forget to take my drugs,” Mukoloka said. “Sometimes I would work all night and not have time. Some clients refuse protection. They say … ‘Why should I use protection when I have paid?’”


    Extended duration an advantage

    Health authorities see lenacapavir’s discreetness and extended duration as a critical advantage for key populations such as sex workers and therefore a boost in fighting the spread of HIV.

    “Prevention must fit into real life. If a health solution is too complicated, too demanding, or too visible, people simply won’t use it,” Douglas Mombeshora, Zimbabwe’s health minister, said at Thursday’s launch. “Lenacapavir represents a new way of doing things.”

    The drug has been rolled out in other southern African nations like Zambia and Eswatini.

    Zimbabwe, Eswatini and Zambia, once global HIV epicenters, have emerged in recent years as among the world’s most successful models in controlling the epidemic, achieving World Health Organization testing, treatment and viral suppression targets.

    Yet despite these gains, new infections remain a concern, particularly among adolescent girls and young women.

    According to the United Nations children’s agency, HIV prevalence among adolescent girls and young women aged 10-24 is “persistently” triple that of their male counterparts in sub-Saharan Africa, driven by gender inequality, poverty and uneven access to health services.

    In sub-Saharan Africa, women and girls of all ages accounted for 63% of all new HIV infections in 2024, according to UNAIDS. In all other geographical regions, about 73% of new infections in 2024 occurred among men and boys.

    In Zimbabwe, authorities say about 46,000 people across 24 sites are expected to benefit in the early phase of the lenacapavir rollout, a fraction of potential demand in a country of roughly 15 million.


    High cost of mass rollouts

    Details for the next phase are not clear. The government says it hopes the number of beneficiaries will increase as more donor-funded doses arrive. It also hopes to acquire its own doses for a mass rollout but, like many other African governments, lacks enough money.

    Health officials, experts and activists warn that practical realities could tamper the drug’s early promise in Africa, a continent of over 1.5 billion people, not least due to the high cost of mass rollouts for governments.

    In Kenya, which received its first 21,000 lenacapavir doses this week, the government said the injectable would be offered at a negotiated price of about $54 per person per year, still a heavy cost for many.

    Bellinda Thibela, who works on health justice and access at Health GAP, an international advocacy organization, described the move as “a bit comforting” but hardly enough on its own on a continent where health systems have heavily relied on external funding that is diminishing, particularly after U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign aid cuts.

    Challenges will remain in countries that were “80% to 90% dependent on U.S. funding,” Thibela said. “What’s the point of having a reduced price if there is no staff and equipment in clinics?”

    While many clinicians describe lenacapavir as a significant advance, they stress it must complement, not replace, prevention tools.

    “Condoms remain key. They are cheap and they also prevent other sexually transmitted infections,” said Enerst Chikwati, Zimbabwe program director at AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

    But for early recipients such as Mukoloka, the drug’s impact already feels profound.

    “I am elated. I can go for a whole six months feeling safe,” she said.

    Associated Press writer Evelyne Musambi contributed to this report from Nairobi, Kenya.

    The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

    Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – Feb. 2026

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  • As nursing homes face staffing crisis, robots help workers focus on care

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    A growing, aging population and an acute caregiver shortage are pushing adult care centers to think outside the box. Itay Hod introduces a new, high-tech helper.

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  • NYC nursing walkout ends as last striking nurses approve new contract

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    NEW YORK — Nurses at a big New York hospital system approved a new contract Saturday, voting to end a major nursing strike after more than a month.

    More than 4,000 nurses in the privately run NewYork-Presbyterian system went on strike Jan. 12. They are now due to start returning to work in the coming week. The union, called the New York State Nurses Association, said 93% of its members at NewYork-Presbyterian voted to ratify the three-year contract.

    Two other big private hospital systems, Montefiore and Mount Sinai, ended their nurses’ walkout earlier this month by inking contract agreements with the same union.

    “We are so happy with the wins we achieved, and now the fight to enforce these contracts and hold our employers accountable begins,” union President Nancy Hagans said in a statement Saturday.

    NewYork-Presbyterian said that it looked forward to its nurses’ return and that the contract “reflects our respect for our nurses and the critical role they play as part of our exceptional care teams.”

    Both sides had said Friday that they had reached a tentative deal. Union members voted on it Friday and Saturday.

    Provisions included staffing improvements, raises topping 12% over three years and safeguards on the use of artificial intelligence, according to the union.

    The union has said the strike initially involved about 15,000 nurses overall at Montefiore, Mount Sinai and NewYork-Presbyterian. It affected only some facilities within the three systems and didn’t involve any city-run hospitals.

    During the strike, Montefiore, Mount Sinai and NewYork-Presbyterian brought on thousands of temporary nurses, transferred some patients and canceled some procedures. The hospitals insisted they were smoothly delivering care, including complex surgeries. But some vulnerable patients and their families said some routine tasks took longer.

    The strikers complained of unmanageable workloads and accused the hospitals of trying to chip away at health benefits. The hospitals contested those claims and said the union’s demands were exorbitant.

    Nurses at some Mount Sinai and Montefiore hospitals also walked out in 2023. That strike ended in three days.

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  • Former ‘Jersey Shore’ star Snooki says she has cervical cancer

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    FLORHAM PARK, N.J. (AP) — Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi said Friday that she has cervical cancer.

    The former “Jersey Shore” star said in a video posted to TikTok that a biopsy had revealed the stage one cancer.

    “Obviously not the news that I was hoping for,” she said, sitting in her car between medical appointments. “But also not the worst news, just because they caught it so early, thank freaking God.”

    She urged her followers to get Pap smears, and said she is likely to have a hysterectomy after her initial treatment.

    “So 2026 is not panning out how I wanted it to,” she said.

    Polizzi became one of the breakout stars of “Jersey Shore” from its debut on MTV in 2009. She was on the reality show for six seasons and appeared in the later spinoffs “Snooki & JWoww” and “Jersey Shore: Family Vacation.”

    Now 38, she still lives in New Jersey, has been married for 11 years and has three children.

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  • Social media can be addictive even for adults, but there are ways to cut back

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    Social media addiction has been compared to casinos, opioids and cigarettes.

    While there’s some debate among experts about the line between overuse and addiction, and whether social media can cause the latter, there is no doubt that many people feel like they can’t escape the pull of Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and other platforms.

    The companies that designed your favorite apps have an incentive to keep you glued to them so they can serve up ads that make them billions of dollars in revenue. Resisting the pull of the endless scroll, the dopamine hits from short-form videos and the ego boost and validation that come from likes and positive interactions, can seem like an unfair fight. For some people, “rage-bait,” gloomy news and arguing with internet strangers also have an irresistible draw.

    Much of the concern around social media addiction has focused on children. But adults are also susceptible to using social media so much that it starts affecting their day-to-day lives.

    Dr. Anna Lembke, a psychiatrist and the medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford University’s School of Medicine, defines addiction as “the continued compulsive use of a substance or behavior despite harm to self or others.”

    During her testimony at a landmark social media harms trial in Los Angeles, Lembke said that what makes social media platforms so addictive is the “24/7, really limitless, frictionless access” people have to them.

    Some researchers question whether addiction is the appropriate term to describe heavy use of social media, arguing that a person must be experiencing identifiable symptoms. These include strong, sometimes uncontrollable urges and withdrawal to qualify as addiction.

    Social media addiction is not recognized as an official disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is the standard reference psychiatrists and other mental health practitioners use to assess and treat patients. That’s partly because there is no widespread consensus on what constitutes social media addiction and whether underlying mental health issues contribute to problematic use.

    But just because there is no official agreement on the issue doesn’t mean excessive social media use can’t be harmful, some experts say.

    “For me, the biggest signpost is how does the person feel about the ‘amount,’ and how viewing it makes them feel,” said Dr. Laurel Williams, professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Baylor College of Medicine. “If what they discover is they view it so much that they are missing out on other things they may enjoy or things that they need to attend to, this is problematic use. Additionally, if you leave feeling overwhelmed, drained, sad, anxious, angry regularly, this use is not good for you.”

    In other words, is your use of social media affecting other parts of your life? Are you putting off chores, work, hobbies or time with friends and family? Have you tried to cut back your time but realized you were unable to? Do you feel bad about your social media use?

    Ofir Turel, a professor of information systems management at the University of Melbourne who has studied social media use for years, said there was “no agreement” over the term social media addiction, and he doesn’t “expect agreement soon.”

    “It’s obvious that we have an issue,” Turel said. “You don’t have to call it an addiction, but there is an issue and we need, as a society, to start thinking about it.”

    Before setting limits on scrolling, it’s helpful to understand how social media feeds and advertising work to draw in users, Williams said.

    “Think of social media as a company trying to get you to stay with them and buy something — have the mindset that this is information that I don’t need to act on and may not be true,” she added. “Get alternate sources of information. Always understand the more you see something, anyone can start to believe it is true.”

    Ian A. Anderson, a postdoctoral scholar at California Institute of Technology, suggests making small, meaningful changes to stop you from opening your social media app of choice. Moving the app’s place on your phone or turning off notifications are “light touch interventions,” but more involved options, like not bringing your phone into the bedroom or other places where you tend to use it, could also help, Anderson said.

    Tech tools can also help to cut back on tech overuse. Both iPhones and Android devices have onboard controls to help regulate screen time.

    Apple’s Screen Time controls are found in the iPhone’s settings menu. Users can set overall Downtime, which shuts off all phone activity during a set period of their choice.

    The controls also let users put a blanket restriction on certain categories of apps, such as social, games or entertainment or zero in on a specific app, by limiting the time that can be spent on it.

    The downside is that the limits aren’t hard to get around. It’s more of a nudge than a red line that you can’t cross. If you try to open an app with a limit, you’ll get a screen menu offering one more minute, a reminder after 15 minutes, or to completely ignore it.

    If a light touch isn’t working, more drastic steps might be necessary. Some users swear by turning their phones to gray-scale to make it less appealing to dopamine-seeking brains. On iPhones, adjust the color filter in your settings. For Android, turn on Bedtime Mode or tweak the color correction setting. Downgrading to a simpler phone, such as an old-school flip phone, could also help curb social media compulsions.

    Some startups, figuring that people might prefer a tangible barrier, offer hardware solutions that introduce physical friction between you and an app. Unpluq, for instance, is a yellow tag that you have to hold up to your phone in order to access blocked apps. Brick and Blok are two different products that work along the same lines — they’re squarish pieces of plastic that you have to tap or scan with your phone to unlock an app.

    If that’s not enough of an obstacle, you could stash away your phone entirely. There are various phone lockboxes and cases available, some of them designed so parents can lock up their teenagers’ phones when they’re supposed to be sleeping, but there’s no rule that says only teenagers can use them.

    Yondr, which makes portable phone locking pouches used at concerts or in schools, also sells a home phone box.

    If all else fails, it may be a good idea to look for deeper reasons for feeling addicted to social media. Maybe it’s a symptom of underlying problems like anxiety, stress, loneliness, depression or low self-esteem. If you think that’s the case, it could be worth exploring therapy that is becoming more widely available.

    “For people struggling to stay away — see if you can get a friend group to collaborate with you on it. Make it a group effort. Just don’t post about it! The more spaces become phone free, the more we may see a lessened desire to be ‘on,’” Williams said.

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  • 75-year-old Clearwater physical therapy tech has no plans to retire

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    CLEARWATER, Fla. — With physical therapy you get out what you put in. Sonny Harriel, 75, doesn’t just tell his patients that, the physical therapy tech lives it in his career.

    What You Need To Know

    • Sonny Harriel has worked at BayCare’s Morton Plant Hospital for 51 years. He is a physical therapy tech

    • The average that Americans have worked at their current job is four years. According to U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics that is the lowest tenure average in more than 20 years

    • Harriel says he has no plans to retire anytime soon

    • To see more Black History Month stories, click here


    He has put in a significant amount of time during that career.

    “I felt so good. I wouldn’t have thought that I would be in the hospital, or anywhere working for 50 years. But once I got 20 and 30, I said, that is it. I am not going anywhere,” said Sonny.

    51 years now at BayCare’s Morton Plant Hospital, and it’s a place that has shaped his life in many ways.

    Sonny Harriel has his own parking space at BayCare Morton Plant Hospital dedicated to his over 50 of service. (Spectrum News/Erin Murray)

    Sonny even found love at the hospital.

    “I said no for a couple of weeks, I kept saying, no, no, no. Then finally he kept being so insistent,” said Janice Harriel.

    “It was it was 4:20, right outside the door at 4:20 we started talking,” said Sonny, who remembers the place and time he first talked to his now wife.

    The pair married in 1991. Like Sonny, Janice has worked at the hospital a long, long time. 

    “This year is 45 years for me. From a child, to now 62 years old. This is my only place I have worked,” she said. 

    Janice smiles when she reminds everyone, she was born in this hospital, on the day former President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. 

    For many African Americans, career longevity at one place of employment has proved more difficult. It is well documented that workforce challenges and discrimination have been a big part of history for Black Americans. 

    For Sonny and Janice, that was not the case. They both say it was the acceptance from their first day working at Morton Plant that played a role in both staying so long. 

    “Patients come up to us, they will come up to Sonny, and they will say you worked with me in therapy, and they will say, I remember you, you prayed for me,” said Janice. “And it’s such a good feeling, giving back to our patients in our community to let them know we love what we do here at Morton Plant hospital.”

    Combined these lovebirds have worked 96 years for Morton Plant Hospital. 

    They don’t plan to retire soon either. 

    “People ask me, when do you retire? I told them they shredded my paper, so I don’t have retirement paper. That’s a trick I play on people, because I like having fun and I just enjoy working here and I don’t know anyone leave, right? No plans,” said Sonny. “As long as I can walk, I’m coming to work.”

    Sonny is actually not the longest tenured employee at Morton Plant. A clinical nurse that started in 1973 has two years more on Sonny. 

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  • Netflix Releases a Posthumous Interview With Eric Dane After His Death From ALS

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    “I think when the lights go out, it’s over,” he said in an interview for “Famous Last Words,” a Netflix series that’s available now. “I do believe that once we go to sleep or however it is we — we go, once we’re gone, we’re gone.”

    He also hoped in the interview that his two daughters, Billie and Georgia, would remember how he was present in their lives. He went to beach volleyball games and dance recitals, adding that he’d seen “The Nutcracker” many times and his review was, “That thing drones on, man.”

    “Famous Last Words” is based on a show that originated in Denmark. The premise is that a person is interviewed — executive producer Brad Falchuk does the questioning in the Netflix show — and it will not be released until their death.

    Dane’s interview is the second episode. The first was with primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall, who died last October. Falchuk tells The Associated Press he’s recorded five conversations already with plans for more.

    No one else was present on set for the taping last November and even the camera operators were in a different room.

    “The guest needs to be totally safe to speak honestly and say whatever they want and know that they’re leaving something for people to experience with them not here,” Falchuk said on Friday. Only a small number of people work on the production of the show afterward. “Very, very few people have seen it and very, very people even know whose done it,” explained Falchuk.

    “Famous people don’t often get an opportunity to speak honestly about themselves and about what they think in the world,” said Falchuk who is married to Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow. “They have to be very protective, especially nowadays. They say things and it goes everywhere and it gets misinterpreted and they also want to keep working or keep you know doing what they do, so this is an opportunity for them not to have to be guarded.”


    Dane’s ALS advocacy lives on

    After his ALS diagnosis, Dane became an advocate to raise awareness and money to fight the disease. After his death, the organization I AM ALS released clips of him recorded for an upcoming documentary.

    “It’s a tough thing to respond to, it’s a tough thing to live with, yeah. But it’s really hard for the people around me too. And it’s almost like — in a weird way, it’s to some benefit, because I spend a lot of my time consoling others,” he said in a clip released Friday.

    Filmmaker Chris Burke also captured Dane on a trip to Washington D.C. where he lobbied politicians for a bill that would help accelerate research, expand access to treatment and secure one billion dollars in federal funding for ALS patients.

    “He understood that ALS is not just a diagnosis; it is a call to action for families, for answers, and for change,” the organization said in a statement after Dane’s death.


    Dane’s last message to his daughters

    In the Netflix show, Dane also reflected on the lifelong impact of losing his father at age 7 and subsequent struggles with addiction to drugs and alcohol. He said he immediately knew he would marry Rebecca Gayheart when he met her and shared a memory of a family vacation to France where he spent a car ride speaking with a “spot on” French accent that made everyone laugh.

    The most poignant part of the taping was at the end — when Falchuk left the room for Dane to look into the camera and deliver a final message which he dedicated to his daughters. Dane shared that his diagnosis with ALS taught him to be present. He also hoped the girls would “fall in love,” whether it be with a person or something that would make them want to wake up each morning.

    “I hope you won’t just listen to me. I hope you’ll hear me,” he said.

    Falchuk said this final message is something each guest has the opportunity to do. “People do all different kinds of stuff. Some people write it. Jane improvised hers. Eric wrote his,” said Falchuk, who was visibly emotional at the idea of Dane’s daughters watching his message.

    “It’s hard to think about that,” he said. “They’re grieving and he loved them so much. They loved him so much and they’re just a beautiful family. I don’t know. Maybe they’ll watch it. Maybe they’ll never watch it, whatever it may be.”

    Falchuk and Dane had dinner prior to filming and they didn’t know each other well, but a new friendship had developed from the experience.

    ”I’m grieving Eric a lot right now. It’s very hard. I was not expecting this to happen this soon. And I miss him,” said Falchuk. “It’s hard when they die. It is hard.”

    The exchange seemed to also have an impact on Dane, who told Falchuk, “This is probably the most revealing and in-depth conversation I’ve had with just about anybody.”

    Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

    Photos You Should See – Feb. 2026

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  • You can give old batteries a new life by safely recycling them

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    NEW YORK — When household batteries die, it’s hard to know what to do with them. So they get shoved into a junk drawer or sheepishly thrown into the trash.

    But dead batteries aren’t quite finished. They can leak heavy metals like cadmium and nickel into soil and water once they reach the landfill. Some of them can also overheat and cause fires in garbage trucks and recycling centers.

    The good news is, safely disposing of your batteries takes just a few steps. They’ll get shipped to recycling centers that break down their contents to make new things.

    Battery recycling processes could use some fine-tuning, but it’s still a simple and responsible way to get rid of them.

    Recycling old batteries “keeps you safe, keeps the waste industry safe, keeps the first responders safe and responsibly sees that battery reach a proper end of life,” said Michael Hoffman, president of the National Waste and Recycling Association.

    Batteries keep things running in our homes, powering everything from alarm clocks and TV remotes to gaming controllers. Millions are bought and used every year in the U.S., according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

    They leave their stamp on the environment at nearly every stage of their life span.

    Many of the materials used to make batteries — elements like lithium and nickel — are mined. Over half the world’s cobalt reserves are in Congo.

    Once mined, those materials are shipped around to be refined, fashioned into a battery and packaged for sale. All the ships, trucks and planes moving them add to batteries’ carbon footprint. Making the batteries can release carbon emissions and pollution into the air and atmosphere, too.

    Though household batteries are far smaller than the big ones that power EVs and electric bicycles, there are a lot more of them and it’s worth figuring out how to get rid of them.

    “One person’s single battery is not necessarily a lot,” said environmental scientist Jennifer Sun with Harvard University. “But everyone uses many batteries.”

    To begin, wrangle your old batteries and figure out what kind they are. Batteries “come in all shapes and sizes, but what’s inside differs,” said materials scientist Matthew Bergschneider of the University of Texas at Dallas.

    Alkaline and zinc-carbon batteries are generally single-use and come in AA, AAA and more. These can be safely thrown in the household trash in most places, but the EPA still recommends recycling them so that their materials can be made into something new.

    Lithium-ion batteries — commonly found in things like power tools and cordless vacuums — are a risk to cause fires and leak toxic gases in garbage trucks and landfills. A lot of rechargeable batteries are lithium-ion, but more single-use batteries are being made this way too.

    Be sure to look up battery disposal laws for your area: Places like New York, Vermont and Washington, D.C. have special rules about throwing away household or rechargeable batteries.

    Once you’ve corralled your batteries, tape their ends or put them in plastic bags to avoid the possibility of sparking. Then, take them to a drop-off location. How easy or hard this is depends on where you live.

    Many hardware and office supplies stores accept old batteries. Look into city and state drop-off programs or search by ZIP code using The Battery Network, a nonprofit geared toward safe battery recycling.

    Have a location in your home to collect the batteries over time and then “at some point, hopefully among all the other things that we all have in our lives, you can find a convenient drop-off location,” said Todd Ellis of The Battery Network.

    If your batteries look swollen, cracked or are leaking, don’t drop them off. You’ll need to get in touch with your local hazardous waste removal agency to figure out how to turn them in.

    Once batteries are dropped off at a collection site, they’re sorted by type and taken to a recycling facility where they’re broken down into their essential components — like cobalt, nickel or aluminum. Some bits can be used to make new batteries or other things. Nickel, for example, can be used to make stainless steel products and alkaline batteries can be turned into sunscreen.

    Safely recycling a battery doesn’t cancel out the environmental cost of making it. But it does give the battery’s components their best chance at becoming something new.

    “You continue to recycle and you don’t have to go back to the Earth to mine,” said public health expert Oladele Ogunseitan, who studies electronic waste at the University of California, Irvine.

    Good battery habits are also good for us. It protects against old or damaged batteries leaking toxic compounds into our cabinets and junk drawers.

    “I think it’s one of the simplest and most controllable actions that we can take to reduce our impact,” said Sun, the Harvard scientist.

    ___

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

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  • Early prenatal care, considered best for moms and babies, is on the decline in the US, data shows

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    Early prenatal care improves the chances of having a healthy pregnancy and baby. But a new federal report shows it’s been on the decline.The share of U.S. births to women who began prenatal care in the first trimester dropped from 78.3% in 2021 to 75.5% in 2024, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday.Meanwhile, starting care later in pregnancy or getting no care at all has been on the rise. Prenatal care beginning in the second trimester rose from 15.4% to 17.3%, and starting care in the third trimester or getting no care went from 6.3% to 7.3%.“We know that early engagement in prenatal care is linked to better overall health outcomes,” said Dr. Clayton Alfonso, an OB-GYN at Duke University in North Carolina. When patients delay medical care during pregnancy, “we’ve missed that window to optimize both fetal and maternal care.”While the trend identified in the report held for nearly all racial and ethnic groups, the decrease in early prenatal care was higher for moms in minority groups. For example, first-trimester care dropped from 69.7% in 2021 to 65.1% in 2024 for Black mothers. Getting late or no prenatal care raises the risk of maternal mortality, which is much higher among Black mothers.Michelle Osterman, lead author of the report, said the overall findings represent a shift. Between 2016 and 2021, the timing of when U.S. women started prenatal care had been improving.The earlier prenatal visits begin, doctors said, the earlier problems can be caught. Visits give doctors a chance to share health guidance, and can include blood pressure checks, screenings, blood tests, physical exams and ultrasound scans.The report doesn’t provide reasons why prenatal care is starting later. But the proliferation of maternity care deserts across the nation is a growing concern, said Dr. Grace Ferguson, an OB-GYN in Pittsburgh.Many hospitals have shut down labor and delivery units “and the prenatal care providers that work at those hospitals also have probably moved,” said Ferguson, who was not involved with the report.A 2024 March of Dimes report found that more than 35% of U.S. counties are maternity care deserts, meaning there’s no birthing facility or obstetric provider. Women living in these areas receive less prenatal care, the report showed.Ferguson, who provides abortions as part of her OB-GYN care, said post-Roe v. Wade abortion restrictions may play a part because some obstetricians are choosing not to practice in states with more restrictive laws.Alfonso, who was not involved in the CDC report, said he also suspects that access issues for patients are pushing prenatal care later, particularly in rural areas. Patients may have to travel farther to get to appointments and may struggle to find a practice that accepts their insurance, particularly if they have Medicaid.Doctors fear that things could get worse.“If this trend continues,” Alfonso said, “I worry about kind of what that would mean for morbidity and mortality for our moms.”

    Early prenatal care improves the chances of having a healthy pregnancy and baby. But a new federal report shows it’s been on the decline.

    The share of U.S. births to women who began prenatal care in the first trimester dropped from 78.3% in 2021 to 75.5% in 2024, according to data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday.

    Meanwhile, starting care later in pregnancy or getting no care at all has been on the rise. Prenatal care beginning in the second trimester rose from 15.4% to 17.3%, and starting care in the third trimester or getting no care went from 6.3% to 7.3%.

    “We know that early engagement in prenatal care is linked to better overall health outcomes,” said Dr. Clayton Alfonso, an OB-GYN at Duke University in North Carolina. When patients delay medical care during pregnancy, “we’ve missed that window to optimize both fetal and maternal care.”

    While the trend identified in the report held for nearly all racial and ethnic groups, the decrease in early prenatal care was higher for moms in minority groups. For example, first-trimester care dropped from 69.7% in 2021 to 65.1% in 2024 for Black mothers. Getting late or no prenatal care raises the risk of maternal mortality, which is much higher among Black mothers.

    Michelle Osterman, lead author of the report, said the overall findings represent a shift. Between 2016 and 2021, the timing of when U.S. women started prenatal care had been improving.

    The earlier prenatal visits begin, doctors said, the earlier problems can be caught. Visits give doctors a chance to share health guidance, and can include blood pressure checks, screenings, blood tests, physical exams and ultrasound scans.

    The report doesn’t provide reasons why prenatal care is starting later. But the proliferation of maternity care deserts across the nation is a growing concern, said Dr. Grace Ferguson, an OB-GYN in Pittsburgh.

    Many hospitals have shut down labor and delivery units “and the prenatal care providers that work at those hospitals also have probably moved,” said Ferguson, who was not involved with the report.

    A 2024 March of Dimes report found that more than 35% of U.S. counties are maternity care deserts, meaning there’s no birthing facility or obstetric provider. Women living in these areas receive less prenatal care, the report showed.

    Ferguson, who provides abortions as part of her OB-GYN care, said post-Roe v. Wade abortion restrictions may play a part because some obstetricians are choosing not to practice in states with more restrictive laws.

    Alfonso, who was not involved in the CDC report, said he also suspects that access issues for patients are pushing prenatal care later, particularly in rural areas. Patients may have to travel farther to get to appointments and may struggle to find a practice that accepts their insurance, particularly if they have Medicaid.

    Doctors fear that things could get worse.

    “If this trend continues,” Alfonso said, “I worry about kind of what that would mean for morbidity and mortality for our moms.”

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