Health & Veritas

Howie and Harlan are joined by Stephen Waxman, a leading neurology researcher, to discuss the promise of new methods developed by his lab to treat the ravages of pain. Harlan talks about the importance of ratings for Medicare Advantage plans; Howie assesses two sobering new reports on the solvency of Medicare. Links: Harlan’s Section  Slides from Humana's Investor Day  "Humana’s cautious defense of Medicare Advantage" "What Are the Medicare Star Ratings?"  "Early analysis: How health plans fared in the 2025 Medicare Advantage star ratings" Interview with Dr. Waxman  "F.D.A. Approves Drug to Treat Pain Without Opioid Effects" "A brief historical perspective: Hodgkin and Huxley" "A quantitative description of membrane current and its application to conduction and excitation in nerve" Nobel Prize: “Speed read: Signal to charge" "Sodium channels and pain" "Targeting a Peripheral Sodium Channel to Treat Pain" Girl with the Dragon Tattoo: "Ronald Niedermann"  "Peripheral Sodium Channel Blocker Could Revolutionize Treatment for Nerve Pain" "Interplay of Nav1.8 and Nav1.7 channels drives neuronal hyperexcitability in neuropathic pain"  "Pharmacotherapy for Pain in a Family With Inherited Erythromelalgia Guided by Genomic Analysis and Functional Profiling"  "Neuropathic Pain" "A historical perspective on the discovery of statins"  "Erythromelalgia" "The Two Sides of NaV1.7: Painful and Painless Channelopathies"  "Dr. Stephen Waxman awarded Sharpey-Schafer Prize for pain research" Nobel Prize: "Robert Edwards" "Gain-of-function mutation in Nav1.7 in familial erythromelalgia induces bursting of sensory neurons"  "Scientists Identify Method to Study Resilience to Pain"  "Chasing the genes behind pain"  "Stephen Waxman: pioneer in axons, their disorders, and pain" "I Feel Like I’m Burning Alive. It’s Hard for People to Believe Me"  "‘How badly does it hurt?’ Challenges of measuring pain in clinical trials" Howie’s Section "2025 Medicare Trustees Report"  "Analysis of the 2025 Medicare Trustees' Report"  "Medicare gets a big (unofficial) surprise: a 17-year extension on when it’ll run dry"  "Evan Sussman: Expanding Access to Fertility Drugs"  "Trump gives major lift to 2026 Medicare Advantage payments"  "June 2025 Report to the Congress: Medicare and the Health Care Delivery System"  "Medicare Advantage’s supplemental benefits will cost taxpayers $86 billion this year, with little transparency"  "How UnitedHealth turned a questionable artery-screening program into a gold mine"  "From boom to bitcoin: A device maker’s surprising pivot amid a Medicare crackdown"   Learn more about the MBA for Executives program at Yale SOM. Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.

Howie and Harlan discuss health and healthcare issues making headlines, including public attitudes toward the Medicaid cuts in the budget bill making its way through Congress, a one-time gene therapy that could cure high cholesterol, “ambient” AI in the exam room, and the replacement of the the CDC’s entire vaccine advisory board.  Links: Remembering Atul Butte “Atul Butte, a biomedical and bioinformatics pioneer, dies at 55” Marina Sirota on LinkedIn “Remembering Atul Butte, MD, PhD” The Budget Bill H.R.1—One Big Beautiful Bill Act “KFF Health Tracking Poll: Views of the One Big Beautiful Bill” CBO: Dynamic Estimate of H.R. 1, One Big Beautiful Bill Act “Protesters disrupt town-hall healthcare talks” Vinay Prasad “Vinay Prasad named chief medical and science officer at FDA” “Critic of drug industry and COVID-19 measures to lead FDA vaccine program” Medicaid Cuts “Senate GOP tax bill would hit politically explosive Medicaid provision” “The Senate Wants Billions More in Medicaid Cuts, Pinching States and Infuriating Hospitals” “5 Key Facts About Medicaid Work Requirements” “Georgia Touts Its Medicaid Experiment as a Success. The Numbers Tell a Different Story.” “Georgia’s Pathways to Coverage Program: The First Year in Review” “Trump’s Big Bill Would Be More Regressive Than Any Major Law in Decades” Gene Therapy to Prevent Heart Disease Verve Therapeutics Verve Therapeutics: Sekar Kathiresan, M.D. “Lilly to buy gene-editing partner Verve for up to $1.3 billion in cardiac care push” “Viral Vector-Based Gene Therapy” “mRNA-based therapeutics: powerful and versatile tools to combat diseases” “Second patient death reported with gene therapy for muscular dystrophy” Anti-Vaxxers at the CDC “Scoop: CDC has no Acting Director, sources confirm.” Video: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on the polio vaccine “This tech millionaire went from covid trial funder to misinformation superspreader” “Kennedy Removes All C.D.C. Vaccine Panel Experts” “RFK Jr. replaced everyone on the CDC's vaccine panel. Here's why that matters” “ACIP, CDC, and Insurance Coverage of Vaccines in the United States” Ambient AI “Ambient AI Is Having Its ‘Moment’ In Healthcare” “This technology is becoming beloved by doctors and patients alike” “Physician Perspectives on Ambient AI Scribes” “Microsoft unveils new voice-activated AI assistant for doctors” “Kaiser Permanente rolls out Abridge's gen AI clinical tech across 40-hospital system” “Andreessen Horowitz in Deal Talks Valuing Abridge AI at $5.3 Billion” “Abridge easing clinician workload”

Howie and Harlan are joined by Sarah DeSilvey to talk about her career as a rural nurse practitioner and her work to create a shared vocabulary for tracking social determinants of health. Harlan unpacks the research implications of the “big beautiful bill” in Congress, and reports on his new research about the link between state gun laws and deaths among children; Howie discusses the simple steps that can prevent syphilis from being passed from mothers to babies in utero.  Links: Budget Cuts “Senators push back on Trump’s proposed $18 billion NIH budget cut” “H.R.1—One Big Beautiful Bill Act” “NIH details how Trump budget would cut support for grants, training, and research centers”“How cuts at the National Institutes of Health could impact Americans' health” Harlan Krumholz: “Characterization of Research Grant Terminations at the National Institutes of Health” Guns and Kids Harlan Krumholz: “Firearm Laws and Pediatric Mortality in the US” Jeremy Faust: Inside Medicine McDonald v. City of Chicago  Health & Veritas Episode 174: James Dodington: Protecting Kids from Gun Violence Sarah DeSilvey The Gravity Project CDC: Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) WIC: USDA's Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children “WIC Works: Addressing the Nutrition and Health Needs of Low-Income Families for More Than Four Decades” “Trump Budget Would Slash WIC Fruit and Vegetable Benefits for Millions” Health Level 7L7 Congenital Syphilis “Missed Opportunities for Congenital Syphilis Prevention—Clark County, Nevada, 2017–2022” CDC: Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report Health & Veritas Episode 1777: Dave Chokshi: Lessons from the Front Lines of the Pandemic Health & Veritas Epoisode 155: Manisha Juthani: Solving Infectious Disease Mysteries Cleveland Clinic: Congenital rubella syndrome CDC: Congenital Syphilis—Reported Cases and Rates of Reported Cases by Year of Birth, by State/Territory and Region in Alphabetical Order, United States

Howie and Harlan are joined by Dave Chokshi, who led New York City’s response to COVID-19 as health commissioner and serves as chair of the Common Health Coalition, which is working to prepare for future crises by strengthening partnerships between healthcare and public health. Harlan reports on a trip to China; Howie says it’s time for a global effort to expand rubella vaccination.  Links: Harlan in China Harlan Krumholz: Yale China Project Harlan Krumholz receives China’s Friendship Award “China has become a scientific superpower” Dave Chokshi Common Health Coalition Dave Chokshi: “Public Health and Care Delivery—a Common Destiny” Common Health Coalition Challenge “Common Health Coalition Announces Awards of More Than $400,000 Through Inaugural Common Health Challenge” Harlan Krumholz: “State-Level Excess Mortality and Potential Deaths Averted in US Adults During the Delta and Omicron Waves of COVID-19” “New York’s Vaccine Mandates Saved Lives, Departing Health Boss Says” BMJ series: “US covid-19 lessons for future health protection and preparedness” Health & Veritas Episode 175: Rebekah Gee: Improving Health, One Family at a Time Center for American Progress: Hurricane Katrina’s Health Care Legacy NYC Health + Hospitals “Dave Chokshi, MD, Is Appointed Chief Population Health Officer of NYC Health + Hospitals” “The Connection Between COVID-19 and Blood Clots” “CCNY receives $500,000 grant to incubate health leadership institute” “Former New York City Health Commissioner Named Sternberg Family Professor of Leadership” Dave Chokshi: “Forget About Living to 100. Let’s Live Healthier Instead.” Rubella CDC: Rubella Cleveland Clinic: Congenital rubella syndrome CDC: Rubella Vaccination “Estimated Current and Future Congenital Rubella Syndrome Incidence with and Without Rubella Vaccine Introduction — 19 Countries, 2019–2055” Learn more about the MBA for Executives program at Yale SOM. Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.

In a special episode recorded at Connecticut’s largest entrepreneurship event, Howie and guest host Megan Ranney, the dean of the Yale School of Public Health, welcome four Yale innovators: entrepreneur and YSPH lecturer Kaakpema “KP” Yelpaala; Basmah Safdar, incoming director of Women’s Health Research at Yale; Kayla Wooley, a YSPH graduate and the founder of two nursing home staffing companies; and Yale College student Laurie Jimenez, founder of FulcrumCare, a value-based dental provider for Medicaid and Medicare patients.  Links: The Yale Innovation Summit Yale Innovation Summit 2025 Yale Ventures Kaakpema “KP” Yelpaala “Public health innovator Kaakpema Yelpaala appointed senior fellow and lecturer at YSPH” InnovateHealth Yale Cityblock Girl Effect Basmah Safdar “Basmah Safdar, MD, FACEP, Appointed Director, Women’s Health Research at Yale (WHRY)” Women's Health Research at Yale “Heart attack symptoms often misinterpreted in younger women” “Sex Differences in COVID-19 Immune Responses Affect Patient Outcomes” “The Truth About ‘Man Flu’” “Drug Agency Recommends Lower Doses of Sleep Aids for Women” Kayla Wooley StaffOnTap “Nursing home staff shortages prompted YSPH alumna to form two companies” “Nursing Home Staffing Shortages and Other Problems Persist, U.S. Report Says” “State Of The Sector: Nursing Home Labor Staffing Shortages Persist Despite Unprecedented Efforts To Attract More Staff” Hinge Health Laurie Jimenez FulcrumCare “Many Medicare Beneficiaries with Dental Insurance Face Financial Barriers to Care” “Variation in Use of Dental Services by Children and Adults Enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP” Learn more about the MBA for Executives program at Yale SOM. Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.

Howie and Harlan are joined by Rebekah Gee, founder and CEO of Nest Health, which provides in-home care to kids on Medicaid and their families. Harlan reports on the first personalized CRISPR gene therapy for a rare genetic disease; Howie untangles the FDA’s restrictions on the COVID-19 booster and what it will mean for your ability to get a shot this fall.  Links: A Breakthrough CRISPR Treatment “Baby Is Healed With World’s First Personalized Gene-Editing Treatment” “Patient-Specific In Vivo Gene Editing to Treat a Rare Genetic Disease” “Progress in the Development of N-of-1 Therapy” “Personalized Gene Editing to Treat an Inborn Error of Metabolism” Nest Health Health & Veritas Episode 40: Rebekah Gee: Can We Bring Family Healthcare to the Home? Nest Health “Nest Health picks up $4M in seed extension funding to build out at-home primary care for families” “How Nest Health Is Redefining Primary Care for Families” Rebekah Gee on LinkedIn on Nest Health “What ‘patient-centered‘ should mean: confessions of an extremist” “Prevalence and Variation of Developmental Screening and Surveillance in Early Childhood” “Postpartum health is in crisis” “The Impact of the Pandemic on Well-Child Visits for Children Enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP” “Families often have chief medical officers—and they're almost always women” “Case Study: Louisiana's Poor Rankings Make Improving Birth Outcomes a State Imperative” “In 6-to-3 Ruling, Supreme Court Ends Nearly 50 Years of Abortion Rights” Rebekah Gee on LinkedIn on Medicaid cuts “5 Key Facts About Medicaid Work Requirements” “Health Provisions in the 2025 Federal Budget Reconciliation Bill” A New COVID Booster Policy “An Evidence-Based Approach to Covid-19 Vaccination” “FDA will limit Covid vaccines to people over 65 or at high risk of serious illness, leaders say” “FDA tightens requirements for COVID vaccine, adding trials for healthy adults” Learn more about the MBA for Executives program at Yale SOM. Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.

Howie and Harlan are joined by James Dodington, a Yale pediatric emergency medicine physician and an expert in community-based violence prevention. Harlan reports on the remarkable financial results and sometimes questionable science of Hims & Hers Health; Howie discusses UnitedHealthcare’s faltering stock price in the face of anger over aggressive care denial and a lawsuit from shareholders. Links: Oscar Health and Hims & Hers “Oscar Health Profits Eclipse $275 Million As Obamacare Enrollment Soars” “Hims & Hers Health Revenue Jumps, But Outlook Disappoints” “Hims & Hers' Q1 revenue doubles to $586M, boosted by growth in weight loss business” “Novo Nordisk to sell Wegovy through telehealth firms to cash-paying US customers” “They Wanted a Quick Fix for Hair Loss. Instead, These Young Men Got Sick.” “EU drugs regulator confirms suicidal thoughts as side effect of hair loss drug” “Measures to minimise risk of suicidal thoughts with finasteride and dutasteride medicines” “FDA alerts health care providers, compounders and consumers of potential risks associated with compounded topical finasteride products” James Dodington Health & Veritas Episode 81: Joseph Sakran: Confronting Gun Violence Health & Veritas Episode 77: Megan Ranney: What’s Next for Public Health? “Children and teens are more likely to die by guns than anything else” “U.S. Surgeon General Issues Advisory on the Public Health Crisis of Firearm Violence in the United States” “New Report Highlights U.S. 2022 Gun-Related Deaths: Firearms Remain Leading Cause of Death for Children and Teens, and Disproportionately Affect People of Color” James Dodington: “Rural Versus Urban Hospitalizations for Firearm Injuries in Children and Adolescents” “Disparities in Pediatric Mental and Behavioral Health Conditions” “Special Report: Dean Megan Ranney Brings a Public Health Approach to the Country’s Gun Violence Epidemic” “Gun Violence Is a Public Health Crisis—But Hospital-based Intervention Programs Can Help Break the Cycle” “Implementation of an emerging hospital-based violence intervention program: a multimethod study” UCSF Wraparound Project: The Public Health Model for Violence Prevention “Just Listen” Firearm Injury Prevention at the Yale School of Public Health “11 Years After Sandy Hook—A New Path Toward Healing and Hope” Nelba Márquez-Greene’s Shared Humanity Podcast 4-CT:Violence Intervention and Prevention “Cash Pilot Targets Violence Victims” “How unrestricted cash aid is transforming violence intervention in Connecticut” Pepe Vega’s story: “Gun Violence Is a Public Health Crisis—But Hospital-based Intervention Programs Can Help Break the Cycle" “Yale undergraduate team takes first place in national health policy competition” UnitedHealthcare “UnitedHealth CEO Is Out, Sending Shares Plummeting” “UnitedHealthcare sued by shareholders over reaction to CEO's killing” UnitedHealth Shareholder Lawsuit “UnitedHealth's string of setbacks, from exec murder to cyber attack” “Zepbound Patients Fear Losing Coverage After CVS Deal for Wegovy” “Zepbound beats Wegovy for weight loss in first head-to-head trial of blockbuster drugs”  

Howie and Harlan are joined by Thomas Gill, a Yale geriatrician whose research tracks the factors that contribute to disability in older adults—and those that support continued independence. And they discuss the contrarian tapped to evaluate vaccines at the FDA, allegations of kickbacks against insurers, and the potential end of a loophole that has allowed states to collect additional Medicaid funding.  Links: Vinay Prasad at the FDA “Vinay Prasad tapped to run FDA center that regulates vaccines, gene therapies” “Vinay Prasad, in his own words, outlines the philosophy he’ll bring to the FDA” “Peter Marks, FDA’s top vaccine regulator, forced out” Howard Forman on LinkedIn on Vinay Prasad's Appointment Vinay Prasad's Substack Insurance News “Justice Department Sues Big Medicare Insurers Alleging Kickbacks” “Aetna to exit the ACA exchanges in 2026” “What Aetna quitting the exchanges says about the exchanges” ”CVS to boost access to Novo Nordisk’s weight loss treatment Wegovy for patients on its drug plans” Thomas Gill Statista: Share of old age population (65 years and older) in the total U.S. population from 1950 to 2050 Thomas Gill: “A physical activity intervention to treat the frailty syndrome in older persons-results from the LIFE-P study” Thomas Gill: “A Program to Prevent Functional Decline in Physically Frail, Elderly Persons Who Live at Home” “Prehabilitation for Patients Undergoing Orthopedic Surgery: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis” “Allostatic Load: Importance, Markers, and Score Determination in Minority and Disparity Populations” “Cohort Profile: The Precipitating Events Project (PEP Study)” “In Memoriam: Yale Expert in Clinical Research Methods, Alvan R. Feinstein” Medicaid Cuts “Putting $880 Billion in Potential Federal Medicaid Cuts in Context of State Budgets and Coverage” “Republicans are running out of ways to cut Medicaid as moderates and hard-liners clash” “G.O.P. Targets a Medicaid Loophole Used by 49 States to Grab Federal Money” Learn more about the MBA for Executives program at Yale SOM. Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.

Howie and Harlan are joined by Joel Bervell, a recent medical school graduate who uses social media platforms to combat misinformation and explain racial biases in healthcare. Harlan discusses his new Wall Street Journal commentary highlighting the link between viral infections and chronic diseases; Howie reports on powerful new evidence for the effectiveness of the HPV vaccine and warns of the dangers of a vaccine-skeptical presidential administration. Links: Viral Infection and Chronic Disease Harlan Krumholz: “How to Lead a Chronic Disease Revolution” “A natural experiment on the effect of herpes zoster vaccination on dementia” “Unexplained post-acute infection syndromes” Joel Bervell Joel Bervell Joel Bervell on TikTok Joel Bervell on Instagram “TikTok's 'Medical Mythbuster' Helps Save Lives By Tackling Racial & Gender Disparities In Healthcare” “How the pulse oximeter became infamous on TikTok” “Racial Bias in Pulse Oximetry Measurement” Joel Bervell’s TikTok on the pulse oximeter Joel Bervell: “The eGFR Equation” “Race Correction and the X-Ray Machine: The Controversy over Increased Radiation Doses for Black Americans in 1968” Joel Bervell: “For over 50 years, X-ray technicians were taught to administer higher radiation doses to Black patients” Joel Bervell’s Instagram reel on bias in the measurement of lung capacity Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die Joel Bervell on LinkedIn Joel Bervell on YouTube: The Doctor Is In Kickstarter: The Doctor Is In “Medical mythbuster Joel Bervell, MD, on how to teach kids about medicine and address misinformation” Cleveland Clinic: Amyloidosis Joel Bervel’s Instagram reel on the GFR equation “Abandoning a Race-biased Tool for Kidney Diagnosis” “OPTN Board approves elimination of race-based calculation for transplant candidate listing” “America’s News Influencers” “85th Annual Peabody Awards Announce Nominees for the Arts, Children’s/Youth, Entertainment, and Interactive & Immersive Categories Vaccines and the Federal Healthcare Agencies Health & Veritas Episode 165: “Aging in Bursts and Other News” “U.S. government researchers present ‘phenomenal’ new data on HPV vaccines” “Invasive cervical cancer incidence following bivalent human papillomavirus vaccination: a population-based observational study of age at immunization, dose, and deprivation” “Kennedy played key role in Gardasil vaccine case against Merck” “RFK Jr. suggests some vaccines are risky or ineffective, downplays measles threat” “FDA chief says they're looking at whether to approve COVID shots for next winter” “How Marty Makary’s FDA is embracing a more skeptical view of vaccines” Learn more about the MBA for Executives program at Yale SOM. Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.  

Howie reflects on his decades-long experience with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation and the procedure that has changed his life. Howie and Harlan report on healthcare issues in the news, including the measles outbreak and a vision for a team of personal healthcare AI agents. And student research assistants Inès Gilles and Sophia Stumpf visit for a farewell interview. Links: Eric Topol: Ground Truths Eric Topol: Super Agers Harlan Krumholz: The Expert Guide to Beating Heart Disease: What You Absolutely Must Know Paroxysmal Atrial Fibrillation “What to know about paroxysmal atrial fibrillation” Joseph Akar, MD, PhD Mayo Clinic: Atrial fibrillation ablation “The True Cost of a Cardiac Ablation in the U.S.” AI Agents “The Four AI Agents of Your Health” “This A.I. Forecast Predicts Storms Ahead” Measles CDC: Measles Cases and Outbreaks “Measles Surge in Southwest Is Now the Largest Single Outbreak Since 2000” Mayo Clinic: History of Measles Food as Medicine “Cooking with the curriculum: a pilot culinary medicine program at the Larner College of Medicine” “Bringing Culinary Medicine to Yale’s New Teaching Kitchen” Bird Flu CDC: H5 Bird Flu: Current Situation “Vietnam reports H5N1 avian flu case with encephalitis” Exercise and Brain Waste “Long-term physical exercise facilitates putative glymphatic and meningeal lymphatic vessel flow in humans” “The brain makes a lot of waste. Now scientists think they know where it goes” Learn more about the MBA for Executives program at Yale SOM. Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.