{"id":408477,"date":"2026-04-20T16:03:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T16:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/408477\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T16:03:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T16:03:11","slug":"cdc-director-weed-teen-pregnancy-measles-morning-rounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/408477\/","title":{"rendered":"CDC director, weed, teen pregnancy, measles: Morning Rounds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT\u2019s free newsletter Morning Rounds.\u00a0Sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Good morning and happy Marathon Monday from Boston! If you\u2019ve been waiting for the right deal to finally sign up for STAT+, then you\u2019re in luck. This week, we\u2019re running what STAT newsletter strategist Alexa Lee calls \u201cone of the fattest discounts we\u2019ve done in a while!\u201d Get it while the getting is good<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Cautious optimism about the latest CDC director nom<\/p>\n

Last week, President Trump nominated Erica Schwartz to direct the CDC. Until now, the position has mostly been filled on a part-time or interim basis. As a team of STAT reporters led by Helen Branswell reports, the nomination has generated sighs of relief in the public health world. As one CDC employee put it, among agency staff, \u201cthe general vibe is guarded but hopeful.\u201d<\/p>\n

But there are lingering questions about how health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may try to influence Schwartz. \u201cShe could be terrible, she could be great,\u201d former CDC director Daniel Jernigan said. \u201cBut it\u2019s really: What is the secretary going to allow?\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a> on how experts have reacted to the nomination and how they predict things will go.<\/p>\n

How weed affects adolescent brains<\/p>\n

In a study of more than 11,000 kids and teens, those who use cannabis showed slower progression over time when it came to memory, attention, language, and cognitive processing speed. The difference was small at times, the researchers acknowledge, but could still be significant. Often, those who used cannabis displayed a cognitive advantage at early ages, only to be surpassed by those in the control group as they aged.<\/p>\n

The research, published yesterday in Neuropsychopharmacology<\/a>, used data from the NIH-supported Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study, following youth from around age nine through 17. Cannabis use was self-reported and confirmed with biological testing from hair, urine, and saliva samples.<\/p>\n

Relatedly, another study published Friday in JAMA Network Open<\/a> found that rates of adolescent cannabis use increased after recreational use was legalized in California, but decreased after the Covid pandemic.<\/p>\n

The safety measures one family must take amid a measles outbreak<\/p>\n

Since 2020, Penelope Gatlin and her family have completely changed their lives to protect her 13-year-old son\u2019s health. He has Okur-Chung neurodevelopment syndrome, an ultra-rare genetic disorder that can lead to autism, intellectual disabilities, low muscle tone, and more. Gatlin forgoes work travel and in-person meetings, and her husband has left the workforce completely. They still wear masks and social distance outside.<\/p>\n

Now, they have another infectious disease to worry about. The family lives in North Carolina, one of 32 states facing a measles outbreak. \u201cThe resurgence of measles is a threat to the health of every child, but for immunocompromised kids like mine, it is catastrophic,\u201d she writes. Read more<\/a> about how the family is grappling with skepticism among friends \u2014 and even health care professionals \u2014 who say their\u00a0fear of measles is overblown.<\/p>\n

How one nonprofit is expanding LGBTQ+ care while it shrinks elsewhere<\/p>\n

Nikolas Indigo (pictured above with one of his found family fathers, Michael Bell) made appointments with four different surgeons over two years before he was able to get top surgery in September. The first doctor deadnamed him: \u201cI did not like the vibe of that man, zero out of 10,\u201d Indigo told me. The next two were unable to take his insurance. The fourth try was the charm, except he had to travel all the way to Atlanta from his home in Savannah, Ga.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo matter how hard I tried, I could not do it on my own,\u201d Indigo remembered about seeking doctors for hormones and top surgery. Instead, he turned to the Savannah Pride Center, a nonprofit where he\u2019s now a lead volunteer, to find reliable information on affirming clinicians. I wrote about Indigo, his journey to top surgery, his work at the Pride Center, and his optimism in the face of endless political attacks on trans people. I even got to travel to Savannah, where I attended the center\u2019s second annual health summit and ate some delicious southern food. Read more<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u2018We still have 3.6 million births a year, but the problem is teens and young adults.\u2019<\/p>\n

That was Marc Siegel, a senior medical analyst at Fox News, framing the declining rate of girls ages 15 to 19 having babies as a \u201cproblem.\u201d And he\u2019s not the only person thinking about it this way.<\/p>\n

A new First Opinion essay by researcher Riley J. Steiner argues that Siegel\u2019s comments are just the latest example of how politicians and public health experts try to take charge of teenagers\u2019 reproductive lives. While Siegel and others seem to want more teen pregnancies, Steiner argues that efforts to reduce teen births are often borne from the same impulse.<\/p>\n

\u201cControlling teen fertility should not be a public health and policy goal,\u201d she writes. Read more<\/a> on the history of the teen pregnancy prevention era and how it affects today\u2019s public discourse.<\/p>\n

A controversial cancer study abstract comes to AACR<\/p>\n

I had to read the headline twice when I saw the press release<\/a>: \u201cEating fruits, vegetables\u00a0and whole grains may increase the chance of early onset lung cancer,\u201d\u00a0according to new research from the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center that will be presented tomorrow at the annual American Association for Cancer Research meeting.<\/p>\n

The claim comes from a survey study of 187 patients who were diagnosed with lung cancer by age 50, most of whom had never smoked. The authors speculated that pesticides might be a contributing factor.<\/p>\n

But outside experts eviscerated the research methods. Peter Shields, a medical oncologist at Ohio State University, noted in a statement that experts have long known leanness to be a risk factor for lung cancer, which could explain the authors\u2019 findings. \u201cThis is only a conference abstract, but the flaws of the study and its conclusions are quite striking,\u201d Baptiste Leurent, a medical statistics professor at University College London said in a comment. \u201cJumping to the conclusion that [healthier eating] could cause lung cancer is quite a stretch, let alone implicating pesticides.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a few days of the conference left. For the latest, strongest reporting on what\u2019s going on there, sign up for STAT\u2019s AACR in 30 Seconds<\/a> newsletter. And don\u2019t miss his special report on KRAS inhibitors<\/a> from yesterday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What we\u2019re reading<\/p>\n

Ohio\u2019s nursing homes are dumping patients at homeless shelters, Signal Ohio<\/a><\/p>\n

A pancreatic cancer expert on why Revolution Medicines\u2019 study could \u2018open up a new era\u2019 of treatment, STAT<\/a><\/p>\n

After conversion therapy ruling, therapists torn on future of Texas\u2019 gender care ban, Texas Tribune<\/a><\/p>\n

PBMs warn Trump\u2019s proposal to disclose drug prices is illegal, STAT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT\u2019s free newsletter Morning Rounds.\u00a0Sign up here.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[103,397,396,61,60],"class_list":["post-408477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}