Health & Veritas

Howie and Harlan discuss the end of flu season, vaccine effectiveness, and the challenge of rebuilding public confidence in immunization. Also: new cholesterol guidelines that push earlier treatment, measles outbreaks and the erosion of herd immunity, a court ruling pausing changes to vaccine guidelines, signs of stabilization at the NIH, new evidence on football and brain injury, and a MedPAC report suggesting Medicare Advantage plans are overpaid.
Show notes:
Looking Back at the Flu Season
CDC 2024–2025 Influenza Season Summary
CDC: Influenza-Associated Pediatric Deaths 
CDC Weekly US Influenza Surveillance Report
CDC: Interim Estimates of 2025–26 Seasonal Influenza Vaccine Effectiveness 
New Cholesterol Guidelines
2026 ACC/AHA/AACVPR/ABC/ACPM/ADA/AGS/APhA/ASPC/NLA/PCNA Guideline on the Management of Dyslipidemia
"ACC/American Heart Association Issue Updated Guideline for Managing Lipids, Cholesterol"
Lipoprotein (a): Levels & Testing
Apolipoprotein B (Apo B) Test 
"Major changes to cardiovascular guidelines suggest taking statins as young as 30" 
"Statins: How They Work & Side Effects"
American Heart Association PREVENT Online Calculator 
Measles Update
CDC: Measles Cases and Outbreaks 
U.S. Measles Tracker 
South Carolina Department of Public Health: 2025 Measles Outbreak 
Utah Department of Health and Human Services: Utah measles outbreak response 
CDC Measles Vaccine Recommendations 
What's Happening at the NIH?
"NIH will spend its full budget this year, agency director promises House appropriators" 
"NIH chief calms nerves on grants, hiring" 
"WATCH: Dr. Jay Bhattacharya testifies at NIH oversight hearing before House panel" 
Harlan Krumholz: "Grant Applications With a Result-Based Orientation" 
New Mexico's Measles Success
CDC: Measles Outbreak—New Mexico, 2025 
Football, Brain Health, and the Biology of Repetitive Hits
"Cognitive and Neuropsychiatric Function in Former American Football Players" 
"Inflammation, Limbic White Matter Microstructure, and Clinical Symptoms in Retired American Football Players With Repetitive Head Impacts" 
ACIP Lawsuit
"Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP)" 
"Judge blocks RFK Jr. advisers' vaccine changes" 
"Federal judge stalls health secretary RFK Jr.'s overhaul of vaccine policy" 
"Federal Judge Puts Brakes on RFK Jr's Vaccine Agenda" 
Medicare Advantage Under the Microscope
MedPAC: March 2026 Report to the Congress: Medicare Payment Policy 
"Congressional advisers call to rein in Medicare Advantage spending amid industry pressure"

In the Yale School of Management's MBA for Executives program, you'll get a full MBA education in 22 months while applying new skills to your organization in real time.
Yale's Executive Master of Public Health offers a rigorous public health education for working professionals, with the flexibility of evening online classes alongside three on-campus trainings.
Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.

Howie and Harlan are joined by Yale School of Medicine surgical oncologist Kevin Billingsley, who discusses how robotics and advanced imaging are reshaping what it means to be a surgeon and offers guidance for those facing a cancer diagnosis. Harlan reports on a company testing AI-based prescription renewals and raises concerns about safety and oversight; Howie reflects on new survey data showing declining public trust in health institutions.
Show notes:
Unsupervised AI
Health & Veritas Episode 207: Robert Wachter: AI Is Already Remaking Healthcare
"Vinod Khosla: Machines will replace 80 percent of doctors"
Doctronic AI Regulatory Mitigation Agreement
"AI could soon renew prescriptions without clinician help. Should the FDA make sure it's safe?"
"Exclusive: Researchers trick a bot that prescribes meds"
"Don't trust this $4 solution for getting a prescription"
"CVS Health And Google Launch AI Business To 'Personalize Healthcare'"
Health & Veritas Episode 206: Mary-Ann Etiebet: Confronting Preventable Disease
Harlan discusses ARPA-H.
Kevin Billingsley
Laparoscopy
Robotic Surgery
"History of robotic surgery: from AESOP and ZEUS to da Vinci"
"Personal Best"
Atul Gawande compares surgeons to athletes.
 "Future of Surgical Training Will Include Major Shift in Education Model"
"Will your next surgeon be a robot? Autonomy and AI in robotic surgery"
"Dying Words"
Jerome Groopman on the relationship between oncologists and patients.
"Teamwork in Healthcare: Key Discoveries Enabling Safer, High-Quality Care"
Smoking and Cancer
Benefits of Physical Activity
Physical Activity and Cancer
Health & Veritas: Melinda Irwin: Can Nutrition and Exercise Improve Cancer Outcomes?
"What Alcohol Does to the Body"
Who do you trust?
"Stark Divide: Americans More Confident in Career Scientists at U.S. Health Agencies Than Leaders"
"Poll: Americans increasingly trust career scientists, not leaders, at CDC, NIH, and FDA"
Your Local Epidemiologist: "Top 5 questions about school vaccination requirements"
Health & Veritas Katelyn Jetelina: A Visit from Your Local Epidemiologist"

In the Yale School of Management's MBA for Executives program, you'll get a full MBA education in 22 months while applying new skills to your organization in real time.
Yale's Executive Master of Public Health offers a rigorous public health education for working professionals, with the flexibility of evening online classes alongside three on-campus trainings.
Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.

Howie and Harlan are joined by Yale School of Medicine neurologist Kevin Sheth to discuss how collaboration helps drive breakthroughs in brain health, including advances in detecting stroke and other neurological diseases earlier and more precisely. Harlan reflects on lessons from his family's recent experience navigating the healthcare system; Howie examines the expanding marketplace for GLP-1 weight-loss drugs and the challenges of ensuring safe and appropriate use.
Show notes:
The Family Perspective
Cleveland Clinic: Percutaneous Coronary Intervention
"What's the Difference Between a CCU and an ICU?"
Kevin Sheth
Alva Health
Mayo Clinic: Stroke
Video: Kevin Sheth at the Yale Innovation Summit
Sandra Saldana, PhD, MBA
"Buddy System" 
NIH: Multiple Principal Investigators
"Assessing the Decade of the Brain"
"Cerebrospinal fluid and plasma biomarkers in Alzheimer disease"
Kevin Sheth: "Burden of Ischemic and Hemorrhagic Stroke Across the US From 1990 to 2019" 
Endovascular Thrombectomy (EVT)
Ischemic vs Hemorrhagic Stroke
"What is cognitive reserve?" 
Cheaper Obesity Drugs
"Will Novo Nordisk's slashing of obesity drug prices save patients' money? It depends" 
"Novo Nordisk to halve US list price of Wegovy from 2027" 
"Walgreens Virtual Healthcare Adds Weight Management Services to Support Patients on Their Weight Loss Journey" 

In the Yale School of Management's MBA for Executives program, you'll get a full MBA education in 22 months while applying new skills to your organization in real time.
Yale's Executive Master of Public Health offers a rigorous public health education for working professionals, with the flexibility of evening online classes alongside three on-campus trainings.
Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.

Howie and Harlan are joined by Yale economist Janet Currie to discuss how early-life investments in health, education, and environmental protection shape children's lifelong well-being and economic opportunity. Harlan highlights a new Medicare payment model that would reward measurable improvements in chronic disease outcomes; Howie reflects on the spread of medical misinformation and a new effort to push back.
Show notes:
The ACCESS Payment Model
CMS: ACCESS (Advancing Chronic Care with Effective, Scalable Solutions) Model
"ACCESS: What this new payment model means for physicians and patients"
"FDA Launches TEMPO: A First-of-Its-Kind Digital Health Pilot to Expand Access to Chronic Disease Technologies"
Janet Currie
"Welcoming Janet Currie: A Pioneer in the Economics of Children and Families Joins Yale"
Janet Currie: "Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector: The Effect of Legal Structure on Dispute Costs and Wages"
Janet Currie: "Child health as human capital"
Janet Currie: "Killing Me Softly: The Fetal Origins Hypothesis"
"Medicaid and Children's Health: 5 Issues to Watch Amid Recent Federal Changes"
Janet Currie: "Medicaid: What Does It Do, and Can We Do It Better?"
Janet Currie: "Does Head Start Make a Difference?"
Janet Currie: "Longer Term Effects of Head Start"
Janet Currie: "Lead and Juvenile Delinquency: New Evidence from Linked Birth, School, and Juvenile Detention Records"
Head Start Impact Study (HSIS) Series
Janet Currie: "Saving Babies: The Efficacy and Cost of Recent Changes in the Medicaid Eligibility of Pregnant Women"
Janet Currie: "Doctor Decision Making and Patient Outcomes"
Janet Currie's American Economic Association Presidential Address: "Investing in Children to Address the Child Mental Health Crisis"
"Addressing Common Misconceptions About the Child Mental Health Crisis"
Janet Currie: "To What Extent are Trends in Teen Mental Health Driven by Changes in Reporting?"
Janet Currie: "Rules versus Discretion: Treatment of Mental Illness in US Adolescents" 
Misinformation
Mayo Clinic: Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS): Symptoms and causes
"Inside RFK Jr.'s push against the flu vaccine that he links to his voice condition"
Health & Veritas Episode 197: Peter Hotez: Mapping the Anti-Science Machine
"It's time for a new era of advocacy for physicians"
"Childhood Vaccination Rates Have Dropped Again, C.D.C. Data Shows"
"Take It From a Scientist. Facts Matter, and They Don't Care How You Feel."
"A small study on Covid vaccine safety sparks an online tempest"
Health & Veritas Episode 192: Akiko Iwasaki: What Have We Learned About Long COVID?

In the Yale School of Management's MBA for Executives program, you'll get a full MBA education in 22 months while applying new skills to your organization in real time.
Yale's Executive Master of Public Health offers a rigorous public health education for working professionals, with the flexibility of evening online classes alongside three on-campus trainings.
Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.

Howie and Harlan are joined by Evangelos Oikonomou, a cardiologist and data scientist at the Yale School of Medicine, to discuss how AI can extract overlooked signs of heart disease from routine ECGs, imaging studies, and electronic health records—and how to deploy these AI tools responsibly at scale. Harlan explains whether a widely covered study suggesting that coffee may lower the risk of dementia should change your daily brew; Howie grapples with the ethical questions surrounding a proposed hepatitis B vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau.
Show notes:
Coffee and Dementia
"Coffee and Tea Intake, Dementia Risk, and Cognitive Function"
"Coffee linked to slower brain ageing in study of 130,000 people"
"2 to 3 Cups of Coffee a Day May Reduce Dementia Risk. But Not if It's Decaf."
Evangelos Oikonomou
"What Is Opportunistic Screening in Healthcare?"
Evangelos Oikonomou: "Artificial intelligence in medical imaging: A radiomic guide to precision phenotyping of cardiovascular disease"
Evangelos Oikonomou: "Non-invasive detection of coronary inflammation using computed tomography and prediction of residual cardiovascular risk (the CRISP CT study): a post-hoc analysis of prospective outcome data"
Evangelos Oikonomou: "Artificial intelligence-guided detection of under-recognised cardiomyopathies on point-of-care cardiac ultrasonography: a multicentre study"
"Fellow Focus in Four: Evangelos Oikonomou, MD, DPhil, Cardiovascular Medicine"
Health & Veritas Episode 80: Josh Geballe: Turning Yale Innovation into Startups
Evangelos Oikonomou: "TARGET-AI: A Foundational Approach for the Targeted Deployment of Artificial Intelligence Electrocardiography in the Electronic Health Record"
"Using AI to Guide AI"
"Are A.I. Tools Making Doctors Worse at Their Jobs?"
"The Robot Doctor Will See You Now"
Health & Veritas Episode 207: Robert Wachter: AI Is Already Remaking Healthcare
"A large language model for complex cardiology care"
Vaccine Trial Ethics
WHO: Statement on the planned hepatitis B birth dose vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau
"Planned US-funded baby vaccine trial in Guinea-Bissau blasted by WHO"
"Guinea-Bissau suspends US-funded vaccine trial as African scientists question its motives"
"Guinea-Bissau Installs Military Ruler After Claims of a 'Fabricated' Coup"

In the Yale School of Management's MBA for Executives program, you'll get a full MBA education in 22 months while applying new skills to your organization in real time.
Yale's Executive Master of Public Health offers a rigorous public health education for working professionals, with the flexibility of evening online classes alongside three on-campus trainings.
Email Howie and Harlan comments or questions.