Federal health officials plan to cut funding to the Women’s Health Initiative, effectively shuttering one of the largest and longest studies of women’s health ever carried out. Its findings changed medical practice and helped shape clinical guidelines, preventing hundreds of thousands of cases of cardiovascular disease and breast cancer.
The study, which began in the 1990s when few women were included in clinical research, enrolled more than 160,000 participants across the nation. It continues to follow some 42,000 women, tracking data on cardiovascular disease and aging, as well as frailty, vision loss, and mental health.
Researchers have hoped to use the findings to learn more about how to maintain mobility and cognitive function and slow memory loss, detect cancer earlier, and predict the risks of other diseases.
Dr. JoAnn Manson, one of the long-term principal investigators of the study and a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, called the funding cuts “heartbreaking.’’
The decision also was perplexing, she added, given statements by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s health secretary, about the importance of reducing chronic disease in America.
“There is no better example of the scientific impact of research on chronic disease prevention than the WHI,’’ Manson said.
“So the slashing of funding of a trial that has contributed enormously to our knowledge of the prevention of chronic disease and healthy aging and extending the healthy span — I mean, it is really puzzling and shocking.’’
The Department of Health and Human Services is terminating contracts for the WHI’s regional centers in September. The clinical coordinating center, based at Fred Hutch Cancer Center in Seattle, will be funded through at least January 2026. The budget for 2025 is $9.3 million.
Whether the center will continue to receive support next year remains uncertain. Even if funding continues, the coordinating office relies on the regional centers to gather data from participants, and so its functions will be limited.
HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Recently, a spokesperson said cuts to such funding “are designed to ensure that every dollar is used more efficiently while continuing to focus on our core mission of improving public health and services.’’
The WHI included a number of randomized controlled trials and has contributed to more than 2,000 research papers. But it is probably best known for a study of hormone replacement therapy that was abruptly halted in 2002, after investigators found that older women who took a combination of estrogen and progestin experienced a small but significant increase in the risk of breast cancer.
Until then, hormone replacement therapy was widely believed to protect women from cardiovascular disease. But the trial found that even though the hormone combination reduced colorectal cancer and hip fractures, it put women at higher risk for heart attacks, strokes, and blood clots.
New York Times
Supreme Court is asked to allow ban on trans troops
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration Thursday asked the Supreme Court to let it start enforcing a ban on transgender troops serving in the military that has been blocked by lower courts.
The administration’s emergency application was the latest in a series of requests asking the justices to pause decisions by trial judges that prevent it from moving forward with the blitz of executive orders President Trump has signed. The Supreme Court has allowed some initiatives to proceed and temporarily blocked others, issuing orders that have for the most part been technical and tentative.
The new case concerns an order issued on the first day of Trump’s second term. It revoked an executive order from President Joe Biden that had let transgender service members serve openly.
A week later, Trump issued a second order saying that expressing what it called a false “gender identity’’ conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an “honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life,’’ and that requiring others to recognize a “falsehood is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.’’
In February, the Defense Department implemented Trump’s order, issuing a new policy requiring all transgender troops to be forced out of the military. According to the Defense Department, about 4,200 current service members, or about 0.2 percent of the military, are transgender.
Service members sued to block the policy, saying it ran afoul of the Constitution’s equal protection clause.
In March, Judge Benjamin H. Settle, of the US District Court in Tacoma, Wash., agreed, issuing a nationwide injunction blocking the ban.
New York Times
Lawmakers demand clarity on Social Security plans
WASHINGTON — Democratic lawmakers, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, are urging the Social Security Administration to keep open its field offices and demanding transparency about potential closures in a new letter.
In addition to Warren, 65 House members and 40 senators signed the letter to acting Social Security commissioner Leland Dudek on Wednesday, requesting that he commit to keeping open the field offices and tell them if the agency intends to close any. The request came after the General Services Administration, which leases and manages commercial real estate for the federal government, identified offices that could be closed or sold in a list that was later deleted. The agency previously denied reports that field offices were closing.
“Given SSA’s recent attempts to close field offices — only to reverse course after public outcry and claim it never had plans to close offices — will you commit to keeping each one of these offices open?’’ the lawmakers said in the letter to Dudek, which included a list of the agency’s field offices.
According to Alex Lawson, the executive director of Social Security Works, the letter sent to Dudek was also to be delivered to those field offices Thursday by thousands of volunteers set to protest sweeping cuts to the agency by the US DOGE Service. Demonstrations were planned at 58 Social Security offices in 23 states.
Lawson, one of the organizers of the effort, said the action is aimed at showing the administration that Americans rely on those field offices for necessary services, such as applying for benefits and obtaining Social Security cards. More than 73 million people receive Social Security benefits.
“We are ringing the alarm bell,’’ Lawson said. “This is about real people who will be hurt.’’
Social Security said in a statement that it has not announced the closure of any local field offices, adding that it found “underutilized office space,’’ mostly “small hearing rooms with no assigned employees,’’ that is no longer needed.
Washington Post
GOP effort to control N.C. elections board blocked
RALEIGH — A court on Wednesday blocked North Carolina Republicans’ latest effort to gain control of the state’s elections board, thwarting changes they sought last year just before they lost their supermajority in the state legislature.
For nearly a decade, Republican state lawmakers have tried to take over the elections board, only to be stymied by the courts. Just after the November election, they launched their latest plan and passed legislation that would give the state’s incoming Republican auditor the power to appoint the board instead of its new Democratic governor.
Outgoing Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, vetoed the bill, but Republicans used their three-fifths supermajority to override his veto and enact the measure. They moved on the bill quickly because they lost their supermajority in November and wanted to ensure they could overcome Cooper’s veto before new lawmakers were seated in January.
New Governor Josh Stein, also a Democrat, sued over the measure. On Wednesday, a panel of Wake County judges ruled 2-1 in Democrats’ favor, finding the law violated a provision of the state constitution that directs the governor to faithfully execute North Carolina’s laws.
“The Constitution does not permit the Auditor to be solely responsible for execution of the State’s election laws,’’ Judges Edwin G. Wilson Jr. and Lori I. Hamilton wrote.
Washington Post
