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Good morning! In addition to dedicating February 4 to soups and stuffed mushrooms, it was also World Cancer Day yesterday. For that one, STAT is running a promo through the 11th: Subscribe now and get half off your first year of STAT+. Think about it, and I promise not to make another entreaty about supporting journalism “in these times” for at least a few weeks.

RFK Jr. is one step closer to leading HHS

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is set to be confirmed as HHS secretary after his nomination cleared the Senate Finance Committee yesterday. The committee voted for Kennedy 14-13 along party lines, sending his nomination to the Senate floor for a vote, probably next week.

It had not been clear how Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy (above, left), a physician who expressed misgivings about Kennedy last week, would vote. Ultimately, Cassidy said that the nominee won him over with certain promises, and promised himself to watch Kennedy closely when it came to vaccines. But some health experts are skeptical that Cassidy will be able to prevent Kennedy from taking actions that would weaken vaccine recommendations or sow doubt about their value.

Read more from STAT’s Lizzy Lawrence about the promises that Kennedy made to Cassidy to win his vote.

One of these nominees is not like the others

Michael Kratsios isn’t like President Trump’s other nominees. Meaning — he’s not controversial. His appointment as science adviser and director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy has earned positive reviews from several scientific and academic groups as well as former OSTP directors — including Eric Lander, a famously brash scientist not known for sparing criticism.

But he’s also not like those who came before him in the critical role. In a departure from long-standing tradition, Kratsios is not a researcher, but a technologist with experience in venture capital. Despite his unorthodox background, former colleagues told STAT he’s well suited for the role.

Read more from STAT’s Jonathan Wosen on Kratsios and his focus on AI and U.S. tech leadership over China.

NIH study sections are back on

Yesterday morning, the NIH hosted the first study section to review grant applications in more than two weeks, after an abrupt and indefinite pause by the Trump administration, STAT’s Megan Molteni and Anil Oza report. These meetings — in which experts consider if the agency should support proposed research — are a core part of how the agency fulfills its mission to improve human health and reduce illness and disease.

While these meetings have resumed, the external communications pause appears to still be in effect, as the Trump administration gets more of its political appointees in place at various health and science agencies. Read more from Megan and Anil.

The communications pause was just one of the administrative actions that led to chaos in scientific research communities last week. Another was the call to end programs promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion. In a First Opinion essay published yesterday, former U.S. surgeon general Jerome Adams takes a nuanced stance on the order, arguing that “our country deserves a far better discourse on DEI.” Read the piece.

What are Americans’ health care priorities?

A new report from Gallup and Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health attempts to answer this question. More than 2,100 people responded to an online survey across two weeks in December 2024. Here were some of the findings:

• One in four respondents said that improving health care access and affordability was the highest priority public health issue for government leaders to address. That was out of 15 potential options that included reducing chronic diseases, preventing gun violence deaths, preparing for emerging infectious diseases, and more.
• Three-quarters of those who named access and affordability as the top issue also said that the federal government would be better suited than state governments to address the issue.
• More than half of respondents say that the U.S. has “lost ground” on the opioid epidemic and mental health.

How institutions have responded to the gender-affirming care EO

Last week, Donald Trump issued an executive order that aims to withdraw federal funds from any hospital that provides gender-affirming care to people under age 19. Yesterday, families of transgender youth filed a lawsuit, asking a federal court to put the order on hold.

“People need to recognize what this administration is willing to sacrifice in order to accomplish its ideological bent towards transgender people,” Meredithe McNamara, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Yale, said to me in an interview yesterday. “This administration is willing to turn off the lights in every children’s hospital, every neonatal ICU, and every pediatric emergency room, in every cancer ward, and pull funding so that hospitals will systematically deprive a very small group of patients health care.”

I talked with McNamara about the implications of the order and how institutions have reacted to it so far. Read our conversation.

What we’re reading

• How a leftist activist group helped torpedo a psychedelic therapy, New York Times

• Even where weed is legal, product safety isn’t guaranteed, Colorado Public Radio

• International monitor allows monkey shipments from Cambodia to continue, STAT
• Trans teens and their parents herald NYC for gender-affirming care, but worry about the future, Gothamist
• U.S. taxpayers should stop funding clinical trials of industry-owned drugs, STAT