Elizabeth Cooney

Boston

Cardiovascular Reporter at STAT

Reporter at @statnews. Writer. Runner. Opinions my own.

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Articles

New budget bans Medicaid coverage of trans gender-affirming care

2 weeks ago | statnews.com | Elizabeth Cooney

Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT’s free newsletter Morning Rounds. Sign up here. Good morning. It’s Liz again, wondering why May looks and feels like March in Boston. Ahead of the Memorial Day weekend, let’s catch up on the news. The NIH is already in turmoil.
FDA asks mRNA vaccine makers to widen age range for rare heart risk warning

2 weeks ago | statnews.com | Elizabeth Cooney

In another sign of growing scrutiny over Covid-19 vaccines, the Food and Drug Administration has asked the two makers of mRNA vaccines to widen the age range of boys and young men that their labels say are at risk for a rare side effect causing heart inflammation. The letters, first reported by CBS News, asked Moderna and partners Pfizer and BioNTech to make updates to safety information based on new studies of myocarditis or pericarditis or both after vaccination.
Risk scores accurately predicted heart attacks, study finds. With CT scans, they did even better

2 weeks ago | statnews.com | Elizabeth Cooney

In what researchers hope could be a case of 1 + 1 = 3, new research suggests that combining a model to predict 10-year cardiovascular risk with an imaging test of coronary arteries could be better than either method alone at identifying people in danger of their first heart attack.
Scientists are pushing to get their grants reinstated — and some are winning

2 weeks ago | statnews.com | Elizabeth Cooney

Study after study gets spiked because it “no longer effectuates agency priorities.”If the research hints at diversity, equity, or inclusion, the wording gets a little nasty, in the view of neurologist Charles DeCarli, chair in Alzheimer’s research at the University of California, Davis. His $53 million inquiry into how vascular factors contribute to dementia among white, Black, and Hispanic people was terminated in March.
Cancer innovation in ‘era of fear’: New AI tools meet old access barriers — and new funding cuts

1 month ago | statnews.com | Elizabeth Cooney

Innovation in cancer detection, treatment, and prevention is stirring excitement today, accelerated by advances in artificial intelligence and other technological tools wielded by scientists, physicians, and even patients. Still, serious gaps remain between theory and reality, experts said Tuesday. There’s a gap in access. There’s a gap between clinical guidance and clinical practice.
CDC's annual HIV report is missing crucial data

1 month ago | statnews.com | Elizabeth Cooney

Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT’s free newsletter Morning Rounds. Sign up here. Good morning. It’s Liz here again, subbing for Theresa on this first day of May. Happy International Workers Day, Beltane, or Mayday to all who celebrate. Looking ahead, the newest set of Dietary Guidelines for Americans might be coming sooner than their traditional December deadline, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised in Wednesday’s cabinet meeting (around the 1:30 mark).
Despite Kennedy’s stated support, funding for Women's Health Initiative remains in limbo

1 month ago | statnews.com | Elizabeth Cooney

The word came down at 9 a.m. Pacific on April 14 that they were done. Marcia Stefanick of Stanford and three other leaders of regional centers that for decades have researched women’s health heard from their study’s national leaders that their funding would end with the fiscal year.
Over the last century, where people lived was linked to how long they lived

1 month ago | statnews.com | Elizabeth Cooney

Get your daily dose of health and medicine every weekday with STAT’s free newsletter Morning Rounds. Sign up here. Good morning. Liz Cooney here taking a turn with the newsletter while Theresa’s out exploring the world. Today is officially the 100th day of the second Trump administration, a tenure marked by so many significant events we need Usha Lee McFarling’s timeline to remind us what we’ve lived through.
Rural health study is told it’s losing federal funds, and other major heart studies are worried

1 month ago | statnews.com | Elizabeth Cooney

Vasan Ramachandran is baffled. A cardiologist and veteran of the famed Framingham Heart Study, he is struggling to understand why a similar study he brought to life in 10 rural counties across four Southern states is facing elimination. The RURAL Cohort Study, set in motion six years ago, was nearing its recruitment goal of 3,300 people, a sign that it was winning the trust of people in remote areas of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Kentucky.
Women's Health Initiative to receive NIH funding after all

1 month ago | statnews.com | Elizabeth Cooney

On Monday, the groundbreaking Women’s Health Initiative announced that the federal contracts funding the study’s 40 regional centers would end with the fiscal year. But on Thursday a federal official said the Department of Health and Human Services was reversing that decision, based on new National Institutes of Health budget numbers.