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This is a MedPage Today story. Last Friday, St. John’s Community Health, a large southern California network of federally qualified health centers serving 430,000 individuals a year, tried to withdraw funds from a $1.67 million CDC grant specifically earmarked for transgender health services. "We weren’t able to access it," Jim Mangia, St. John’s president and CEO, told MedPage Today, "even though there was an injunction forbidding federal departments from initiating any funding freezes or terminations based on [the president’s] executive orders." And even though the money is needed for payroll and service expenses. The balance remaining in that 4-year grant, which began in June of 2022 — $743,706 — was stripped from their account subsequent to President Trump’s Jan. 28 executive order, "Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation," he said. Despite that, St. John’s is committed to fighting back and will find the money elsewhere, he said. It receives some $230…

This is a MedPage Today story. Last Friday, St. John’s Community Health, a large southern California network of federally qualified health centers serving 430,000 individuals a year, tried to withdraw funds from a $1.67 million CDC grant specifically earmarked for transgender health services. "We weren’t able to access it," Jim Mangia, St. John’s president and CEO, told MedPage Today, "even though there was an injunction forbidding federal departments from initiating any funding freezes or terminations based on [the president’s] executive orders." And even though the money is needed for payroll and service expenses. The balance remaining in that 4-year grant, which began in June of 2022 — $743,706 — was stripped from their account subsequent to President Trump’s Jan. 28 executive order, "Protecting Children From Chemical and Surgical Mutilation," he said. Despite that, St. John’s is committed to fighting back and will find the money elsewhere, he said. It receives some $230…

This is a MedPage Today story. More than 230 clinicians at Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA) in Massachusetts won their union election and have received certification through the state Department of Labor Relations. About half of the group’s members are physicians, including primary care doctors, psychiatrists, and hospitalists; members also include physician assistants (PAs) and psychologists, according to SHARE CHA/AFSCME, the union representing the group. Jeremy Stricsek, MD, a primary care physician at CHA, told MedPage Today that collective discussions about ways to improve working conditions and patient care began several years ago, some of which were spurred by the pandemic. However, in the summer of 2022, organizing efforts became more serious as the group recognized that physicians and other healthcare professionals would need to unionize in order to "better advocate" for themselves and patients. Overall, there has been concern over "increasing pressure to do more with…

This is a MedPage Today story. More than 80 domestic cats, among many other types of mammals, have been confirmed to have had bird flu since 2022 — generally barn cats that lived on dairy farms, as well as feral cats and pets that spend time outdoors and likely caught it by hunting diseased rodents or wild birds. Now, a small but growing number of house cats have gotten sick from H5N1, the bird flu strain driving the current U.S. outbreak, after eating raw food or drinking unpasteurized milk. Some of those cats died. The strain of bird flu currently circulating has not adapted to efficiently spread among people. And there have been no known cases of cat-to-human transmission during the current outbreak of H5N1. Still, there’s always been the risk that cats, which are arguably only semi-domesticated, could bring home a disease from a midnight prowl. "Companion animals, and especially cats, are 100% a public health risk in terms of the risk of zoonotic transmission to people,"…