Brian P. Dunleavy

This week’s Public Health News Watch shifts the focus towards pop culture as a Grammy award winner, and one of the foremost activists for the HIV/AIDS crisis has been taken ill with what news outlets are reporting as a “rare and potentially deadly bacterial infection.”

Experts are arguing that the President’s focus on national security needs to include healthcare response, before it’s too late.

This week’s Public Health News Watch focuses on healthcare costs and provides a brief comparison of the US healthcare system to Canada’s healthcare system, highlighting a few pros and cons of each.

This week’s Public Health News Watch highlights initiatives taking place this week in celebration of National Public Health Week, as well as two new pieces of legislation being considered in Congress that could impact food safety in the country and healthcare, in general.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently reported that they are seeing between 30 to 40 new cases of Zika virus in pregnant women in the United States each week.

Health officials in Florida declare that they are better prepared for a potential outbreak in their state as Zika vaccinations have begun in a multi-site Phase II/IIb clinical trial of VRC705 in areas of endemic Zika transmission throughout the world.

This week’s Public Health News Watch focuses on the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and how the opioid epidemic in the United States needs plays a pivotal role in any suggested replacements.

Preliminary data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) “National Scorecard on Rates of Hospital-Acquired Conditions” suggests that progress has been made in reducing the incidence of hospital-acquired infections and other facility-linked health problems in US hospitals.

Researchers from the University of Oxford and Janssen Pharmaceuticals believe they have demonstrated an Ebola vaccine approach that fosters immunity for up to 1 year.

This week’s Public Health News Watch focuses on recent claims in the media that the budget cuts proposed by the Trump administration will have a negative impact on healthcare outcomes and patient safety.

This week’s public health news watch focuses on the President Donald Trump’s nomination of Scott Gottlieb, MD, as the next commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration.

It has been reported that the new healthcare reform bill could eviscerate the US Department of Health and Human Service’s Prevention and Public Health Fund, which, among other things, funds roughly 12% of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s budget.

Members of Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres discussed the aftermath of the 2014-2015 epidemic in a recent webcast.

In the first study to examine multiple body fluids for the presence of Zika virus in an ongoing fashion, researchers discover Zika virus remains in bodily fluids longer than other flaviviruses.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently published a study detailing a case of Ebola virus RNA persistence in the semen of a male Ebola survivor with HIV.

A recent outbreak of leptospirosis in the Bronx section of New York City has local officials on alert.

Researchers have found that the Zika virus uses receptor tyrosine kinase AXL to slip past major barrier cell types in the placenta.

Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health experts discuss the issues associated with Trump’s executive order on refugees during an online symposium.

Researchers have found incidence of multidrug-resistant HIV-1 infection, despite the use of preexposure prophylaxis (PrEP).

The new pediatric vaccine formulation for diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and poliomyelitis (DTaP) may solve the issue of vaccine schedule adherence.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) plans to fund research projects designed to discover and develop new antibiotics to treat these troublesome bacteria.

New research from Pew Charitable Trusts has found that quality issues are not the only factor that contribute to drug shortages.

A team of dermatologists and gynecologists recently described their work with a 23-year-old pregnant woman in Florida who was eventually confirmed as the first documented case of Zika virus infection acquired via a mosquito bite sustained in the local area.

In light of recent news that reported “vaccine skeptic,” Robert F. Kennedy, may be appointed to lead president-elect Donald Trump’s panel on vaccine safety, Contagion spoke with vaccine experts to learn of any potential ramifications this may have.

A new biotechnology company, Vir Biotechnology, is gunning for bear in the fight against infectious diseases and boasting a roster of heavy hitters in the industry.

Researchers from Martinique, France have determined that current tools to diagnose Chikungunya infection in older adults may not be useful.

The year 2016 may be over, but the fight against the infectious disease that dominated headlines for most of the year—Zika virus—has only just begun.

Researchers from the National Institutes of Health recommend integrating men into the family-planning process in the age of Zika.

Experts suggest government efforts are sorely needed to provide education about HIV/AIDS to at-risk groups, especially among the young gay population.

Researchers continue to move closer to the development of a universal influenza vaccine that would potentially provide protection against all influenza A strains and subtypes.