A presidential debate, GLP-1s for kids, and ultra-processed foods research

Good morning! Today STAT is publishing the final installment in the “Embedded Bias” series. My colleagues Usha and Katie have done some amazing reporting over these seven stories. And many more people across the newsroom worked to make it all happen. I’m a big fan of the “credits” section at the bottom of the series’ landing page. Check it out.

Trump can’t land on an abortion answer

The first Trump-Harris showdown brought heated debate on abortion policy (and a Taylor Swift endorsement) but little substance as former President Trump struggled to land on a stance that would appeal to most voters and his party’s stalwarts.

Trump said he wouldn’t sign a national abortion ban before avoiding a question about whether he’d veto one. He maintained that Roe’s overturn was broadly popular, though that hasn’t been borne out in state ballot initiatives, or polling.

Harris didn’t waste her opportunity for attacks on an issue many Democrats see as a winner with voters. She warned again against Project 2025, leading Trump to, again, distance himself from the conservative think tank proposal.

That wasn’t all. Trump also revealed he still doesn’t have a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, 8 years after he won the presidency vowing to repeal the health law.

— Rachel Cohrs Zhang

1,104

This is the number of U.S. counties in which there is not a single birthing facility or obstetric clinician, according to the annual March of Dimes report on maternity care deserts, released yesterday. There are more than 2.3 million women of reproductive age in these counties who gave birth to more than 150,000 babies in 2022. Women in these areas are at 13% higher risk of preterm birth.

“There’s no one reason why we are in the place that we’re in, and there’s no really one silver bullet solution to the change,” Stacey Stewart, the former president and CEO of March of Dimes, told me in 2022. The problem isn’t limited to rural areas, either, as STAT recently highlighted in a story on how a wave of maternity ward closings is impacting care for pregnant people in Los Angeles.

A new study raises hopes and concerns on giving GLP-1s to kids

A year-long trial of a GLP-1 drug found that the medication helped to lower BMI for young children with obesity. Kids ages 6 to 12 who were given Novo Nordisk’s Saxenda in addition to lifestyle interventions experienced a 5.8% decrease in BMI compared to a 1.6% increase in the control group. But the study also found that BMI started to rise again when the kids stopped taking the drug, suggesting they might need to stay on the medication as they grow.

Should these drugs be given to children as young as age 6? While some doctors see medication as “a tool in the toolbox” to combat obesity, others are concerned about the lack of longer-term data on how it could affect development and puberty. Read more on the study from STAT’s Elaine Chen and Liz Cooney.

The peril and promise of AI in clinical algorithms

In their “Embedded Bias” series, STAT’s Usha Lee McFarling and Katie Palmer have dived deep into the flawed algorithms that factor race into medical decision-making. But there’s another problem — even if the algorithms were perfect, what if the real-world data plugged into them aren’t?

Take the pulse oximeter. These tools are notorious for delivering less accurate blood-oxygen readings for people with darker skin tones, and a stark example of how racial bias can sneak into seemingly objective medical data. But fundamentally, all clinical prediction tools are built on the same flawed data. We have limited access to information about disadvantaged groups — whether racial and ethnic minorities, rural patients, or people who don’t speak English as their first language.

Without action, AI stands to cement bias into the health care system at disquieting speed and scale. Read more from Katie in the last story of the series.

Better health insurance and internet access associated with lower suicide rates

Nearly 50,000 people in the U.S. died by suicide in 2022, making it the second leading cause of death among people ages 10 to 34. A report from the CDC released yesterday highlights the ways that Americans’ socioeconomic realities may impact their risk of suicide. The report found that suicide rates were lowest in counties with the highest levels of health insurance coverage, internet access, and household incomes. These same factors were particularly associated with lower suicide rates in populations that are at disproportionately high risk for it, including American Indian or Alaska Native populations, white people, and males.

It’s unclear exactly why these factors correlated with lower suicide rates, or why they seemed to have stronger associations among certain groups. But the data demonstrate the importance of implementing programs and policies that improve the communities in which people live and work, the authors wrote.

Also yesterday, HHS and SAMHSA announced $68 million in funding for suicide prevention and mental health care programs. That money will be divided to go to states and tribes, colleges and universities, and other groups with a particular focus on suicide prevention for young people.

The researcher who wants to supersize his studies on ultra-processed foods

Kevin Hall is a self-proclaimed “failed physicist,” and one of the only researchers doing controlled feeding trials for ultra-processed foods. With a small but consistent stream of federal funding, his team controls what study participants eat for a month to better understand whether a diet of foods like chicken fingers and mac and cheese might prompt people to eat more than when they’re fed unprocessed foods.

Looking into industrial food creations like sodas, breakfast cereals, and hot dogs is critical to improve public health, Hall and other nutritionists believe. But some nutrition scientists have challenged Hall’s work. “Studies on diet, energy balance, and body weight lasting only two weeks are less than useless because they are likely to be seriously misleading,” Walter Willett, the most-cited nutritionist in the world, said about Hall’s first study, which saw participants eating ultra-processed foods for two weeks, then unprocessed foods for the next two weeks.

But Hall forges ahead. He’s hoping to gain interest in his research from the same industry leaders who create ultra-processed food. Read more in a profile from STAT’s Nick Florko.

What we’re reading

• Dr. Glaucomflecken, the internet’s funniest doctor, is in on the joke, STAT

• Native-led suicide prevention program focuses on building community strengths, NPR

• How hospitals could make money off of Kamala Harris’ medical debt relief plan, STAT
• 10,000 Feet Up, Scientists Found Hundreds of Airborne Germs, New York Times
• Why so many patients are confused about CPR and do-not-resuscitate orders, STAT