As we attempt to digest and make sense, so much as is possible, of the avalanche of shocking news spewing from the United States, we thought to at least start this column on a positive note. Thanks to Royal Life Saving Australia for delivering some good news.
The Trump Administration’s assaults on health, justice and democracy have already been covered in The Health Wrap and The Zap this week, but there is still more to report. A series of updates follows below, including a call to resist a growing global anti-gender movement’s dangerous efforts to weaponise gender.
The column this week also covers new research into microplastics and nanoplastics in the brain and other organs, a position statement from regulators of health practitioners on family violence, news on health reform and social prescribing, and a list of upcoming events, including a discussion putting health journalism under the microscope.
We also link to an 18 March event organised by the Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (VACCHO,) in partnership with The Centre of Excellence for Aboriginal Families Wellbeing and Lowitja Institute, “for mob to come together to question Federal Government candidates from numerous political parties on important issues impacting Aboriginal communities in the lead up to the Federal election.”
The quotable?
The richest man on Earth is dismantling the organisation that feeds the poorest children on earth.”
Leadership for good
Late last year Croakey published a call from public health experts urging the water safety sector to avoid partnerships with the alcohol industry – this followed a Don’t Drink and Dive campaign in the United Kingdom, supported by Malibu and the Royal Life Saving UK, which used water safety concerns as an opportunity to market alcohol.
Australia has been spared such a campaign.
In a recent statement from CEO Dr Justin Scarr, Royal Life Saving Australia said it had turned down the offer of a large donation to endorse the Malibu ‘Don’t Drink and Dive’ alcohol advertising campaign.
Its reasons included:
- Accepting funds to support a campaign aiming to sell alcohol to young people by leveraging concern for water safety clashes directly our values and sends a terrible message to the community.
- While the private sector plays a key role in drowning prevention, alcohol advertising has frustrated water safety efforts for decades, especially when linked to recreational water activities.
- Alcohol consumption was a factor in more than 300 drowning deaths in the last five years. The highest rates (25–34-year-olds) are the key target market for this product.
In other positive news for public health, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has rejected an infant formula industry bid to keep its self-regulatory marketing agreement. More details are at the ACCC website.
Trumpism
Latest reports include:
• The World Health Organization (WHO)’s essential work in responding to emergency responses faces a budget cut of 25 percent because of the US withdrawal, according to a Health Policy Watch report on the organisation’s Executive Board meeting this week.
The US funds around 20 percent of the WHO’s emergency appeal and acute response side, and about 25 percent of its core program.
Scott Pendergast, Director for Strategy, Financing, and Partnerships for the WHO Health Emergencies Programme, told the meeting that the WHO was “also having to deal with the immediate withdrawal, the instruction of the US to stop any spending against the existing awards we have”.
“This is putting a major challenge on our teams on the ground in terms of how to reduce operations or meet the obligations that we have now that we no longer have access to that financing.”
The WHO’s health emergency appeal is only 65 percent funded for 2025, and there is only $22 million in the contingency fund for rapid action in health emergencies, he said.
And this at a time of increasing health emergencies, fuelled by rising conflict and climate-related health emergencies.
• Trump’s agenda is emboldening others. Argentina has now withdrawn from the WHO, and announced a ban on gender-affirming care for trans children. 
• The US will no longer participate in or financially support the Human Rights Council in Geneva, the US is reviewing its membership of UNESCO, the UN agency for education, science and culture, and has withdrawn funding from UNRWA – reports UN News. A US executive order also calls for a review of US membership in “all international intergovernmental organisations” and all conventions and treaties by 4 August 2025.
• Some of the pages on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website that went offline last week have since reappeared, NPR reported on 6 February. However, much data remains scrubbed. The Seattle-based Urban Indian Health Institute (UIHI), which tracks health data for tribes and urban Indian communities, demanded the CDC immediately restore the data. Native News reports that the sudden removal of CDC information violates federal obligations to share health information with tribes.
“The decision to remove essential public health data is a violation of treaty rights,” Abigail Echo-Hawk (Pawnee), executive director of UIHI, said in a statement. “As tribal public health authorities, tribes and (Tribal Epidemiology Centers) must have unrestricted access to public health data to fulfill our mission. The CDC’s actions undermine our ability to respond to urgent health crises that disproportionately impact American Indian and Alaska Native communities.”
UIHI serves as one of 12 Tribal Epidemiology Centers that track and respond to health issues affecting 574 federally recognised tribes, 41 urban Indian health organisations, and more than 9.7 million American Indians and Alaska Natives across the country.
• Assuming Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. becomes Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), what influence could he and the incoming heads of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and CDC have over vaccine policy? KFF has prepared a policy brief addressing this question. It highlights several areas in which HHS, FDA, and CDC have authority to shape US vaccine policy with a specific focus on vaccine approvals and recommendations for the public.
“Ultimately, while there are limits, federal officials have significant authority to influence and alter vaccine policy, which could affect vaccine availability, views about vaccines, and vaccine use in the US,” says the brief. “However, this does not include imposing mandates on or changing local vaccination requirements, as those authorities rest with state and local governments.”
• Reacting to President Donald Trump’s comments that the USA will “take over the Gaza Strip”, advocating again for the forcible transfer of around two million Palestinians from Gaza to neighbouring countries, Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard said in a statement:
“President Trump’s remarks calling for the forcible transfer of Palestinians from the occupied Gaza Strip must be unequivocally and widely condemned. His language is inflammatory, outrageous and shameful, and his proposal amounts to a flagrant violation of international law.
“Any plan to forcibly deport Palestinians outside the occupied territory against their will is a war crime, and when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack on the civilian population, it would constitute a crime against humanity.”
Other commentary
Resistance
Medical and scientific journals and editors must resist dangerous efforts by a growing global anti-gender movement to weaponise gender, as exemplified by recent Trump Administration actions, say editors at the BMJ.
In an opinion article published on 4 February, International Editor Dr Jocalyn Clark and Editor-in-Chief Professor Kamran Abbasi respond to a “sinister and ludicrous” order by the Trump Administration for scientists employed by the CDC to withdraw or retract articles from medical and science journals.
The order was for publications that included “forbidden terms” such as gender, transgender, LGBT, or transsexual, and applies to submissions that have not been accepted yet and accepted papers that have not yet been published.
Demanding the erasure of medically relevant terminology “amounts to the censorship of scientists, breach of rights to free expression, dehumanisation of LGBT individuals, and indifference for the American taxpayers and human beings worldwide who support CDC’s research and have a right to expect that the findings are shared”, the editors said.
The order “is part of a broader complicity of this US government and other political and religious conservatives with anti-gender ideology that seeks a return to fundamentalist values”, they wrote.
“Exceptionally well funded, well connected, and growing globally, the anti-gender movement actively opposes pro-equity efforts, threatening women’s sexual and reproductive rights, LGBT rights, and gender equality – and thus health – worldwide.
“Gender is being dangerously weaponised. Like Trump’s censorship of CDC scientists, journals and editors must resist this too.”
More global health news
Scientists have investigated the presence of microplastics and nanoplastics in human organs, including the brain, using autopsy specimens from 2016 and 2024.
They found that the total mass concentration of plastics in the brains analysed in this study increased by approximately 50 percent in the past eight years.
While further research is needed to confirm the significance and implications of the findings, the scientists suggest that rising global concentrations of environmental microplastics and nanoplastics are concerning, especially in relation to neurological disorders.
“These results highlight a critical need to better understand the routes of exposure, uptake and clearance pathways and potential health consequences of plastics in human tissues, particularly in the brain,” they report.
Nature Medicine: Bioaccumulation of microplastics in decedent human brains
Public health
Regulators of health practitioners have issued a joint position statement on family violence that covers:
- family violence as a public health issue
- the important role of health practitioners in responding to family violence
- the consequences for health practitioners who are perpetrators of family violence
- how regulators support victim-survivors who share information with the regulators, or make complaints.
The statement also considers definitions of family violence, noting that it is defined differently in legislation in each Australian state and territory.
#AusPol
Under an agreement between the Albanese Government and all state and territory governments announced this week, the total Commonwealth contribution to state-run public hospitals will increase by 12 per cent to reach a record $33.91 billion in 2025-26.
Meanwhile, some news about the role of 24-hour pharmacies comes from South Australia, via Minister for Health and Wellbeing Chris Picton.
Picton says the state’s first 24-hour pharmacy has helped more than 25,000 people after hours in Norwood and surrounding suburbs in Adelaide since opening round-the-clock a year ago. It is one of three community pharmacies to open 24/7 as part of a State Government initiative, with a fourth 24-hour pharmacy in the outer southern suburbs is also on the way.
According to a statement from Minister Picton, the 24/7 pharmacies help to reduce avoidable presentations to hospital emergency departments by providing access to medicines, health advice and pharmacy services around the clock.
Workforce matters
#CroakeyREAD
Appointments and opportunities
Events upcoming
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