51ÊÓƵ

The Department of Health and Human Services recently removed a former surgeon general’s warning declaring gun violence a public health crisis to comply with the president’s executive order to protect Second Amendment rights, according to a White House official. Giffords, the gun violence prevention group founded by former Rep. Gabby Giffords, announced on Monday that former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s advisory recognizing gun violence as a public health crisis was wiped from the Department of Health and Human Services’ website. (Friedman, 3/17)

Amid the Trump administration’s reshaping of America’s public health authorities, Eric Green, longtime director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, has abruptly left his role, according to two NHGRI employees with knowledge of the situation and internal communications reviewed by STAT. (Molteni, Oza, Mast, Herper and Lawrence, 3/17)

The Trump administration has moved to reinstate at least 24,000 federal probationary employees fired in the president’s push to shrink the government, according to filings in one of two cases in which a federal judge ruled the terminations illegal. (Mettler, 3/17)

Thousands of employees returned to the Food and Drug Administration’s headquarters Monday to find overflowing parking lots, long security lines and makeshift office spaces without chairs and other basic supplies. The FDA is the latest agency scrambling to meet the Trump administration’s return-to-office mandate, part of a flurry of actions — including firings and buyouts — intended to radically shrink the federal workforce. Monday was the first day that all rank-and-file FDA staffers were required to report to offices, including the agency’s 130-acre campus just outside Washington. (Perrone, 3/18)

The Trump administration has canceled funding for an ongoing 30-year, nationwide study tracking patients with prediabetes and diabetes, researchers said, at a time when top officials have emphasized their determination to curb the incidence of such chronic conditions. (Chen, 3/17)

The abrupt withdrawal of U.S. global health funding that many disease control programs and developing countries have long relied on presages a leaner future for the sector, says the head of one of the world’s largest charitable foundations. Charities and other governments will be unable to fill all the gaps left by the Trump administration’s decision to slash aid spending, John-Arne Røttingen, CEO of the Wellcome Trust, told STAT in an interview. (Branswell, 3/18)