U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

The measles outbreak in West Texas didn’t happen just by chance. Health officials say the easily preventable disease has ripped through communities sprawling across more than 20 Texas counties in part because health departments were starved of the funding needed to run vaccine programs.

About 500 Texans, mostly young unvaccinated children, have contracted the disease. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. visited the West Texas town that has been the epicenter of the outbreak.

Public health departments relied on COVID funding to expand testing, lab and vaccination capabilities. Local health leaders say the federal government's clawback of $11.4 billion will undermine that growth.

Of the charity’s 29 partner agencies, 24 have had to lay off staff or furlough employees, leading to a 64% drop in staffing capacity in cities like Dallas and Houston.

Distrust surrounding vaccines and President-elect Donald Trump's nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to oversee public health took center stage at a vaccine policy symposium on Friday.

Health insurers would be required to cover all recommended over-the-counter contraception products, such as birth control and condoms, without a prescription and at no cost, for those with insurance.

HHS Assistant Secretary Rachel Levine visited Parkland Health in Dallas on Thursday to discuss high rates of syphilis in Texas.

Dallas is the new site of a federal science and health research network with ARPA-H researching ways to improve patient experiences.

The new number is up to 30,253, which a city of Dallas spokesperson says includes approximately 3,000 people for whom the city didn't have addresses.

Five of the department’s regional infusion centers have run out of sotrovimab, the only antibody treatment known to be effective against the new variant.

The Biden administration is holding tens of thousands of asylum-seeking children in an opaque network of some 200 facilities that The Associated Press has learned spans two dozen states and includes five shelters with more than 1,000 children packed inside.

The U.S. will protect gay and transgender people against sex discrimination in health care, the Biden administration announced Monday, reversing a Trump-era policy that sought to narrow the scope of legal rights in sensitive situations involving medical care.