science
How one quest to fight prejudice in biology classrooms ended
Jerry McBride for STAT
Less than a decade after getting his Ph.D. in science education, Brian Donovan had done something remarkable. He’d begun to develop a new approach to high school genetics education that, rather than simply outlining the basics, emphasized the complexities of human genetic variation — and mobilized a coalition of teachers, researchers, and geneticists to consider it. “What I really wanted was to take a sledgehammer to prejudice,” he told STAT’s Megan Molteni. “I was naive enough to think that we could teach genetics and actually make a real dent in this problem.”
On a single day last April, years of painstaking, thorough work was ground to a halt. Donovan lost both of his National Science Foundation grants as part of the Trump administration’s mass cancellation of awards determined to “no longer effectuate administration priorities.” Now, he’s preparing to apply for nursing school. In her latest story, Megan details all that science education will lose without Donovan’s research efforts. Read more.
exercise
Half of U.S. adults are aerobically active enough
A little less than half — okay, 47.2% to be exact — of American adults met federal guidelines for aerobic physical activity in 2024, according to new data analysis from the National Center for Health Statistics. That includes about 52% of men and 42% of women. Some of the other demographic breakdowns seem to highlight structural and societal inequalities: people without disabilities, with more money, in younger age groups, and who were white or Asian were more likely to be more active than their peers.
These numbers are much higher than they were for 2020, which, to be fair, was a unique year for all of us when it came to physical movement. That year, just a quarter of adults met the guidelines for aerobic and muscle-strengthening activities together. (Wondering how you stack up? Guidelines recommend at least 2.5 hours of moderate aerobic activity — or an hour and 15 minutes of vigorous activity — per week.)
first opinion
How insurance works against addiction recovery
As an addiction medicine physician, John Fomeche has seen firsthand that financial stability isn’t secondary to treatment for many patients — it’s a key part of the treatment itself. In a new First Opinion essay, he recalls speaking with a patient who had done everything that clinicians ask patients in recovery to do. But her progress was jeopardized when her insurance premium tripled, making continued support much more perilous.
“This is the part of addiction medicine we rarely name out loud: Relapse is often engineered far upstream from individual choice,” Fomeche writes. Read more on the real consequences to opaque changes like premium hikes, formulary shifts, and prior authorization barriers.
