IDPH’s funding for infectious disease prevention will see a “debilitating impact,” Director Sameer Vohra said in a statement. IDPH has been using the funding to track the spread of diseases, invest in lab upgrades, build up the public health workforce, and improve vaccination efforts.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. criticized the department he oversees as an inefficient “sprawling bureaucracy” in a video announcing the restructuring Thursday. He faulted the department’s 82,000 workers for a decline in Americans’ health.

Most were in some way related to sexual minorities, including research focused on HIV prevention. Other canceled studies centered on cancer, youth suicide and bone health.

Under a new two-year pilot project, local and regional authorities are covering the costs of “museum prescriptions” issued by doctors who believe their patients could benefit from visits to any of the town’s four museums as part of their treatment.

People with severe asthma insured by BlueCross BlueShield of Illinois may soon face a new hurdle in accessing a treatment that providers say is critically important to keeping certain patients alive and well.

Native American women have the highest rate of ovarian cancer. Black women with ovarian cancer have lower rates of survival compared to white women. Finding ovarian cancer early can lead to better chances of survival.

Finland is the happiest country in the world for the eighth year in a row, according to the World Happiness Report 2025 published Thursday. Other Nordic countries are also once again at the top of the happiness rankings in the annual report published by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has removed the 2024 surgeon general’s advisory on gun violence from its website.

A pharmacy benefit manager negotiates prices with wholesalers, sets reimbursement rates on drugs and compiles the lists of which medicines an insurer will cover. But critics describe the industry as focused on self-enrichment and in need of regulation.

Measles is caused by a highly contagious virus that’s airborne and spreads easily when an infected person breathes, sneezes or coughs. It is preventable through vaccines, and had been considered eliminated from the U.S. since 2000.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in 2023, diversity is in decline at medical schools nationwide.

State Rep. Bob Morgan (D-Deerfield) is sponsoring two bills that would place restrictions on the use of AI in online therapy services as well as AI use in decision-making processes that determine a person’s health insurance coverage.

According to the World Health Organization, more than 7 million people across the globe have died from COVID-19 since the virus was first declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020.

“It’s like a storm that takes over your body,” Marta Cerda said of her struggles with long COVID. “It’s just a nightmare for me and I’m trying to maintain hope that there will be these treatments and cures, but it’s sometimes very hard to have hope.”

More than 1.2 million Americans have died from COVID-19. Despite having one of the most sophisticated health care systems in the world, the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic fell well short when compared to other developed nations.

A House GOP budget plan passed last week asks the agriculture committee, which funds food assistance programs like SNAP, to cut $230 billion over 10 years. The energy and commerce committee, responsible for health care spending like Medicaid, was also asked to cut $880 billion over the decade.