​Céline Gounder, KFF Health News’ editor-at-large for public health, discussed a recent study that suggests ultraprocessed foods are linked to increased dementia risk on CBS News 24/7’s The Daily Report on June 3. Gounder also discussed the Ebola outbreak in central Africa and the impact of U.S. health funding cuts on CBS News’ CBS Mornings on June 3.

On June 2, Gounder joined CBS News’ CBS Mornings to discuss a study that found women taking GLP-1 drugs had a lower rate of breast cancer diagnoses. She also discussed President Donald Trump’s new medical report and creatine supplements on CBS News 24/7’s Mornings and CBS News’ CBS Mornings, respectively, on June 1.

Click here to watch Gounder discuss ultraprocessed foods and dementia on The Daily Report.

Click here to watch Gounder discuss the Ebola outbreak on CBS Mornings.

Click here to watch Gounder discuss GLP-1s and breast cancer on CBS Mornings.

Click here to watch Gounder discuss Trump’s new medical report on Mornings.

Click here to watch Gounder discuss creatine supplements on CBS Mornings.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.This <a target=”_blank” href=”https://kffhealthnews.org/on-air/on-air-june-6-2026-ebola-glp1s-trump-medical-exam-creatine-upf-food-dementia/”>article</a&gt; first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https://kffhealthnews.org”>KFF Health News</a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License</a>.<img src=”https://kffhealthnews.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2023/04/kffhealthnews-icon.png?w=150&quot; style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”>
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​Harrowing scenes are unfolding at health facilities at the epicenter of an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A 25-year-old midwife and a doctor in his early 30s are sick with Ebola symptoms, including fevers and severe joint pain, said their colleague Elisabeth Furaha, the medical director at SOFEPADI’s Karibuni Wa Mama Medical Center in the northeastern province of Ituri.

They had cared for patients with similar symptoms in early May, before the outbreak was detected. One of the patients is now dead, Furaha said, and none of them has been tested for Ebola, even though samples were taken. The hospital still lacks access to tests, and an adequate supply of protective gowns and plastic masks to keep doctors and nurses safe.

“We live with fear in our stomachs,” Furaha said, speaking in French. “Every day, there are healthcare providers and patients dying.”

The outbreak took the world by surprise, with nearly 250 suspected Ebola cases and 80 deaths by the time Ebola was confirmed in Congo. Disturbed by the extent of silent transmission, and by cases in neighboring Uganda, the head of the World Health Organization sounded the group’s highest alarm on May 17, declaring the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern.” That triggered donations from around the globe, including a pledge of more than $162 million from the U.S. State Department to “stop the outbreak at its source and ensure Ebola does not reach the United States.”

But despite international attention, doctors in northeastern Congo say that many clinics lack even rudimentary supplies: gloves, protective gowns, masks, Ebola tests, and even clean water. Without rapid action to bolster those on the front line, researchers say, the outbreak will grow exponentially, costing even more money and risking lives far beyond Congo.

“All signs point to this becoming the biggest outbreak we’ve ever seen in the DRC,” said Nahid Bhadelia, the director of Boston University’s Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases. “That could lead to regional instability, and that has repercussions for the world.”

Some supplies from the country’s Ministry of Health, the WHO, and other United Nations agencies have landed in northeastern Congo, but not nearly enough to stock hundreds of health facilities where Ebola patients may seek care. Furaha has spent her own money on gloves, masks, and a tarp to build a makeshift tent to isolate patients with Ebola symptoms from the rest of the hospital. But she said it’s “inhumane” to put patients there before she can afford a mattress for them to rest on, or reliable access to tests.

Without testing, patients who turn out to have Ebola can infect those who don’t. Malaria and other diseases have initial symptoms similar to Ebola, causing fevers, soreness, and gastrointestinal problems.

Aid workers say shipments of medical supplies have been delayed by logistical hurdles, such as suspen  

​The Host

Julie Rovner

KFF Health News

@jrovner

@julierovner.bsky.social

Read Julie’s stories.

Julie Rovner is chief Washington correspondent and host of KFF Health News’ weekly health policy news podcast, “What the Health?” A noted expert on health policy issues, Julie is the author of the critically praised reference book “Health Care Politics and Policy A to Z,” now in its third edition.

New rules out this week from the Trump administration for implementing work requirements for adult Medicaid recipients surprised many state officials. The rules make it more difficult for states to determine who should be exempt from the requirements, including by stipulating that having a serious condition such as HIV or cancer does not automatically excuse an enrollee from having to engage in 80 hours per month of paid work, volunteering, or school attendance.

Meanwhile, a separate rule would give political appointees far more power over who gets health and science grant funding, and what political activities grant recipients can participate in. This would be a dramatic change — currently most decisions are made by career scientists and outside peer reviewers and based solely on scientific merit rather than whether they advance an administration’s political agenda.

This week’s panelists are Julie Rovner of KFF Health News, Margot Sanger-Katz of The New York Times, Alice Miranda Ollstein of Politico, and Liz Essley Whyte of The Wall Street Journal.

Panelists

Margot Sanger-Katz

The New York Times

@sangerkatz

Read Margot’s stories.

Alice Miranda Ollstein

Politico

@AliceOllstein

@alicemiranda.bsky.social

Read Alice’s stories.

Liz Essley Whyte

The Wall Street Journal

@l_e_whyte

Read Liz’s stories.

Among the takeaways from this week’s episode:

The Medicaid work requirement was pitched as a massive money-saver for the federal government because, supporters argued, it will keep people who shouldn’t be eligible for the program from being on the rolls. But it is becoming clear that implementing the policy is going to cost states tens of millions of dollars in new hires, contracts, communication campaigns, and tech systems. State officials say this is coming when budget pressures are already high.

The White House has advanced long-anticipated draft regulations designed to give political appointees the final word on federal research grants. The regulations, which have been close to the heart of Office and Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and were   

​Yolibeth’s 4-year-old daughter scrambled headfirst onto a cushy leather love seat at their home near New Orleans and pushed a hairbrush into the hands of Miriam Romero, a health coordinator who works with the family. Romero placed the girl in her lap and started brushing her dark hair.

Yolibeth, a 38-year-old single mother who moved to South Louisiana from Honduras 15 years ago, watched them, smiling. The daughter is the youngest of five children living in this mixed-status household. Yolibeth and her two oldest kids don’t have legal immigration status, but the other three — ages 4, 9, and 13 — were born in the U.S. and are citizens.

All of her U.S.-born kids were enrolled in Medicaid at birth, which made it affordable for her to take them to the doctor for regular checkups when they were little. Her oldest two, ages 15 and 17, have never had health insurance, so Yolibeth relies on low-cost community clinics when she can afford it.

But now she worries that healthcare access for all of her children is slipping away. Yolibeth has been waiting for months to hear whether any of her children’s Medicaid renewal applications  has been approved. She fears they will be denied because of a new Louisiana law targeting noncitizen Medicaid enrollees, even though she isn’t applying for herself. She worries particularly about her 4-year-old’s access to routine care and required childhood vaccines.

“ I cannot access the same services, and so my child is not getting what she needs to grow healthy,” Yolibeth said in Spanish as her daughter giggled on the love seat.

Verite News and KFF Health News agreed to not use Yolibeth’s full name, because she is worried about repercussions related to her immigration status.

Romero (left) welcomes a community member to Familias Unidas en Acción’s office in New Orleans in April. (Christiana Botic/Verite News and CatchLight Local/Report for America)

Romero, who works for a local immigrant advocacy group, Familias Unidas en Acción, said that in a single week she received calls from eight immigrant families who had been denied after applying for Medicaid on behalf of children who are citizens.

“Because of the law that passed in Louisiana, children are losing their Medicaid every day,” Romero said in Spanish. “The more time that goes by, the more children are impacted by it.”

Romero said that all children from mixed-status families are likely to be denied Medicaid by the end of the year.

Missing Out on Care

Nationally, many immigrants said they skipped or delayed healthcare last year, citing issues including costs, struggles finding services, and fears about their or a family member’s immigration status, according to polling by KFF and The New York Times. Immigrants without legal status were the most likely to skip or delay care for themselves or their children. An increasing number of immigrants avoided applying for programs like Medicaid, too scared to risk dra  

​U.S. health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is pursuing federal government access to most Americans’ medical records, in a quest to research a link between vaccines and autism — a connection the medical establishment studied for decades and flatly rejects.

The Department of Health and Human Services is seeking data from little-known state systems that allow hospitals and clinics to exchange detailed, identifiable patient information, KFF Health News has learned.

In private meetings, some public health leaders have objected to giving Kennedy’s team access to such data, raising doubts that it’s legal or that the information would even be useful.

They have also expressed concerns about allowing the federal government to peer into the minutiae of Americans’ medical records, which could mean viewing anything from doctors’ notes to prescription history. HHS has offered no insight into how it will protect or handle the personal health information it obtains.

But Kennedy told KFF Health News that medical records are key to investigating the cause of autism, vaccine safety, and chronic diseases. And millions of dollars in grant money has poured into a Nebraska nonprofit that has assisted Kennedy’s effort, according to state records.

He and his advisers have been frustrated that federal access to Americans’ medical records has been limited.

“We need a good health record system, and one of the things that really surprised me most when I came into office is that there is — that the systems are broken,” Kennedy said in a May interview. “We’ve had to go to the states and, luckily, we’ve got a lot of cooperation from the states, but we now have databases together that we can actually do the studies on. Those studies are in motion.”

HHS has not publicly announced any new projects involving medical records and autism or vaccine research. Kennedy faced blowback last year when he proposed compiling the medical records of people with autism to create a federal disease registry — which health department officials later disputed was underway.

But Kennedy said in May, “We have a whole pipeline of studies that will be done over the next year.”

Though the White House has steered Kennedy away from further changes to U.S. vaccine policy ahead of November’s crucial midterm elections, President Donald Trump has regularly echoed Kennedy’s doubts about vaccine safety and last week signed an executive order calling for the U.S. to reduce the number of vaccines recommended for children.

Kennedy’s political appointees and allies — including William “Reyn” Archer III, a former Texas health official and vaccine critic whom Kennedy hired as a senior adviser — have led the initiative for the health department to collect and examine medical records.

William “Reyn” Archer III, a former Texas health commissioner, attends the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meeting at Centers for Disease C