Tonight: we all know the US fertility rate has hit record lows, but there are reasons it’s more complicated than it sounds. Plus nearly 30 maternity wards closed since last summer, what women with cancer aren't being told, and more.
THE U.S. BIRTHRATE KEEPS FALLING. IT MAY NOT MEAN WHAT YOU THINK. // The U.S. fertility rate hit a new low last year, but demographers say the headline number obscures something more interesting: women aren't opting out of motherhood, they're postponing it. Today's 45-year-olds are more likely to be mothers than their counterparts two decades ago: 88 percent vs. 84 percent. Women in their 20s are simply having children later, a pattern demographers call a "postponement transition" that happened in Europe in the 1990s and largely rebounded. The harder question is whether that's true for everyone. Women with less education and lower incomes are delaying childbearing too, often because the economic conditions that would make them feel ready — a stable income, a home, a long-term partner — keep receding. "I worry we get to a point where there are the fertility haves and have-nots," one sociologist told the New York Times.
NIH IS BUILDING A VIRTUAL MODEL OF THE FEMALE HORMONAL SYSTEM // The NIH Office of Research on Women's Health launched an initiative to fund models of how hormones actually work in women across our lifespans, covering puberty, the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and menopause. The goal is to understand why women respond differently to the same drugs that work in men: sex hormones interact with nearly every system in the body and existing models were largely built on male biology. Researchers are being invited to use tools like AI and digital twins to simulate hormonal complexity that clinical trials haven't been able to capture.
DEM GROUP’S NEW PLAN TO FIX HEALTH CARE COSTS // The Center for American Progress released a new plan that aims to bring down health care costs, including capping annual premium increases, limiting outlier hospital prices, and replacing prior authorization with independent clinical review. They project that could cut average employer deductibles roughly in half and lower family premiums by around $1,300 per year by 2032. It’s just a plan for now, but Democratic legislators take CAP seriously.
NEARLY 30 MATERNITY WARDS HAVE CLOSED SINCE LAST SUMMER // A report tracking the fallout from Trump’s Medicaid and ACA cuts finds that nearly 30 maternity wards have shuttered since Republicans’ “One Big Beautiful Bill” passed last year. On top of that, more than 800 hospitals, nursing homes, and other health facilities have closed, cut services, or are at risk. Medicaid pays for more than 40 percent of all US births — and the biggest cuts haven't kicked in yet, because they were timed to hit after the midterms.
MOST CANCER PATIENTS AREN'T GETTING THE TEST THAT COULD CHANGE THEIR TREATMENT // A study of around 63,000 patients with advanced breast, lung, colorectal, pancreatic, and prostate cancers found that most never received genomic tumor testing, even though those tests can identify mutations that point doctors to targeted therapies. Among metastatic breast cancer patients, only about a third were tested after diagnosis. The gaps tracked predictably: lower income, Medicare or Medicaid coverage, and Black or Hispanic race or ethnicity all meant waiting significantly longer. "The fact that you're still seeing half of patients not getting genomic testing is extremely concerning," one oncologist told STAT.