Hello from the Common Health Coalition! The 2-4-2 Digest is a weekly snapshot for health leaders - 4 key insights in 2 minutes or with 2 swipes on your phone.

Weekly Health Insights

HIV: Starting March 1, Florida is lowering income eligibility for its AIDS Drug Assistance Program from 400% to ~130% of the federal poverty level, which could affect access to HIV medications or insurance premium assistance for around 16,000 people. 

Public Health Funding: The Trump administration plans to rescind $600 million in CDC-administered public health funding from California, Colorado, Illinois, and Minnesota, cutting grants that support activities such as HIV prevention, disease surveillance, staffing, and outbreak response. The funds had already been appropriated by Congress but the majority have not been spent yet.

Measles: The U.S. has reported more than 700 measles cases in just a few weeks – about four times the typical annual total. Some federal health officials are urging vaccination, emphasizing that the MMR vaccine remains widely available and highly effective at preventing further spread.

Health Legislation: Last Tuesday, Congress passed a funding bill that extends Medicare telehealth and hospital-at-home waivers through the end of the year and requires PBMs serving Medicare and Medicaid plans to pass manufacturer rebates through to health plans.

Colleague Corner

In a Washington Post opinion, former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb draws on his personal experience with Epstein-Barr virus–related cancer to highlight how viral infections can have serious, lifelong consequences, and why vaccines remain one of the most powerful tools for prevention beyond acute illness.

"The choice being made now to disassemble the U.S. vaccine enterprise risks foreclosing entire avenues of research and development that we may later wish we had preserved, once more of the long-term penalties of viral infections are painfully obvious. In the meantime, another generation of patients will endure the same consequences that I once did."

– Dr. Scott Gottlieb, MD, Former Commissioner, Food and Drug Administration

Data Watch

A JAMA Network Open study conducted from 2024-2025 suggests that COVID-19 vaccines were at least 40% effective for serious COVID-19 cases, leading to a decrease in hospitalizations and better outcomes in severe COVID cases. It noted that vaccine protection persisted 3-6 months after vaccination.

Figure 3.  Number of COVID-19 Cases by Hospital Admission Week and SARS-CoV-2 Lineage

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