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'Here & Now' Highlights: Charles Franklin, Jason Stein
A month before the 2026 election, the Marquette Law School Poll shows candidates for governor neck-and-neck — poll director Charles Franklin explained where voters stand and why. Enrollment caps for ...
NAMI Central Florida highlights mental health resources during Mental Illness Awareness Week
Freddy Morello Jr., CEO of NAMI Central Florida, discusses free resources, new programs, and an upcoming gala during Mental Illness Awareness Week.
Some mental health providers hoping to serve Lane County's Oregon Health Plan members say they’re facing barriers
Aspire is one of a few healthcare providers in Lane County that told KLCC they want to – but haven’t been able to – get a contract with Lane County's Medicaid insurer Trillium. That’s left Aspire without access to its target population, and other providers considering scaling back their services.
Community health fair provides one-stop shop for Arlington families
Arlington's third annual community health fair brought crowds to Carlin Springs Elementary School over the weekend. From flu shots and eye exams to bike giveaways and tips for healthier eating, the event hosted by the Kiwanis Club of Arlington and VHC Health offered a one-stop shop for families. "It's a lot of fun on a
Why your health insurance problem might not be over when you turn 65
Couples with an age gap have an extra consideration: How to continue coverage for the younger spouse who’s not yet eligible for Medicare.
The 2026 Lookout List: Health and Wellness
Are you feeling centered? This is a place where we value having aligned chakras, purposeful movement, a good gym to frequent and a good dispensary to drop into (for those that partake). For our Health and Wellness category of the Lookout List, we asked you for the best spots to drop into for yoga, mindful moments, health food and more.
Yale School of Medicine On the Science of Childhood Anxiety, Say, Anxiety Disorders Are the Most Common Mental Health Challenges In Youth
Credit: Matt Bradbury October 5, 2026 - By Isabella Backman - Anxiety disorders are the most common mental health challenges in youth. Left untreated, they can disrupt the lives of both children and their families. The good news is that with intervention, most children will overcome these conditions. Across Yale School of Medicine, scientists are working to understand anxiety at every level, from common anxious behaviors to molecular biomarkers in the brain. They are using their findings to develop and disseminate new evidence-based treatments for childhood anxiety. Today, the go-to treatment for childhood anxiety disorders is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). This is a form of psychotherapy that teaches children skills for confronting anxious thoughts and helps them practice managing situations that cause anxiety. While it is the gold-standard treatment backed by considerable scientific evidence, up to 50% of children will not see sufficient benefit from CBT alone. Wendy Silverman, PhD, Alfred A. Messer Professor in the Child Study Center, co-directs the Anxiety and Mood Disorders Program alongside Eli Lebowitz, PhD, associate professor in the Child Study Center. One of their main interests is learning how to improve outcomes beyond CBT. “We’re developing cutting-edge, research-based knowledge that can reduce the suffering that anxiety causes children and their families,” says Silverman. Changing parent behavior YSM experts are investigating how to improve CBT outcomes for children by involving the parents. Silverman’s research has uncovered two main components of parent intervention that improve childhood anxiety: not enabling children to completely avoid the things that make them anxious and taking steps to enhance their autonomy. Parents may unintentionally reinforce their child’s anxiety by allowing them to avoid what makes them anxious. They also may unintentionally limit the children’s sense of autonomy by being overly intrusive. “One of the things that we take pride in is that we’ve focused on trying to understand what parents need to do, and to test our ideas and see if changing the parents’ behaviors is enhancing the effects of CBT,” Silverman says. “Our findings thus far suggest that they do." As much as CBT can be helpful, it can also be challenging to get one’s child to do the necessary steps for CBT to work. This is one important reason why Lebowitz created a novel intervention program for parents named Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE). Existing intervention programs often teach parents to act as therapists for their child, such as training them on how to practice breathing exercises. “It makes sense, but this doesn’t work very well in practice,” says Lebowitz. “And part of the reason, I think, is that it’s not easy to get your kid to do things, especially if they’re not excited about doing it.” SPACE is unique because it focuses entirely on parent involvement and changing parental behavior—children are not involved in the sessions. For example, parents learn how to use supportive messages that convey confidence that their child can tolerate and manage distress. “It might sound like a parent saying to a child, ‘I get that this is really hard for you, but I know that you can handle it,’” Lebowitz says. The program also works with parents to identify the ways in which they are accommodating anxious behaviors. “We’ll pick one thing that parents are doing that is an accommodation and help them make a detailed plan for how they’re going to change that,” Lebowitz explains. Treating Anxiety in Children and Adolescents Much of the existing research on SPACE has focused on parents of children under age 14. Ongoing studies are now exploring its use with parents of older teens. “Both anxiety and accommodation can interfere with normative developmental shifts during the teen years, including increased autonomy and individuation from parents,” says Rebecca Etkin, PhD, associate research scientist in the Child Study Center. “In this sense, SPACE may be particularly well-suited for anxious teens and their parents. We want to see whether it is effective during this distinct developmental window.” Unfortunately, many families in need of CBT face barriers, including limited availability of services and geographic constraints. One way to improve access is digital interventions. Silverman and her team are developing an evidence-based digitized intervention program for parents that they can access directly from their computer or smart phone. “The work we’re doing will be one of the very few parent interventions that is digitized and importantly tested for effectiveness,” she says. Creating interventions for anxiety-related challenges Silverman and Lebowitz recently received a generous gift to develop and test other interventions that help parents reduce other child anxiety-related behavioral and emotional difficulties, such as restrictive eating and unexplained somatic symptoms. One of these projects in particular focuses on understanding the risks of social media and its potential benefits, including offering a sense of connection. “A lot of research has focused on the idea that social media is harmful and the less of it the better,” says Lebowitz. “But we actually see is that this is not quite right—there are negatives, but there are also positives. So, we’re trying to get a little bit more nuanced of a picture.” The team is working with teens with social anxiety and their parents over an extended period to better understand their social media habits and how their anxiety levels affect engagement with different platforms. The teens will answer questions sent to an app on their phones about mood and social media usage in an effort to capture emotional responses as they unfold. “We hope to develop interventions that can help make the best of social media while protecting against the more problematic effects,” Lebowitz says. The brain’s role in anxiety Researchers are also testing therapies to address anxiety at the neurological and molecular levels. In collaboration with Dylan Gee, PhD, professor of psychology in Yale's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Hilary Blumberg, MD, John and Hope Furth Professor of Psychiatric Neuroscience at Yale School of Medicine, Lebowitz and Silverman are using brain imaging to identify changes in a child’s brain before and after parents enroll in SPACE. In one study, children viewed anxiety-inducing images while undergoing magnetic resonance imaging (MRI); the researchers conducted scans with and without the children’s parents nearby. Before SPACE, children’s brains were better able to activate the regulatory circuitry needed to turn off an anxious response when their parents were nearby. But after SPACE, children could activate this circuitry even without the parent around. “As parents work on gradually reducing some of their accommodations, you can see a child get better at regulating their own fear system in the brain,” Lebowitz says. “It’s remarkable.” Research into the molecular underpinnings of anxiety can also inform new childhood anxiety treatments. In a recent study, Lebowitz, Silverman, and Flora Vaccarino, MD, Harris Professor in the Child Study Center, discovered that a protein known as fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2) could be protective from the toxic effects of stress. FGF2 levels in children and their parents were linked to the children’s risk of developing anxiety and depression, the study showed. The findings could help explain why some children who are exposed to early life trauma such as poverty or abuse are more prone to developing mental health disorders. And FGF2 could be a target for treatment. “This is very novel because it starts to give a clue to what is the molecular chain that connects those lived experiences to the actual psychological outcomes,” Lebowitz says. New ways to study and treat childhood anxiety Michael Crowley, PhD, associate professor in the Child Study Center, collaborates with Silverman and Lebowitz to study the role that attention plays in development and maintenance of childhood anxiety. There is a large body of research that shows that anxious children, like anxious adults, are prone to focus on threatening stimuli such as angry faces compared with neutral faces. This has led to innovative interventions that involve attention retraining. The idea is that if experts train children to look away from threatening stimuli, it may reduce their anxiety—especially children with social anxiety who are most prone to attend to threats. The researchers have just completed a clinical trial for attention retraining with 10- to 14-year-olds with social anxiety disorders and are currently analyzing the findings. Besides this innovative attention retraining research, as Crowly notes, “I like to design tasks that are engaging to kids,” Crowley says. “My goal is to assess something without the kids knowing what we are assessing.” With this goal in mind, Crowley has created a virtual game, named Boom, to study threat processing in children with anxiety disorders. The game is similar to that of hot potato—the child and three digital players take turns virtually passing a ball to each other’s gloves. At some point, the ball turns into a bomb, and as the bomb lands in each player’s glove, the outline of the glove turns yellow. The goal is to avoid having the bomb go off in your glove. What isn’t obvious is that the game is designed to measure different types of threatening stimuli, both ambiguous and direct. In the game, the direct threat occurs as the bomb is traveling towards your glove. The ambiguous threat is the yellow outlined glove as it is unknown where the bomb will travel next. While children play the game, Crowley’s team measures their brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG). The researchers have discovered that in kids with anxiety, the brain reacts more strongly to ambiguous threats than it does in their peers, but less strongly to direct threats. They believe that the initial abnormally large brain response to not knowing where the bomb is going impairs the brain's ability to properly respond when the threat is actually traveling the child’s way. “The brains of children with anxiety are unable to differentiate between threats you need to do something about and those that are not your problem.” Michael Crowley, PhD, develops innovative games for studying anxiety in children and adolescents.Credit: Matt Bradbury Based on these insights, Crowley hopes to study whether interventions like attention training could restore appropriate threat processing. Crowley’s team is also working on a test called the Balloon Risk Avoidance Task, which evaluates risk-taking and avoidance behaviors. It features a digital balloon that is full of air and about to burst. Kids have six seconds to let air out of the balloon. The more air they let out, the less risk they face that the balloon will pop. But at the same time, the balloon becomes less valuable as it deflates. “The more air you keep in the balloon, the more points you get,” Crowley explains. So far, the researchers have found that when the balloons pop unexpectedly, teens with social anxiety show distinct brain responses. Studying these responses can help psychologists understand the underlying pathways driving the various manifestations of anxiety. The genetics of anxiety When Thomas Fernandez, MD, associate professor in the Child Study Center and of psychiatry, was still in training, there was a lot of excitement about understanding the genetics associated with autism spectrum disorder. Since then, scientists have identified around 250 genes associated with autism. The genetic contribution to anxiety disorders, on the other hand, has historically received less attention. Anxiety is less heritable than autism, but the genetic contribution for anxiety disorders that emerge in childhood may be higher than for anxiety disorders overall. While scientists estimate the heritability of anxiety disorders in general to be around 30% to 50%, some studies suggest higher heritability for certain childhood-onset anxiety presentations. “I saw firsthand how researchers in the field went about finding vulnerability genes for autism,” Fernandez says. “So, we’re using a very similar playbook for childhood anxiety.” “I saw firsthand how researchers in the field went about finding vulnerability genes for autism. So, we’re using a very similar playbook for childhood anxiety.” Thomas Fernandez, MD Associate Professor In the Child Study Center and in Psychiatry Now, Fernandez and Emily Olfson, MD, PhD, assistant professor in the Child Study Center, are studying children and their parents to identify genetic changes that are present in the child but not the parents, known as “de novo mutations.” “All of us have some de novo mutations—maybe about 50 to 100 sprinkled throughout the genome,” Olfson says. “But when they occur within the coding regions of genes, they can be really disruptive.” Previous research shows that people with autism have higher rates of damaging de novo mutations than the general population. In 2022, Olfson, Lebowitz, Silverman, and Fernandez published a study on 68 children and their families that found that children with anxiety had similarly high levels of these mutations. Studying de novo mutations can help point the researchers to where they should be looking for genes associated with anxiety. “The end game is using the genes to steer us toward the right part of biology that we can then target to come up with better treatments,” Fernandez says. Building on those findings, the team is now studying more families to better understand how these de novo mutations, along with other genetic and environmental factors, shape pediatric anxiety disorders. They recently received a National Institutes of Health grant to enroll 750 new families over the next five years. Olfson is the principal investigator, with co-investigators Lebowitz, Fernandez, Silverman, and Shuangge Steven Ma, PhD, department chair and professor of biostatistics at Yale School of Public Health. Neurodevelopment, Risk Genes, and Mental Health Conditions - The Olfson Lab Joel Gelernter, MD, Foundations Fund Professor of Psychiatry, is interested in how different anxiety disorders differ genomically. “We are studying social phobia, panic disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder, working to understand why people differ in their risk to these specific anxiety disorders and evaluating various risk factors,” he says. Gelernter was recently involved in one of the largest studies to date of the genomics underlying anxiety disorder. The study included around 122,000 people with anxiety disorders and around 730,000 without. It found that some genetic differences associated with anxiety were linked to signaling that helps reduce overactivity in the nervous system. Many anxiety medications available today work by targeting this process. “It’s nice when the biology that you get out of a large genome-wide study ratifies things that we already know because that can help increase confidence in further findings from the study,” Gelernter says. Uncovering the neurobiology of psychiatric disorders John Krystal, MD, Robert L. McNeil, Jr. Professor of Translational Research and chair of the Department of Psychiatry, is interested in the neurobiology of psychiatric disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), of which anxiety is a major symptom. In the late 1980s, Krystal’s team discovered that the drug yohimbine activated symptoms in patients with PTSD. “This was the first time we could link a specific biological mechanism to the symptoms of PTSD,” Krystal says. At the time, he adds, this finding was highly controversial. “A lot of people felt that PTSD was a purely psychological syndrome that didn’t have an underlying biology.” Since then, Krystal has dived deep into understanding the neurobiology of PTSD to learn how to better treat it. His team is evaluating the use of ketamine and psychedelics. These would be among the first treatments to be developed specifically for PTSD. They may also be applicable for other disorders including anxiety disorders, Krystal adds. An important gap in PTSD treatment is the absence of biological tests that inform how to best help patients manage their PTSD symptoms. A doctor doesn’t diagnose cancer based on how they feel. Rather, they use tests of the biology of the cancer to determine the best course of treatment. “And we can’t do that in any psychiatric disorder other than Alzheimer’s disease,” Krystal says. “But now we are building a foundation for this approach to the treatment of anxiety disorders for the first time.” Source: Yale School of Medicine
Three sheriff’s offices sign up for jail mental health hold reimbursements under new Wyoming law
The law allows the health department to pay jails for holding and treating people with mental illnesses while they await a bed at the state hospital.
When midterm politics get in the way of governing
After some proposals fell apart in the Senate, both parties will need to figure out to message the failed votes while convincing voters they should be running the show.
“I’m in the Hospital”: Chad Ochocinco Announces Health Update After Sudden Illness Amid Bengals’ Loss to Jaguars
As a former wide receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals, Chad Ochocinco had no choice but to root for his team as they battled against the Jacksonville Jaguars in the Week 4 game. Unfortunately for him, the Bengals lost the game by 22-17.
Businesses brace for impact as digging set to begin at Olney home
Heavy machinery, road closures and weeks of work could affect businesses near the Chew Avenue property in Philadelphia.
Modern forensic science uncovers human sacrifice in ancient Egypt
Reinvestigation of mass burial sites around royal tombs finds evidence of fatal blunt force trauma on skulls
Apple Hiring 'iCup' Specialist
Apple recently posted a job listing for an "iCup Supply Specialist" who would be responsible for ensuring that "all Apple employees have access to freshly brewed coffee in their break room". MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris highlighted the job listing this weekend, but it turns out that Apple has been using the "iCup" name since at least 2014.
MIPCOM 2026: 3Boxmedia unveils new documentary slate featuring science, nature, and current affairs
The Spanish-German distributor is launching a diverse lineup of factual content spanning travel, climate investigation, science, and 4K wildlife productions for the market in Cannes.
Accenture Completes Acquisition of Mjølner Informatics, Bringing Deep Software Engineering Expertise for Energy, Utilities and Manufacturing Clients in Denmark
Accenture has completed its acquisition of Mjølner Informatics from Norlys, strengthening Accenture’s software engineering, digital engineering and embedded software development capabilities in Denmark.
Mental health matters: here are campus resources available for students
The first full week of October recognizes Mental Illness Awareness Week, which is from Oct. 4 to Oct. 10. With students back on campus for the fall term, Wayne State
Christina Mezes, D.O., Joins Lynn Women’s Health & Wellness Institute as a Urogynecologist
October 1, 2026 – Board-certified obstetrics and gynecology physician and fellowship-trained urogynecologist Christina Mezes, D.O., has joined the Christine E. Lynn Women’s Health & Wellness Institute in Boca Raton, a part of Baptist Health South Florida. Dr. Mezes provides care for women with pelvic floor disorders, including pelvic organ prolapse and urinary and fecal incontinence. […]
More than 1,000 walk in Concord for NAMI New Hampshire menta...
More than 1,000 people joined NAMIWalks New Hampshire in Concord, raising over $250,000 for mental health and suicide prevention as Mental Illness Awareness Wee...
Mobile healthcare clinic set up provide free services
This mobile health clinic provides screenings, chronic disease management, prescription management, dental care and primary care for free.
Eagles vs. Rams Week 4 game thread
The Eagles will face the Rams in Week 4 at Lincoln Financial Field.
How Americans’ Financial Health Is Faring In The “K-Shaped” Economy
Hey all, Jason here. Money20/20 is still two weeks away, but I’ve already started packing (not procrastinating for once!). My calendar is already filling up with various sessions I want to catch, meetings, and of course happy hours, dinners, and other side events. If you’ll be in Vegas and want to catch up, let me know by replying to this email, and we can try to find a time amidst the chaos of the Venetian. A big if not totally unexpected piece of news dropped on Friday: the Independent Community Bankers of America, a trade group that represents smaller U.S. banks, filed a lawsuit against the OCC and Comptroller Jonathan Gould, arguing that the regulator’s move to grant trust bank charters to firms seeking to use them to conduct substantial non-fiduciary activities exceeds the authorities granted to the OCC by Congress. I haven’t had time to fully digest the legal filing or speak to folks in my network about it, but you can expect to see coverage and analysis on it in next week’s newsletter. Subscribe or Support by Upgrading The NerdCon agenda just dropped. It’s stacked. Partner content: Nubank built an AI-first bank. Chime built its own banking core. Figure and Valon are rebuilding the mortgage stack. At NerdCon, you’ll hear from the people behind those bets: what they chose, what they learned, and what they’re still figuring out. The agenda is live, with leaders from Nubank, Chime, OpenAI, Remitly, Mercury, Figure, Valon and more. Follow the mainstage conversations, bring the problem your team is wrestling with to a hands-on workshop, or pull up a chair at a roundtable. Pick your quests. Meet us in San Diego, November 18–20. Fintech Business Weekly readers save 20% with code FBW20. Explore the Agenda Things To Know & Other Good Reads Federal Reserve Board finalizes changes to enhance the transparency and public accountability of its stress test and reduce volatility in its stress test-related capital requirements (Federal Reserve Board of Governors) FDIC Announces Conclusion of Independent Monitorship (FDIC) Modernizing Financial Regulation: Initial Observations from eSLR (Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michelle Bowman) The Data Version of Godzilla versus Kong: FRED Takes on AI (Fed Governor Christopher Waller) Financing the AI buildout (Brookings) Q3’26: Rules for Banks but Not for Crypto (Fintech Takes Banking) The Inevitability of Local Stablecoins (Lombard Notes) Delusions of AI Governance: The Human-in-the-Loop Comfort Blanket (Fintech Snark Tank) Stripe agrees to acquire Parafin to expand revenue opportunities for platforms and help small businesses grow (Stripe) Listen: Fighting Fraud in the Age of AI, with SEON’s Tamas Kadar (Fintech Business Weekly) How Americans’ Financial Health Is Faring In The “K-Shaped” Economy If there is one overarching theme across the economy and politics in the U.S. at the moment, it’s “affordability.” The term is vague enough to encompass a panoply of factors shaping Americans’ day-to-day lives: rising costs for the hallmarks of being “middle class,” including healthcare, housing, childcare, and education, inflation and rising interest rates, and a job market with the specter of AI hovering over it. At the same time, policy shifts under the Trump administration have resulted in reduced subsidies to those who get health insurance under the Affordable Care Act and new restrictions on qualifying for Medicaid and SNAP, the impacts of which have yet to be fully felt. These factors are contributing to declining consumer confidence and general dissatisfaction with the economy, despite continuing GDP growth and stock market records. This divergence is encapsulated in the idea of the “K-shaped” economy, in which a small proportion of Americans have seen their wealth balloon, while the majority of American households struggle to preserve the lifestyle they have. Perhaps the greatest determinant of which branch of the “K” a household is on is whether their wealth and income are primarily derived from employment vs. from assets. Nearly two decades of low interest rates and, more recently, elevated rates of inflation have benefited asset owners, while those whose income is primarily or solely derived from labor have largely seen real purchasing power stagnate or decline. This is reflected in recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data showing that labor share of U.S. GDP — the fraction of economic output that accrues to workers as compensation in exchange for their labor — dropped to just 52.8% in Q2 2026, the lowest since the BLS began keeping records. In 1947, approximately 2/3rds of economic output accrued to workers; even as recently as 2001, labor’s share of GDP was 64.1%. Against this backdrop, we’ve seen the rise of more credit and credit-like products: cash advance apps, “no-fee” overdraft, earned wage access, and buy now pay later, which are often used as small-dollar short-term borrowing mechanisms to meet immediate consumption needs or pay other bills (eg utilities, cell phone, other debt payments). With the markers of a middle class existence and, increasingly, basic financial stability seemingly out of reach for many, it should be no surprise there’s been an increase in “financial nihilism,” something industry peers like Alex Johnson and Frank Rotman have discussed and analyzed the roots of. The explosion of gambling and gambling-adjacent products and services — often marketed under the guise of being an “investment” — is inextricably intertwined with the rise of financial nihilism. Crypto, sports betting, and, more recently, prediction markets offer an escape or even hope of sorts, like a contemporary, digital version of a scratch-off lottery ticket, while leaving the overwhelming number of people who use such products worse off. Share of Households That Are Financially “Vulnerable” Ticks Up The Financial Health Network’s 2026 Financial Health Pulse® report adds context on how American households are faring. (I linked to this report in last week’s newsletter, but wanted to take time to further unpack the data in the report this week.) The Financial Health Network publishes the report annually, providing insight into how Americans’ financial circumstances are changing over time. The 2026 report is derived from a survey fielded in April and May 2026. The report leverages survey responses to assess indicators of financial health across spending, saving, borrowing, and planning/protecting and to determine a zero to 100 “FinHealth” score. Those with scores between 0 and 39 are considered “Financially Vulnerable,” consumers with scores ranging between 40 and 79 are defined as “Financially Coping,” and those with scores of 80 to 100 are “Financially Healthy.” The report found that moderate improvements in 2025 were reversed, with the share of respondents considered financially “vulnerable” rebounding to 17%. The longitudinal data reflect the impact of pandemic-era programs, like expanded unemployment, cash stimulus payments, and pauses of federal student loan payments. The positive impacts of those programs, as reflected in the Financial Health Pulse reports, had largely disappeared by 2023. While pandemic-era inflation — to be fair, in part caused by the various support and stimulus measures — had come down from as high as 9% in 2022, it has rebounded since the start of Trump’s second term, with tariffs and energy market disruptions owing to the war in Iran pushing prices back up. Specific indicators in the survey that deteriorated from 2025 to 2026 include the share of respondents spending less than their income over the past 12 months, the share paying all bills on time over the past 12 months, the share that have a manageable amount or no debt, the share that are “moderately” or “very” confident their insurance is adequate to cover them in an emergency, and the share that “somewhat” or “strongly” agree that their household plans ahead financially. Unsurprisingly, lower- and moderate-income households are more likely to struggle to pay their bills on time and have any funds leftover to save. The share of low-income households whose income exceeded their spending dropped from 35% in 2025 to 31% in 2026, while the share of upper-income households whose income exceeded expenses remained unchanged at 63%. Households with student loans or revolving credit card debt reported having “a bit more” or “far more” debt than was manageable at rates far higher than those not carrying these types of debts. The share of those with student loan debt indicating their debt load was too high to manage increased from 50% in 2025 to 55% in 2026, while the share of those with revolving credit card debt saying the same ticked up from 51% in 2025 to 54% in 2026. Households that had student loans were markedly more likely to be financially “coping” or “vulnerable” vs. those without student loans. In 2026, 27% of households with student loans were considered financially vulnerable, a jump of 6% points vs. 2025. Households without student loans saw just a 1% point increase (not statistically significant) in those considered financially vulnerable. Households’ perception of the affordability of categories of goods and services paints a stark picture, with less than one-fourth considering higher education affordable, about a third deeming childcare affordable, and less than half viewing healthcare as affordable. Fintech Business Weekly is made possible by the generous support of paying subscribers — bringing you independent analysis of banking, fintech, and crypto without fear or favor. You can support my work by becoming a paying subscriber if you aren’t already. Paying subscribers enjoy: access to the entire archive of nearly six years of newsletters extended versions of the weekly newsletter, with additional content and analysis and (for founding member tier) quarterly personal 1:1 fintech Q&A / strategy calls with me, tapping into my unparalleled knowledge of the intersection of banking and fintech and experience working in the sector, including helping to launch Goldman Sachs’ retail bank Marcus Support Fintech Business Weekly You can also support Fintech Business Weekly by sponsoring a newsletter or podcast, putting you in front of 93,000+ of the most influential decision makers in banking, fintech, and crypto. Learn more about sponsor opportunities or request a media kit by dropping me an email. Democratic Senate Report Highlights How Iran Uses Tether to Evade U.S. Sanctions Iran uses stablecoins, specifically Tether, to evade sanctions, fund regional proxies, and to purchase military drones, a report released last week by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations says. The report was authored by committee ranking member Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and the minority staff. Crypto and stablecoin proponents will often push back on criticism that criminals make use of these assets by arguing that, on an absolute dollar basis, far more illicit funds flow through traditional banking systems and payment rails than via crypto and stablecoins. And while that is likely true, it elides the reality presented in news story after news story: whether state actors — Russia, Iran, North Korea — or criminal groups, those looking to engage in illicit transactions increasingly favor stablecoins and, specifically, Tether (USDT). The report from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations released last week adds context to how Iran uses Tether has a lynchpin in its shadow banking system. The report analyzed 846 wallets that have been sanctioned or targeted for seizure, finding that 84% of them transacted exclusively or primarily in Tether. The ability to create near limitless, anonymous wallets and to move funds effectively instantaneously and irreversibly have made crypto a favored financial mechanism for bad actors. Stablecoins solved key drawbacks of bitcoin, namely, the original cryptocurrency’s highly volatile value in dollars. And while Tether (the company) has the technical ability to “freeze” or destroy funds, the company is often limited and reactive in its approach to doing so, the Senate report argues. Tether, which is nominally based in crypto-friendly El Salvador, “has stated that its compliance with OFAC sanctions is ‘voluntary’ and that it follows ‘OFAC guidelines,’” the Senate report says. Owing to these favorable attributes, Tether “became a primary cryptocurrency for Iran, Hamas, Hizballah, and the Houthis beginning in 2023 and has expanded in scale since,” according to the report. Tether’s role in Iran’s shadow banking system, the report says, is enhanced by crypto exchanges like Bybit, Kyrrex, OKX, Gate, and Binance, and through “over the counter” exchanges and hawala networks. The consequences of these financial flows aren’t hypothetical. The Senate report links Tether as a funds transfer mechanism to Iranian proxies in the region, including Hizballah, the Houthis, and Hamas. Tether has also been used to make payments to secure components necessary to manufacture drones, the report says. The report concludes by arguing that “[s]tablecoin issuers with a significant nexus to the United States, particularly those that offer dollar-denominated stablecoins, should be subject to American sanctions law rather than being allowed to hide behind foreign jurisdictions.” Stablecoin issuers like Tether must be held accountable for repeated failures to prevent illicit finance and sanctions violations by law enforcement, the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and OFAC, the report argues. [Paying Subscriber Exclusive] OUSD Goes Live, Make Your Own Neobank, U.S. Sanctions Russia’s A7 Network As “Transnational Criminal Organization” OpenUSD, the stablecoin issued by the Open Standard consortium that includes Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, core providers, crypto firms, and numerous banks, went live last week. Social commerce platform Whop raised eyebrows in fintech by offering creators on its platform the ability to launch their own neobanks, which the company describes as “great businesses that are easy to run,” in just 15 minutes. And OFAC and FinCEN target Russia’s “shadow banking” A7 Network — more on these stories after the paywall.
San Jose launches pilot program for mobile healthcare unit on downtown streets
The program hopes to help most vulnerable residents “with complex needs who too often cycle between the street, 911, emergency rooms and back again”
Why Ken Paxton could lose a Texas GOP Senate seat to James Talarico
Plagued by ethics allegations, the Senate candidate is unusually vulnerable for a red state Republican.
Why Ken Paxton could lose a Texas GOP Senate seat to James Talarico
Plagued by ethics allegations, the Senate candidate is unusually vulnerable for a red state Republican.
Nebraska volleyball notches its 12th sweep of the season against Maryland
Over a thousand miles away from Lincoln, the No. 1 Husker volleyball team beat the Maryland Terrapins in their home arena in three sets (25-13, 25-20, 25-15) on Saturday, the same day as Nebraska’s football team beat Maryland 49-23. Sophomore setter Campbell Flynn started the game for senior Bergen Reilly for precautionary reasons, following an ankle sprain during the match against Penn State.
Wellness Services connects students with mental health support and resources
Wellness Services connects students with mental health support and resources
Memorial Health System expanding healthcare services at Gulfport clinic
GULFPORT, Miss. (WXXV)- Memorial Health System is expanding services at one clinic in northern Gulfport. Dr. Rolando Barnes now provides comprehensive family medicine services at the Highway 49 clinic. This gives patients more convenient access to both primary and specialty care in their community. Barnes will also provide preventative care, wellness visits, chronic disease management, and ongoing care for patients...
Sadie Strong hosts annual health and wellness expo
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — Buffalo-based nonprofit breast cancer support organization Sadie Strong hosted its eighth annual Community Health and Wellness Expo on Saturday at the Northland Workfor…
Sadie Strong hosts annual health and wellness expo
Sadie Strong hosts annual health and wellness expo
Michigan State suffers 31-3 loss at Wisconsin
MADISON, WI. (WLNS) — The Michigan State football team suffered its third straight loss in its first Big Ten road game of the season, falling 31-3 at Wisconsin Saturday. This is the first time since the 2024 season that MSU failed to score a touchdown in a game. The Spartans have scored a combined 26 […]
From saunas to psychedelics, how a health reporter sorts science from hype
A reporting trip to a sauna conference in Oslo found NPR's Will Stone in a sauna with his clothes and recording gear. In this reporter's notebook, he explains how he investigates the science behind wellness claims.
From saunas to psychedelics, how a health reporter sorts science from hype
A reporting trip to a sauna conference in Oslo found NPR's Will Stone in a sauna with his clothes and recording gear. In this reporter's notebook, he explains how he investigates the science behind wellness claims.
Hundreds gather to support Mental Health Awareness
MADISON, (WKOW) — More than 700 people gathered for a NAMIWalks event in Dane County, coming together to raise awareness about mental illness and support mental health resources in the
NAMIWalks at Asbury Methodist Church raises over $116,000 for mental health awareness
The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) held its annual walk fundraiser on Saturday at the Asbury Methodist Church on East Avenue.
Nebraska vs Maryland – Game Thread of Winning Fun!
Time: 3:00pm CST Location: Memorial Stadium, Lincoln, NE Surface: Hellas Turf (Blessed by the Bobfather himself in Husker Valhalla) Wagering Info: Huskers -14 1⁄2 . O/U – 52 1⁄2. Moneyline: Nebraska +116, Maryland +666 ($100 wager) (FanDuel) Series Record: Nebraska is 3-1 vs. Maryland all-time with all 4 games being played after the Huskers joined the Big 10. The last two games […]
Search warrant served at another Butler County business in ongoing illegal gambling investigation
An illegal gambling investigation in Butler County, Missouri continues.
Fulton County pairs deputies with mental health clinicians to help keep people in crisis out of jail
When a person is experiencing a mental health crisis, a call for help can bring law enforcement to the door. But in Fulton County, a new team is giving deputies another option before someone ends up in jail.
AI Could Turn U.S. Media And Entertainment Into A $48 Billion Market
Scripts, storyboards, trailers, thumbnails, voiceovers and rough cuts are all becoming part of AI’s entertainment-industry résumé. A Research and Markets report projects the U.S. AI media and entertainment market will grow from $9.70 billion in 2025 to $47.95 billion by 2034, with a compound annual growth rate of 19.43 per cent from 2026 through 2034. […]
Is the ‘Verity’ cast Team Letter or Team Manuscript? Anne Hathaway weighs in on debate
Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, and Josh Hartnett explain to EW where they stand on the shocking ending of their new movie ‘Verity.’
'Fall in Love With Science" Will Be Oct. 3 in Lincoln Park
“Fall in Love with Science” will take place Saturday, 3 to 5 p.m., in Oleans Lincoln Park Pavilion.
The Protect College Sports Act set out to stabilize conference membership, but the ACC is still at risk of being picked apart
The Senate has passed a bill that attempts to rein in spiraling costs, but it leaves room for half the ACC members to jump to other conferences.
Ivy Tech Valparaiso to Host Fall into Wellness Mental Health Fair Oct. 5
Community event will connect students, employees and community members with mental health resources, wellness activities and support VALPARAISO, Ind. — Ivy Tech Community College’s Valparaiso Campus will host its Fall into Wellness Mental Health Fair on Monday, Oct. 5, bringing together students, employees and community members for an afternoon focused on mental health, well-being and connection. The free event will take place from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Commons Area at Ivy Tech Community College, 3100 Ivy Tech Drive, Valparaiso. The fair is open to students, faculty, staff and members of the community. Designed to make conversations around mental health
Friday Scoreboard
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) – Here are scores from around the area: College Volleyball:Sioux Falls 3, UMary 0Jamestown 3, Augustana 2 High School Football:#2 Brandon Valley, 38, #3 Harrisburg 12Roosevelt 40, Rapid City Central 0#4 O’Gorman 35, Washington 13#1 Jefferson 62, Omaha Westview (NE) 25#5 Lincoln 55, Rapid City Stevens 0#2 Tea Area 42, Brookings […]
South Korean official says Trump announcement on Alaska LNG went ‘far beyond what was agreed’
The governor and Republican incumbents in competitive U.S. Senate and House races said they expect South Korea to ultimately invest $54 billion. Some industry observers cast doubt on that prospect.
Smaller walnut crop may be good news
USDA announced Oct. 1 that 2026 California walnut production is forecast at 680,000 tons, down 16% from the 2025 production of 809,000 tons. The preliminary estimate of producing bearing acres
Grizzlies Enter Camp in Better Health After Injury-Ravaged Season
Tuomas Iisalo says the Memphis Grizzlies are in a much better health position entering camp after losing 564 games to injury and illness last season.
Grizzlies Enter Camp in Better Health After Injury-Ravaged Season
Tuomas Iisalo says the Memphis Grizzlies are in a much better health position entering camp after losing 564 games to injury and illness last season.
Could the International Space Station win a Nobel Peace Prize? Here's what to know
Not-so-outlandish, prognosticators say: The Nobel Peace Prize this year could go galactic, with an award to the International Space Station.
$55 million student wellness center project breaks ground at Michigan Tech
Features include a UP Health System - Portage supported urgent health care clinic, a fitness floor and therapy offices.
‘A lack of respect’: Repeated vandalism, disruptions from teens frustrate Canonsburg business owners
Business owners along Pike Street in Canonsburg say they are frustrated by what they describe as a growing problem involving a group of young teens.
NJ Reminds Residents to Continue to Take Precautions Against Mosquito-Borne Illnesses
NJ Reminds Residents to Continue to Take Precautions Against Mosquito-Borne Illnesses
Richland County law enforcement considers mental health alternative over arrests
The Richland County Sheriff’s Department is beginning a partnership with the Mental Illness Recovery Center, Inc. (MIRCI) to guide its Law Enforcement Assisted Deflection (LEAD) program.
Health and wellness fair returning to Hartford on Saturday
HARTFORD, Conn. (WTNH) — The 16th annual Ollie M. Williams Community Health and Wellness Fair will be held Saturday in Hartford. The event will offer free resources, health screenings and giveaways…
Sports Overtime: Week 6 (Friday, Oct. 2, 2026)
Watch highlights and view scores from Week 6 of the 2026 NSAA football season.
Family demands answers after son, 23, killed at Minneapolis mental health facility
The family of a 23-year-old man killed at a Minneapolis mental health facility is seeking answers as to why someone with a recent history of alleged violence was allowed to live alongside vulnerable residents and what could have been done to prevent it.
CalAIM Offers Housing and Health Support, but Medi-Cal Barriers Leave Some Californians Behind
California’s CalAIM program can connect vulnerable residents with health care and housing, but getting that help isn’t always simple.
New Macomb-Kettering deal enables business students to transfer straight into bachelor’s program
The Flint-based university will provide a pathway to its Bachelor of Science in management degree.
DA proposes civil commitment court during mental health symposium
Salt Lake County DA Sim Gill is proposing a civil commitment court as an alternative to jail for those suffering from a severe mental illness.
Kennedy Center Honors to be held at Capital One Arena amid fight over adding Trump's name
The 49th annual awards are set to take place at Washington's downtown arena, a Kennedy Center spokesperson said Friday. Few other details were immediately available, and an explanation for the change wasn't given.
Caesars Entertainment Atlantic City Resorts unite for Breast Cancer Awareness Month
This October, Caesars Entertainment Atlantic City Resorts are coming together in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, uniting Caesars Atlantic
Where Public Health Meets Public Safety: What Healthcare Design Can Teach Us About Modern Justice Facilities
For decades, justice facility planning centered on security, operational efficiency and durability.
Oklahoma’s largest natural health and wellness event returns this weekend in Broken Arrow
Clearwater approves Scientology road requests for entertainment center
The council also voted to sell a city-owned parcel for the project this week.
Emory Healthcare enforces annual flu shot requirement as respiratory illness season begins
A Flaw in ChatGPT’s Mac App Could Have Let Hackers Grab Sensitive Data
While the focus has been on AI agents’ hacking capabilities, a recently patched vulnerability in a ChatGPT app shows that AI software is itself an inviting—and vulnerable—target.
High School Sports Scores
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Take a look at the various scores from all the high school sports across South Dakota. Volleyball Aberdeen Central 3, Tea Area 0 Mitchell 3, Pierre 0 Lincoln 3, Brookings 2 Sioux Falls Christian 3, Yankton 0 Harrisburg 3, Huron 0 Washington 3, Roosevelt 2 Sturgis Brown 3, Douglas 1 […]
‘This is my man cave’: Auto parts business in Gordon marks 50 years as community hub
Hinn Gordon Auto Supply looks like a typical auto parts store from the outside. Inside, owner Jerry Kearns has created a destination that is anything but ordinary.
18 Sports earns Sportscast of The Year at NYSBA Awards
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. (WETM) – 18 Sports is proud to share and showcase a special honor for the year. Thursday, at the 2026 New York State Broadcasters Association Awards (NYSBA) in Binghamton, 18 Sports was awarded Sportscast of The Year for our region of the state. WETM-TV Sports Director Andy Malnoske, along with Sports Reporter Nick […]
UVA professor studies payoff of engaging in political conversation
When conversations about politics get tense, many people’s instinct is to shut them down. A UVA professor is urging people to resist that instinct, saying they might get more out of the conversation than they expect.
Local hospitals to conduct community health survey
Memorial Health partnered with Lincoln Memorial Hospital, Logan County Department of Public Health, Decatur Memorial Hospital and HSHS St. Mary’s Hospital to gather feedback from their respected communities on their needs.
The secret to healthy habits isn't doing more. Psychologists say it's 'wellness stacking,' and here's how it works
Psychologists explain what wellness stacking is, why it works neurologically, and how to build a daily routine that holds up even on your worst day.
Rutgers Experts Available to Discuss Implications of Proposed 2030 Census Changes for Research and Public Health
A proposed Census Bureau rule could change the demographic information collected through the 2030 Census — eliminating questions on race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation — with potential implications for population health research and the use of Census data. The Census Bureau has invited the public to comment on this proposal by October 13, 2026. Rutgers experts available to discuss the proposed changes include Cristine Delnevo, Director of the Rutgers Institute for Nicotine and
Think Pink partnership focuses on women’s health in El Paso
Learn how a planned $3,500 gift to Desert Imaging would support screening mammograms and the Women’s Wellness Fund’s broader goals in El Paso.
GOP hold on Florida and Texas governors’ races weakens, nonpartisan analyst says
President Donald Trump’s poor ratings contributed to the Cook Political Report shifting both races from “Likely Republican” to “Lean Republican.”
Judge permanently dismisses Trump administration's case charging ex-Olympian with Reflecting Pool vandalism
A judge in the nation’s capital agreed on Thursday to permanently dismiss a criminal case charging a former Olympian with vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, a move that could prevent federal prosecutors from reviving the case under political pressure from President Donald Trump.
Twenty-five years after 9/11, researchers are still discovering health effects among first responders
“We see differences 25 years later between those who were using or not the PPEs. We see that in these types of brain imaging…” said Dr. Roberto Lucchini.
Bills Have a Major Problem Emerging in Their Secondary
Rising sack totals mask a vulnerable unit struggling with Christian Benford’s regression and mounting injuries. Now, Buffalo’s depth faces a brutal litmus test against the league’s elite quarterbacks.
Milestone integration for Goshen Health in century long history
WSBT CBS 22 provides news, sports, entertainment and public interest programs to the South Bend, Indiana area including Mishawaka, Notre Dame, Granger, Osceola, Elkhart, Jimtown, Dunlap, New Carlisle, Goshen, Middlebury, Bristol, New Paris, Nappanee, Howe, Lagrange, Topeka, Bourbon, Milford, Syracuse, North Webster, Warsaw, Bremen, Plymouth, Walkerton, Argos, Tippecanoe, Culver, Grovertown, Delong, Rochester, Akron, Winamac, North Judson, LaPorte, North Liberty, Wakarusa, Lapaz, Millersburg, Knox, and Michigan City, Indiana – and these areas of Michigan: St. Joseph, Benton Harbor, Buchanan, Niles, Three Oaks, New Buffalo, Harbert, Bridgeman, Stevensville, Watervliet, Berrien Springs, Dowagiac, Marcellus, Cassopolis, Decatur, Vandalia, Constantine, White Pigeon, Galien and Edwardsburg.
Judge cites Trump’s threats in permanent dismissal of Reflecting Pool damage charges against Olympian
A federal judge on Thursday dismissed charges against David Hearn, the former US Olympian initially accused of damaging the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial with prejudice, citing President Donald Trump’s comments to ensure charges cannot be brought in the future.
Committee led by Rep. James Comer seeks brain health study of naval aviators
The House Oversight Committee says the Navy isn’t doing enough to ensure it's protecting the long-term wellbeing of naval aviators.
Neil Pierre: Philadelphia Union's towering defender reaches USMNT
By Jonathan SigalNeil Pierre goes bowling with his Philadelphia Union brothersPhiladelphia Union center back Neil Pierre has gone from prospect to star for club and country, emerging as one of Major L...
Top Weekly Entertainment Picks
October is here, bringing crisp days, apple cider and a full lineup of fall fun. Phish makes its highly anticipated return to Atlantic City, Smithville raises
The Enemies Project: WashU father-daughter duo fight against political extremism
With over 90000 subscribers on YouTube, senior Sadie Rosen and her father Larry Rosen (B.A. ‘88) reveal the power of empathy through their channel, The Enemies Project. The pair bring together strangers with fundamentally opposed political beliefs for a sit-down conversation. Their docuseries aims to break online echo chambers through vulnerability. It’s working, as across their 16 uploaded episodes, all the enemies have left connected.
Rotary Health Fair brings on-site blood testing back to Homer
More than 50 exhibitors will offer health screenings and wellness resources
Global Health & WASH: October 2026 Funding Opportunities (26 new opportunities)
41 opportunities on the Global Health & WASH page this cycle, 26 of them new. The health money on this page is mostly research money, and much of it is aimed at people early in their careers. Funder after funder, from the TANGO2 Research Foundation’s Research Pathways grants to the South African Medical Research Council’s Early Investigators Programme to the National Ataxia Foundation and Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, is funding early-career investigators and the institutions that host them, with a clear tilt toward researchers based in or from the Global South, from AMBSO in Uganda to Kenya’s CONNECT-VAX network to Ersilia’s AI Incubator for African drug discovery. The money is organized by disease as much as by need: narrow foundations, the Parkinson’s Foundation, NTAP for neurofibromatosis, the RUNX1 Research Program for an inherited blood disorder, each run their own grant, so the question for an applicant is less which health problem you work on than which foundation owns your disease. The largest European cheques go to consortia only, with the European Innovation Council putting up to EUR €4 million behind a single healthy-ageing project and UNITE up to EUR €1 million behind each cross-border digital health team. Water sits apart, almost entirely in applied utility research: the Water Research Foundation’s cluster of USD $250,000 to $500,000 projects, each built around a utility problem from sewer laterals to reuse treatment. And the biggest single pot is public: HRSA is renewing community health center service areas with awards of up to USD $10 million each. This post is for paid subscribers. This helps support the time and effort it takes to curate and organize these opportunities. Subscribe To keep this accessible to everyone who needs it, we’re happy to offer pay what you can rates. You can find more details here. Open Opportunities 2027 Building the Field of Health Advocacy Grant, Georgia Health Initiative. *New!* *Closing soon!* Georgia Health Initiative, a nonprofit private foundation focused on health equity, is opening its 2027 Building the Field of Health Advocacy Grant to strengthen the organizations that push for healthier systems across the state. The Initiative treats advocacy as infrastructure, backing one-year projects that range from urgent responses to shifting federal policy to longer arc campaigns on housing, behavioral health, care access, and food security. It wants coalitions that elevate community voice, apply an equity lens, and arrive ready to deploy concrete strategies, and it deliberately seeks variety in issues, communities, and organizational size. The optional webinar and required lobbying training signal a funder investing in a durable field, not one grant cycle. The strongest fits are Georgia nonprofits and public agencies ready to turn advocacy readiness into systems change. Geographies: United States. Who can apply: Tax-exempt 501(c)(3) public charities, state or local government agencies, or coalitions/collaboratives using a 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor, that work in Georgia on behalf of Georgians and align with the mission, vision, and values of Georgia Health Initiative. Only one application per organization, though an organization may be listed as a partner or subcontractor on multiple applications. Funding amount: Organizations can apply for up to USD $80,000 per project; the Initiative anticipates investing a total of USD $1.36 million. Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Governance, Policy & Advocacy · SDG3; SDG10. Deadline: October 2, 2026. Learn more and apply here. TDD Research Pathways Grant, TANGO2 Research Foundation. *New!* *Closing soon!* The TANGO2 Research Foundation, working with a founding gift from Tango2UK, is opening its TDD Research Pathways Grant to fund early-career investigators anywhere in the world who study TANGO2 Deficiency Disorder. The foundation is using this money to seed pilot work and to build a research community around a rare disorder that few labs currently study. It wants to back emerging scientists, clinicians, and trainees who will stay with this field, not one-off projects, which is why it requires a committed mentor and real institutional support and asks each applicant for a plan for future contributions. The design rewards promise and persistence over track record. The strongest fits are students, residents, postdoctoral fellows, and new investigators ready to commit to TANGO2 research. Geographies: Global. Who can apply: Early-career investigators worldwide, including undergraduate, graduate, and medical trainees, postdoctoral fellows, residents, and clinical or research fellows. Early-career investigators must hold a PhD, MD, or equivalent doctoral degree and be within 10 years of that degree or within 5 years of initiating rare disease research, engaged in postdoctoral research at an academic institution, teaching hospital, or nonprofit research institute. Currently enrolled trainees and transitional PhD candidates beginning a postdoctoral appointment at a nonprofit institution by July 1, 2026 are also eligible. All applicants must identify a qualified mentor with relevant TDD or rare disease research experience and demonstrate institutional support. Funding amount: Up to USD $15,000. Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Innovation, Science & Technology. Deadline: October 2, 2026. Learn more and apply here. Call for Expression of Interest (EOI): AMBSO Impact Research Initiative, Africa Medical and Behavioral Sciences Organization (AMBSO). *Closing soon!* The Africa Medical and Behavioral Sciences Organization is inviting expressions of interest for its Impact Research Initiative, which funds early-stage pilot studies and proof of concept work on priority health challenges. AMBSO is a Ugandan research organization backing bold ideas that can grow into larger studies, and its tracks span antimicrobial resistance, epidemic preparedness, artificial intelligence for diagnostics, HIV prevention, climate and health, cancer, maternal and child health, and non-communicable diseases. The small award size and direct-cost-only rule point to a funder that wants evidence rather than overhead, and that favors projects able to attract follow-on money or use AMBSO’s own research infrastructure. Eligibility runs worldwide, welcoming researchers and institutions inside and outside Africa. The strongest fits are researchers with a feasible pilot that generates policy-ready evidence. Geographies: Global. Who can apply: Open worldwide to researchers, academic institutions, and research organizations whose work aligns with generating high-impact health evidence. Independent researchers are eligible if affiliated with an academic or research institution. Doctoral students are encouraged to apply as part of a research team led by a faculty Principal Investigator. Community-based organizations and other eligible entities may apply. Projects may be implemented inside or outside Uganda. Funding amount: Up to USD $10,000 per project, with no minimum funding threshold. Targeted Sectors / SDGs: SDG3. Deadline: October 2, 2026. Learn more and apply here. Entrepreneurs for Resilience 2027 (E4R27), Swiss Re Foundation. *Closing soon!* Swiss Re Foundation is opening the tenth edition of Entrepreneurs for Resilience, which backs healthcare social enterprises expanding affordable, quality primary care for low-income communities across low- and middle-income countries. The Foundation is using catalytic, blended funding plus multi-year advisory to take risk out of scaling, helping proven models reach more people sustainably rather than stay stuck at pilot size. It looks to back brick-and-click enterprises that pair physical care with digital tools and build affordability through savings, payments, or microinsurance, ideally integrated with public health systems. Requiring earned revenue, real customer scale, and gender-inclusive teams signals that this is growth capital for commercially serious ventures, not seed money. The strongest fits are established, revenue-generating healthcare enterprises ready to scale access for underserved populations. Geographies: Global. Who can apply: For-profit and hybrid healthcare social enterprises serving low-income and underserved populations in low- and middle-income countries, using combined physical and digital (brick-and-click) healthcare delivery models. Applicants must demonstrate measurable social impact, generate at least 50% of income through earned revenue, have been established no later than December 2023, already serve at least 50,000 people with potential to scale, and have at least 30% low-income customers. Preference for gender-inclusive enterprises with at least one female founder or at least 30% women in management. Funding amount: Pilot funding of up to USD $45,000 for the 6-8 shortlisted social enterprises; up to USD $1 million in blended funding (up to USD $600,000 unconditional plus up to USD $400,000 conditional) shared among 3-4 finalists over a two-year implementation period; total programme funding approximately USD $1.3 million. Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Innovation, Science & Technology · SDG3; SDG5. Deadline: October 4, 2026. Learn more and apply here. Horizon HealthTech 2026, IIITD Innovation & Incubation Center. *Closing soon!* IIITD Innovation and Incubation Center is opening Horizon HealthTech 2026, a nine-month MedTech incubation cohort run under the aegis of BIRAC EDGE for founders building medical devices, diagnostics, surgical and interventional tools, or remote monitoring. The center is backing teams that already hold a validated proof of concept and want to reach a tested prototype, pairing each founder with a named expert and clinical validation through a hospital partner. What they seek to back is Indian health technology that can survive real clinical scrutiny and regulatory review, not slideware. The structure, with lab access, CDSCO guidance, IP support, and investor connects, signals a program built to make startups ready for follow-on capital. The strongest fits are early-stage MedTech teams with defensible IP and a working path from bench to bedside. Geographies: India. Who can apply: Early-stage teams/startups with a validated idea/proof of concept (TRL 3 onwards) working on medical devices, diagnostics, surgical/interventional technologies, or remote monitoring, holding IP or with potential to generate IP. Funding amount: No cash award amount is stated on the official program page. Benefits are in-kind: prototyping lab and equipment access, clinical/hospital validation (Max Healthcare), expert mentorship, CDSCO regulatory guidance, IP filing support, workspace, cloud credits and tools, and investor connects. Run under the aegis of BIRAC EDGE and builds a path to follow-on Government/VC/Angel funding. Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Innovation, Science & Technology · SDG3; SDG9. Deadline: October 5, 2026. Learn more and apply here. OpenAI AI and Teen Development Research Grant Program, OpenAI. *New!* *Closing soon!* OpenAI is opening its AI and Teen Development Research Grant Program to fund independent studies of how generative AI shapes the lives of young people ages 13 to 17. OpenAI wants a stronger evidence base on how teens actually use these tools and what that use does to their social and emotional development, so that product teams, policymakers, and regulators can act on findings rather than assumptions. It seeks work on emotion regulation, relationships, belonging, and the safeguards that keep teens safer, welcoming interdisciplinary teams and any methodology. That it will fund research whose conclusions may not favor AI providers, and prioritizes studies touching ChatGPT, signals a genuine appetite for credible outside scrutiny. The strongest fits are research groups grounded in adolescent development, well-being, and AI safety. Geographies: Global. Who can apply: Researchers aged 18 or older who are affiliated with a research institution or organization, and/or have significant experience relevant to child or adolescent development, well-being, human-computer interaction, AI impacts, or a closely related field. Multiple institutions may collaborate. OpenAI is seeking to fund research rather than for-profit initiatives and will not prioritize for-profit organizations. Funding amount: Individual research grants up to USD $1 million, totaling up to USD $5 million; maximum 10% of each grant for overhead or indirect costs. Targeted Sectors / SDGs: Social Inclusion & Community Wellbeing; Innovation, Science & Technology. Deadline: October 6, 2026. Learn more and apply here.
September Monthly Review: Health MCP Guy?
For all the time I spend talking about APIs and data exchange, this newsletter has had embarrassingly little interoperability of its own. It’s old-school SaaS, baby - UI or bust. Not all of that is my fault! Substack, for all its popularity, is (as mentioned before) really frustrating as my system of record. The primary user it optimizes towards is the reader, whose attention feeds the app, the Notes feed, and the recommendation network that Substack is actually selling. Health API Guy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe They’re falling into the same trap that Medium once sprinted into, albeit at a much more glacial speed. Younger generations may not remember (or never knew) it, but Medium once lured publications like The Ringer and Signal v. Noise onto its platform, only to lose them as it rebuilt itself around a paywall and an algorithmic feed. Substack’s original pitch circa 2020 was the antidote (you own your list), but every new feed feature chips away at it. I get it: writers are generic supply in the eyes of the Substack product team. Generic supply follows demand, so the consistent pressure on the PMs is to generate demand, which leads to every product cycle going toward discovery (Notes, recommendations, the app, live video). The end result lackluster author tools (laggy and broken analytics are truly crippling) all despite the premium price point. The archive is where it crosses from authorial gripes to actual reader impact, though. Across Substack and LinkedIn, I’ve published 1,218 posts and nearly 900,000 words since 2018. Substack’s native search can see only the 464 posts that live on Substack, and even there it’s woefully inadequate at surfacing relevant content (even for the guy who wrote it)! Readers have the same problem, writ large. Ask the Archive Fixing search (for both my readers and my own use) turned out to be extremely non-trivial, unfortunately: There’s no public API for readers to access content RSS exists for new content notification, but it only carries the 20 most recent posts and cuts paid ones off at the preview The only Substack MCP is an admin tool for analytics The export exists for authors, but it’s painfully awkward and slow. So I built something to work around that: the Health API Guy MCP. It’s a private MCP server holding the full text of everything I’ve written across Substack and LinkedIn. Add it to Claude or ChatGPT as a connector and you can ask things like: It pairs keyword search (for acronyms and case names, of which we have many) with semantic search. Every post is also labeled by topic, form, and court case, so you can pull a lawsuit’s (or multiple cases’) entire docket across Substack and LinkedIn in one query: Hail, Healthapiguyhydra This is also a bit of me eating my own cooking. I’ve spent the year arguing that headless healthcare is arriving and that developers want primitives over abstractions. Last week in Hail, Benihydra, I watched Salesforce plug its platform into Claude and bet that the records underneath outlive whatever interface sits on top: Salesforce must believe that the Hydra’s immortal head is the records, permissions, and business logic (in that they will survive whatever happens to the interface). It felt a bit hypocritical to keep my own archive behind a Substack search bar. The archive is the body. Substack is one head, and now whatever tool you might use is another. Will the EHRs follow my lead? Probably not imminently, but one can hope! Why Founding Members Only The MCP is available to Founding Member subscribers. A few reasons: It costs money and time to run. Hosting, the database, Clerk usage and AI compute for search and labeling are significant operational costs (that increase with usage). Substack gives me no way to automate access. There’s no API to check whether someone is a paid subscriber, so every user is manual operations for now. It’s a beta. We’ll need to improve things and parts will break. I’d rather they break for a small group of dedicated readers who will tell me about it. The Founding tier deserved a real benefit. Until now it was mostly a generous tip. Now it comes with something. If you’re already a Founding Member, reply to this email with the address you’d like provisioned. If you’re not and want in, upgrade here. Larger teams (such as companies) can get access too: group subscriptions at the Founding tier come with the group discount. The admin for the subscription can reply with the list of addresses to provision. Get 20% off a group subscription Pricing Founding membership is now a flat $200 a year, replacing the old suggested $150 that readers could adjust. Existing Founding Members will have access grandfathered in at their previous rate. Month in Review Articles Published Make Networks Dumb Again (Sep 11): AI is making old analog networks cheaper to use and flooding them with machine traffic in the process. A plea for agent-native rails with the intelligence at the endpoints, and for Washington to drag them to ubiquity. Interoperability, Unbuttoned (Sep 29): Interoperability is a series of workflows in a trenchcoat, and this post finally takes the trenchcoat off. A color-coded map shows which provider workflows went digital, which are fragmented, and which still run on fax. Video Content Antitrust’s System of Record Problem (Sep 3): The FTC’s investigation into Epic prompted a ninety-minute webinar, now posted with chapters and a smoothed transcript. We get into why market definition, missing B2B share data, and the SSNIP test leave antitrust poorly suited to systems of record, plus why information blocking may be doing more than any pending lawsuit. The Information Exchange: Cerner Milking Edition (Sep 18): This was so fucking fun. Ryan Tucker, Ryan Brickner, Brad Thorson, and I try an Around the Horn format, complete with points, penalties, and a mute button. We debate whether Oracle Health is dead, who would actually buy Cerner (IBM enters the chat), p(Doom), and why the front desk still hands you a clipboard. Regulatory Ask Not What Your Network Can Do (Sep 23): CDC’s RFI on public health data intermediaries lists use cases already served, unevenly, by eCR, lab reporting, IZ Gateway, and syndromic surveillance. The real opportunity sits in one question about AI: a network that can handle the next emergency without another interface project. Court cases Particle v. Epic: The Naughty Schoolteacher (Sep 4): After a summer-long vigil, the answer on Epic’s early summary judgment bid is two paragraphs and a remedial assignment. Particle advances to the next grade, and market definition gets another year of discovery. The Epic Discovery Files (Sep 8): Texas’s motions to compel arrive with a 251-page appendix of requests, objections, and meet-and-confer letters with Cravath. Inside: Epic using generative AI for document review, denied interoperability requests in scope, and Noerr-Pennington raised against lobbying discovery. Epic v. Health Gorilla: “Working as Designed” (Sep 9): Epic wants nothing to do with the data breach MDL, and explaining why puts fresh discovery on the public docket. The spiciest allegation: Health Gorilla told GuardDog to scrub its law firm business from its website instead of cutting off access. Veeva v. Epic: Legal Bypass Surgery (Sep 15): Veeva asks the Wisconsin Supreme Court to skip the Court of Appeals, while law professors and three policy groups line up as amici. Meanwhile, Epic’s lawyers apologize for another round of citation errors, including a quote that never existed. Texas v. Epic: Behind the Black Bars (Sep 17): The court portal served up Epic’s unredacted filings, revealing a $5 million document review budget and the AI workflow behind it. Also inside: the 200-plus company names Texas wants searched, and one very expensive Zoom invitation. OpenEvidence v. Doximity: Consequences Will Follow (Sep 25): OpenEvidence tells the court it will not comply with a discovery order, and its own lawyers at Quinn Emanuel say they won’t defend the choice. Add years of Slack reported unrecoverable, and Rule 37 sanctions come into view. Health Tech Keeps Choosing Violence (Sep 28): Doximity moves to end OpenEvidence’s case, Epic asks Texas to show its work, and a sleepy Audacious Inquiry patent fight sprouts antitrust and information blocking counterclaims. The main event is a long-sealed Cognizant v. Infosys ruling that hints where system of record antitrust claims can survive. EHRs One Verb for Oracle Health (Sep 14): Oracle’s earnings call quantifies every data center to the decimal point, while Oracle Health gets a single verb: “accelerate.” Panning the few healthcare mentions turns up an agentic care management system, a research-to-care ledger play, and the question of whether healthcare gets Larry’s patience. Epic’s Forretress Under Siege (Sep 30): Judy Faulkner tells a panel Epic paused hundreds of projects to harden its software and calls it a “shame,” while a spokesperson insists the roadmap hasn’t changed. Project Glasswing, a Pokémon-branded QAN sprint, and a trove of Jodel grievances reconcile the two Epics and preview the Jevons paradox coming for all software. Industry Analysis Scanning for a Network (Sep 1): Scan.com raises $220M to build the imaging network labs never got, speedrunning Zocdoc’s consumer-to-B2B pivot. Its wedge to network density may be the most American one available: personal injury litigation. The Front Desk Wants the Damn Whole Building (Sep 16): Hello Patient buys Converse Health, pushing its AI front desk into referrals, chart work, and prior auth. The copilot categories keep blurring, and your distribution partner is still your final boss. Cross-industry Comparisons A Different Patchwork Quilt (Sep 10): Healthcare loves to envy open banking, but the US version has no mandate, a toll booth at Chase, and data quality problems of its own. The grass isn’t greener; it’s another American patchwork quilt, and perhaps a worse one. Hail, Benihydra (Sep 21): Salesforce brings its platform into Claude, Slack, and its own agent, inviting the interfaces that might replace it. Cut off one head and more grow back, so long as the records underneath stay put. Living on A Trade Secret Prayer (Sep 22): Six credit unions are suing Fiserv, the Epic of core banking, by claiming their own member records as trade secrets. Banking has no Cures Act, so its lawyers reach for legal alchemy that healthcare has already tried. Other News None this month External Media Nabla Accelerate NYC: I kicked off fall conference season at Nabla’s Accelerate event in New York, where Delphine Groll opened by asking the room to picture the company it wants to become and the one it doesn’t. I liked her framework of bureaucracy, fear, and ego as the blockers. I also love vendor conferences/events in general - different vibe than industry biggies. Healthcare 101 with Nikhil Krishnan: I briefly guest lectured Out-Of-Pocket’s Healthcare 101 class. Appreciated Nikhil’s takeaways cover whether AI doctors can query HIEs, why healthcare’s data-liberation rules beat most industries’, and the hi-res graphic is in the comments. HCN: Epic Probed by the FTC: I joined the HCN guys to talk through the FTC’s investigation into Epic. Cedric’s new hairdo was an unexpected plot twist. The episode also covers MFN drug pricing, healthcare M&A and Eli Lilly’s acquisition streak. Fall Conferences: At eHealth Exchange’s Annual Meeting in Austin on Oct 27, I’ll moderate a panel on the tensions between AI, HIEs, and timely patient access with Jean Ross (Primary Record), Therasa Bell (Kno2), Byron Crowe (Doctronic), and Michael Marchant (Freenome). Here’s the rest of my schedule if you want to meet up: CommonWell (Redwood Shores, CA): Oct 13-14 Will be participating in a fun Jeopardy event Open@Epic (Madison, WI): Oct 20-23 Will be enjoying Verona, Willy Street, and other local adventures eHealth Exchange and Sequoia Project (Austin, TX): Oct 27-29 Yeehaw HLTH (Vegas): Nov 15-18 Groundhog Day, Venetian Edition RSNA (Chicago): Nov 30-Dec 2 See me at “Governing AI in Breast Imaging: What Health Systems Are Actually Doing” Digital Health Counsel 2026 AI Summit (Seattle): December 2-3 Will likely be speaking to a bunch of lawyers about information blocking Posts I Liked ChatGPT’s Epic integration: game changer or nothing burger?: Joshua Liu, MD offers five thoughts on OpenAI’s Epic launch, starting from the point that it rides the same open APIs available to anyone. He argues read-only access leaves ordering to Art and the ambient startups, and asks why HCA is piloting it alongside Commure. He’s sorta a must-follow at this point - consistently excellent, thought-provoking takes. Epic, Lilly, and the Discovery pass: Seth Chaney reads Epic’s first major Discovery deal (with Eli Lilly), as well as its revised developer terms on commercial displays, as the pipe finally opening between EHRs and pharma. Life sciences and health continue to collide. Scott Rossignol on EHR payer platforms and ePA fees: Scott argues the top ambulatory EHR vendors are turning the prior auth mandate into a per-member-per-year toll on payers, for an API whose operating cost has nothing to do with covered lives. His fix is two lines of regulatory text: put the CRD/DTR/PAS certification criteria in the Base EHR definition, and bring payer-facing ePA connectivity under § 170.404’s cost-based fee rules. It’s a good solution. Health API Guy is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
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