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Two years after Yale Health adopted AI helpers, Yalies are on the fence
The campus health clinic incorporated an artificial intelligence-powered tool into clinical visits in 2024. Yale students expressed varying levels of comfort with the technology, which is intended to reduce the providers’ workload when documenting visits.
Veteran Chicago Asset-Based Lending Executive Fobbe Launches Maple Bay Business Capital
Maple Bay Business Capital launched as a commercial finance firm focused on asset-based products and services for middle market companies. Founded by Joe
Opinion: CT Republicans need a reckoning, not excuses
If CT voters were convinced we offered a credible alternative, more would have supported us.
Trump says deportations were ‘too tough’ and hurt him during the midterms
The president said in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes” that he would like to work out a deal with Democrats on immigration.
KC Concepcion records first NFL TD in Week 9
Cleveland Browns wide receiver KC Concepcion posted four receptions for 85 yards and his first NFL touchdown on six targets in Week 9
Science Teacher Goes Viral for Being the ‘Real-Life’ Miss Frizzle of ‘Magic School Bus’
Lisa Herring, who took her school photo with her class’ bearded dragon Rango, has gone viral, drawing comparisons to the lovably zany Miss Frizzle and her lizard pal Liz.
Mike Tirico will miss NBC’s Sunday night NFL game in Chicago because of health issue
Noah Eagle will replace Tirico in the booth.
Lubbock Children’s Business Fair Nov. 14 at Science Spectrum
The Lubbock Children’s Business Fair will return 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 14 at the Science Spectrum.
Lubbock Children’s Business Fair Nov. 14 at Science Spectrum
The Lubbock Children’s Business Fair will return 10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 14 at the Science Spectrum.
New billboards urge people to ‘boycott the boycott’ of Jewish-owned businesses
The nonprofit organization JewBelong put up 14 billboards across the city in response to a planned boycott of Jewish-owned restaurants in the city.
Here’s what state passed a ban on transgender girls in female sports
A ballot measure approved Tuesday by voters in Washington state will prohibit transgender athletes from participating in girls’ school sports.
Ellen Burstyn passed on Cloris Leachman’s Oscar-winning role: ‘I didn’t want to be doing it 24 hours a day’
Ellen Burstyn reveals why she passed on the role that won Cloris Leachman an Oscar, plus how her new audiobook could put her on the verge of EGOT history.
Gov. Josh Shapiro urges Democrats to prioritize healthcare, food assistance
The Pennsylvania governor said in an interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” that he hopes Medicare and SNAP programs are revitalized by Congress next term.
Big spending, little change: Why Portland voters rejected a shakeup, except in one key way
Tuesday’s election leaves Portland's political landscape largely intact but delivers a milestone for Multnomah County.
9 Healthy Pasta Toppings to Keep You Full and Stabilize Blood Sugar, From Dietitians
Turn any pasta into a more nutritious meal by adding these dietitian-approved toppings high in protein, fiber and healthy fats.
Shark vacuums are secretly on sale on Amazon this weekend, with up to $200 off popular models
From stick to upright, there’s a vacuum for you.
New guidance for women's heart health aims to connect the dots of cardiovascular risk throughout life
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death among women, but many factors that influence a woman's heart health can emerge decades before her...
KCPL Beyond Business event to feature nonprofit leaders for conversation on local needs November 12
As the holiday season and year-end giving period approach, the Kenton County Public Library’s Small Business Resource Collaborative will bring community members together in November for “Beyond…
Leaked iPhone 18 and 18e X-rays show Apple's reuse, reduce, recycle approach
Leaked X-ray images point to Apple consolidating its spring 2027 iPhone 18 and iPhone 18e around a single design, separating the two mainly by camera hardware.
Recap: Sporting KC ends season with 1-0 victory in San Diego
Sporting Kansas City (7-22-5, 26 pts.) concluded the 2026 MLS season with a 1-0 victory over San Diego FC (9-14-11, 38 pts.) at Snapdragon Stadium on Saturday night. Andre Luiz scored the only goal of the game from the penalty spot in the second half to vault Sporting out of
Zelda: Ocarina of Time posts highest Metacritic user score ever despite review bombing
Metacritic user reviews are now live days after the Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake release date. Gamers rank it above Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and Silent Hill 2. Score bombing failed to overshadow players who compliment the Switch 2 game’s revamped graphics and controls.
Want to fly to the moon? NASA is looking for new astronauts to help grow its Artemis program
Applications are open through Dec. 3, with new recruits expected to begin training in early 2028 as NASA works toward a permanent lunar base.
Delap double condemns Man City to third straight defeat
Manchester City slumped to a third consecutive Premier League defeat on Saturday as Liam Delap's double lifted Nottingham Forest out of the relegation zone with a 3-1 win at the City Ground.The only crumb of comfort for City is that Forest's victory dumps Manchester United into the relegation zone ahead of their clash against Aston Villa on Sunday. kca/td
OKC Thunder assign Nikola Topic to G League
Oklahoma City Thunder assign Nikola Topic to G League.
Tectonic forces near Japan helped fuel the formation of the Grand Canyon
A double subduction zone off the coast of Japan caused rifting halfway around the world to accelerate, fueling the formation of some of North America's most iconic features.
This popular KC neighborhood has become a hub for women-owned businesses
It has a block that is 100% women-owned. But beside those seven, there are 25 other women-owned shops and eateries.
Highly anticipated cholesterol drug fails to prevent heart attacks, strokes
The drug, Novartis’ pelacarsen, should have worked against lipoprotein(a), a genetic type of cholesterol that causes plaque to build up in arteries, researchers said. Why didn’t it?
Public health officials confirm infant death from measles outbreak was from Grant County
Grant County Public Health confirmed the infant death associated with the southwestern Wisconsin measles outbreak was from Grant County.
Scurry County included in New World Screwworm infested zone by Texas Animal Health Commission
Scurry County has been included in a New World Screwworm infested zone by the Texas Animal Health Commission after the parasite was detected in nearby Mitchell County.
How state Sen. Camera Bartolotta, besieged from all sides, survived a grueling year in American politics
First came the scathing rebuke from her own local party. Then, an insurgent primary challenger and political outsider rose to try to defeat her, backed...
'Milo' Expands Its Presence In Audio Storytelling
DeAPlaneta Entertainment continues to drive the expansion of Milo, the globally renowned preschool series, across various formats.
Independence to present plan to ease business licensing, add small-business help Monday
City of Independence staff will present a set of recommendations Monday to make it easier to open, operate and grow a business.
EAST TEXAS POLITICS: Texas’ next comptroller and attorney general discuss election wins, Republicans respond
Two Democratic statewide winners and two Republican leaders join Blake Holland this week
Player Availability Report: #SDvSKC
Player Availability Report is SportingKC.com’s look at the latest status updates around the team ahead of upcoming matches and is presented by Saint Luke’s. All details listed are from the league’s official Player Status Report that is submitted the day prior to the match. Sporting Kansas City closes out the
Behind the scenes with Kaitlan Collins covering the historic 2026 blue wave midterm election.
Iowa health officials identify potential measles exposure locations
The Iowa Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have identified potential measles exposure locations after cases were confirmed in Keokuk and Osage.
Macklemore Says U.S. Venues Rejected His Free Palestine Tour
“In over 20 years of touring, I’ve never experienced anything like this,” the rapper said in a post.
New crop of Senate Democrats calling for ‘generational change’ head for a clash over Chuck Schumer
A number of candidates were swept into office after promising to challenge Schumer’s leadership. But unless an alternative steps forward, he may coast to the post.
The White House’s post-election shake-up: From the Politics Desk
Plus, the midterms reveal a much larger slice of the electorate is up for grabs.
As U.S. faces loss of measles-free status, health leaders rethink vaccine strategies
At a meeting this week, CDC staffers and public health groups agreed vaccines must be a major part of containing measles. How will the agency respond under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?
Pa. health department revokes Sharon Regional hospital's license as it shuttered
A Hail Mary try at resuscitating a rural hospital ended Wednesday when the state department of health revoked the license for Sharon Regional Medical Center,...
Whoa, I Missed It! Disney Starts Licensing the Household Silver, When IP Backfires, and More Big Content Moves
(Welcome to the “Most Important Story of the Week”, my bi-weekly strategy column analyzing the most important (but often not buzziest) news story of the last two weeks. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. Please subscribe.) Over these last few months, the entertainment business story landscape revolved around Skydance (and their merger) and Netflix (and their leadership shakeup). I don’t even want to scan my archives to see how many times I wrote about just those two companies over the last six months or so, let alone how many times they demanded their own article. Oh, how I long for June, when I could avoid them and write about other mergers and acquisitions (Comcast and NBCUniversal; Fox buying Roku). Well, not really, but you know what I mean. That focus on just two companies meant I ignored a lot of fun and, more importantly, important stories. So, it’s also time for another “Whoa, I Missed It” article. These are stories I wish I had written about, but aren’t exactly current events anymore. And there are a lot of them! Fifteen stories in all, including a very important merger that I didn’t write about, my word of warning about the IP deluge, how “genre” TV is making a big comeback, Netflix’s latest smart acquisition (and a licensing divorce), Disney and HBO’s recent TV show buys (and what they say about reboots on TV), a big cable merger, Amazon’s new bundle, social media censorship, and a lot more. Subscribe Most Important Story of the Week - Buy, Sell or Hold the Latest Content Development and Licensing in 2026!!! Content is king. I’ve written that before, and I believe in it now more than ever. If I had to quantify it, and I have, I put it at about 50% of the fate of any given media company, be they streamer, network, bundler, studio or social platform. This is a hits-driven business, and, as I like to do about every so often, it’s time to check in on the latest content moves. These content shifts on their own aren’t usually enough to be the “most important story” of a week, but if you add them up, you can see the content landscape shifting. The stories also fell into two natural buckets: licensing deals and IP moves. Plus, I’ll offer my “buy, sell or hold” rating for whether I think the deal is smart for a given side. Let’s dive right in. Disney Starts Licensing the Household Silver Disney is starting to license their core brands to Netflix. Quietly, over the last couple of years, Disney had rented some 20th Century [Fox] shows and films to Netflix, but until now, the core brands had escaped that fate. Now? At least some Pixar films will make it to Disney (including Elio) and some Disney+ Originals (like Percy Jackson and the Olympians). Here’s my rating for each company: Disney: Sell. One is tempted to say Disney has started licensing the “crown jewels”, but I don’t think we see that yet. I’d call this the “family silver” instead, which isn’t quite as valuable. That said, Disney’s new CEO clearly is focused on shoring up the company’s profitability, and that means licensing deals, even at the expense of Disney+ exclusivity. This could also help bring eyeballs to Percy Jackson for the upcoming season, a similar benefit to “dual casting” this show, which I also think Disney should do. Still, in the long run, I’d protect the core brands more. Netflix: Buy. This is a smart move, assuming the price is right, and I’d bet it is. (Netflix’s content licensing teams are some of the best in the industry.) Of course, this is another data point that Netflix is moving away from making their own films and relying on licensing instead. That has downsides—they’ll always end up renting—but if you’re buying Disney content, that’s a good move. Prime Video Buys More Live Events Amazon’s Prime Video/MGM Studios keeps purchasing live events, including the Emmys (which I wrote about here) and some regional sporting rights. These bolster their NFL, NBA and Academy of Country Music Awards licensing deals. My theory here is that Prime Video knows that they can sell the advertising for more on live events than on their massive acquired/original inventory of shows and films. (As I’ve been showing with Reelgood’s data, they have a LOT more shows and films than other streamers.) Advertisers want live, engaged viewers, since they’re a lot more likely to be real. Prime Video: Hold. I like Amazon’s focus on live events, but it remains tough to evaluate this company, er, business unit, since we don’t know anything about their financials. Yes, Amazon’s CEO recently released a very carefully worded statement about Prime Video, claiming profitability, but we don’t know by how much by when. (It’s also not audited by third parties, so we have to take it with another grain of salt.) Plus, given that Amazon increased the price of the Emmys by about a third, they also likely overpaid. (Maybe that’s why they’re barely profitable, allegedly.) But also, I think they know they need to dominate live TV, and that’s a smart strategy! So I’m torn, but lean towards calling this a smart move. The Emmys: Definitely sell! I mentioned this in my “Streaming Bonus Content” article, but I really, really, really, really do NOT like this move for the Emmys. Chasing short term dollars over long term awareness is not a smart move. To reach the widest audience, the “dual-cast” format—meaning broadcast and streaming—just reaches more people. Skydance Takes Its Animation Back This is the story that made me want to write a “let’s catch up on content” column in the first place. Specifically, Skydance and Netflix have ended their animated film output deal. It’s not huge, since really, what film has Skydance Animation made that’s broken out? But strategically, it shows you how Skydance is positioning their company. Skydance Animation: Hold. Again, I still need to see Skydance Animation put out a hit or two before I can judge this as a smart move. The other worry for Skydance is they have a lot of overlapping animation houses now, and that’s going to end at some point. Still, if John Lasseter can regain his animation mojo—and his track record has been mixed at Skydance, ignoring his other issues—this could be a powerful point for Paramount. Netflix: Hold (put your films in theaters). Right now, with the Dan Lin upheaval and Peter Rice coming in, we don’t really know what Netflix’s plans for theaters versus straight-to-streaming films are. So I need to see what new films (if any) they buy/rent/produce to replace the Skydance flicks, but it will probably be a smarter investment of capital, since the straight-to-streaming films have just failed to break out, outside of one major example. Theaters: Buy! They do look like they’re gonna end up with more inventory based on the Skydance move, and now Netflix putting four to five films in theaters per year. For example, Netflix confirmed that KPop Demon Hunters 2 will come to theaters, and that’s going to be a smash. Disney+’s Reboot Future So those were the major licensing news stories, and now we get to the IP-related updates. Obviously, I’m generally pro-IP in content development. But that’s not some iron law; not all IP hits equally. Get ready for Entertainment Nuance Guy. And let’s start with a big worry. Scanning the news stories, Disney has three reboots on their lineup between ABC, Hulu and Disney+: Coach (on ABC), The X-Files and Glee. So are reboots as immune to failure as IP? We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out about… Why I’m skeptical about some upcoming genre and IP plays… How Skydance’s merger closing unlocked Paramount and HBO… The focus on “genre” across the streamers and studios… Some big creators leave Netflix… Netflix’s horror TV show licensing play (and what they should have done instead)… A huge merger that I didn’t write about... Whether or not we’ll see a major film tax credit… Amazon’s new megabundle of streamers… And (somehow) more… ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support.
Trump names Stephen Miller his new chief of staff, replacing Susie Wiles
The president announced Wiles’ departure and Miller’s ascension in a social media post.
Cook County Department of Public Health Awards $475,000 to Expand Youth Mental Health Programs in Four Suburban Communities - Cook County Department of Public Health
Today, Cook County Department of Public Health launched Building Healthier Communities 2030, suburban Cook County’s Community Health Improvement Plan. The plan was announced together with Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Cook County Department of Public Health, community organizations, healthcare providers and cross-sector partners. Building Healthier Communities 2030 serves as both a collective vision and a practical roadmap that will guide public health efforts across suburban Cook County through 2030.The plan aligns with President Preckwinkle's Policy Roadmap and reflects a shared commitment to advancing health equity through coordinated, community-informed action.
Stephen King brought up his own death live on TV: ‘God will shut me up’
Stephen King addressed his own death on live TV: ‘God will shut me up eventually,’ he said. ‘Hopefully not too soon.’
Quiet Revolt Media Group Launches New Connected Media and Entertainment Production Ecosystem
Aiming to be a home for world-class storytelling, the company brings together high-end production, distribution, live cultural touchpoints, and original IP incubation, with an active slate of projects covering food, travel, music, lifestyle, and more
Democrats rode a blue wave. Can they ever keep up momentum in Missouri and Kansas?
Democrats made historic gains in states where they’ve struggled for years to gain a foothold. What’s next?
Payroll processing issue leaves Novant Health employees waiting for pay
A technical issue has delayed pay deposits for thousands of Novant Health employees, according to emails shared with WECT.
Best Buy's Black Friday Event Begins With Sitewide Savings on Apple, TVs, More
Early Black Friday sales are kicking off this week, with Best Buy joining in with deals that will last the next few weeks. Similar to other retailers, Best Buy's early Black Friday event includes sitewide savings on Apple products, headphones, TVs, monitors, video games, and more. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.
This gen’s top 10 PlayStation Studios games
As we near the six-year anniversary of the PS5, we thought we’d dive into our estimates for the top-grossing PlayStation Studios games since the start of the gen. Together, the 10 games we’re covering today have generated over $6.5 billion across PlayStation (84.7%), Steam (14.1%), and Xbox (1.2% via just Helldivers 2). Let’s have a look at the top 10. Spidey and Kratos sequels take the top two spots God of War Ragnarok takes the top spot with $1.4B in revenue via 21.6M copies – 20.1M on PlayStation (75.2% via PS5) and the rest on Steam. Around 27.5% of the copies sold on PlayStation were physical. It’s another PlayStation evergreen seller, too. This year, Ragnarok has already sold 1.1M copies, generating $60M (68% on PlayStation), outperforming new 2026 titles like Gears of War E-Day and Saros. Overall, our estimates show that Ragnarok has been accessed by 6.7M PlayStation Plus players (it was added to the Extra tier about two years ago). So it’s performed that well this year despite subscription cannibalisation. That’s the pull of God of War IP. And that Bautista series on Amazon is going to be massive - bigger than Fallout, I reckon. Next up is Spider-Man 2 with $1.3B across PS5 (over $1.2B) and Steam (nearly $70M). Spider-Man 2 has sold over 19.1M copies overall, so it should pass 20M early next year. Spider-Man 2 is an evergreen title that always spikes around the holidays (mostly concentrated around Christmas week): In December 2023, it sold 2.1M copies, up 20% from November 2023 (the month after release) In December 2024, Spider-Man 2 sold 460K copies (natural decay), up 60% from November 2024. Despite the Steam version launching in January 2025, it still sold more copies – and made more revenue – the month before. In December 2025, it sold 328K copies, up 30% from November 2025. This year’s December and Christmas will be somewhat limited by Spidey’s February 2026 addition to PS+ Extra, where 6.3M people accessed it for the first time. While subscription inclusions always cannibalise premium revenues to some extent, Spider-Man 2 did manage to sell 578K copies in August 2026 – the most its sold since Q1 2024, following hype from the Spider-Man Brand New Day movie. Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe God of War Ragnarok and Spider-Man 2 continue to be huge evergreen tentpoles for Sony. Together, both titles have sold 3.4M this year (2.3M for Spidey and 1.1M for Ragnarok), generating a combined $172.9M ($115.8M for Spidey and $57.1M for Ragnarok). Again, some premium games would take a leaf out of Kratos’ book (not Spidey’s!) and would kill for these numbers in year 1. And we can see why Sony wants to take a leaf from Steam’s book, killing physical to get higher margins from catalogue sales, ensuring they get their cut, and having more control over supply and demand (and pricing for their first-party titles). Hot rods, hellpods, and horizons Gran Turismo 7 takes #3 this generation with $841.9M in revenue via 12.7M copies sold. For more info on GT7, you can check out our write-up from earlier this week. Around 1.1M people have already played GT7 this month, less than six days in. Next up – at #4 – is the first second-party game on this list. Helldivers 2 has generated $786.3M via 23M copies sold across Steam (66.1% of the copies), PS5 (25.7%), and the 1.5-year-later Xbox port (8.3%). And there are plenty of players very dedicated to the Super Earth cause, as over 4M folks have played Helldivers 2 for over 100 hours, while 462K played for over 500 hours. That dedication to democracy is pretty topical… Anyway, Helldivers 2 still attracts about 700K players per day (more if there’s a significant update), and its August addition to PlayStation Plus Extra has led to 1.6M new players overall. This year, Helldivers 2 has sold over 2.5M copies, generating $81.1M in revenue. It’s another evergreen hit for Sony, and draws in engagement numbers similar to Arc Raiders. The Helldivers 2 model, in my opinion, should be the way PlayStation approaches its live-service and second-party releases. Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Horizon Forbidden West rounds off the first half of the top 10, generating $485.8M. That said, PlayStation completely stifled Horizon Forbidden West’s revenue by adding it to PlayStation Plus way too early (one year after launch). You can see the revenue drop-off clearly in our platform: As you can see: Forbidden West was still a healthy catalogue earner right before it was added to PS+ Extra, making about $1.23M a week on PlayStation across late 2022 and into January 2023. After it was added to Extra_, Forbidden West_’s weekly revenue halved to around $610K, basically overnight. Excluding launch month, Horizon Forbidden West generated about $67.2M on PlayStation in the period before the PS Plus addition. In the same period after it joined the service, that fell to $28.1M, a 58% drop. So, PlayStation didn’t trade a little bit of premium revenue for subscriber value here. It gave up well over half of it, and it cut momentum instantly for one of its premier franchises. Could you imagine the kind of cannibalisation if it launched day in date on Extra? Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe And the cannibalisation wasn’t a temporary blip that bounced back once the game left the service in September 2024. By then, 19 months on PS Plus had already hoovered up most of the install base that would have bought it, so there was barely a premium audience left to monetise. PlayStation even added it back to PS Plus on October 21 this year, and sure enough, weekly revenue dropped again (by around a third); though, the numbers are small now that Forbidden West is nearly four years old. Worth the trade-off. The usual suspects, platformers, and an Asia-driven second-party hit As for the rest of the list: Ghost of Yotei has now generated $410.1M via 5.5M copies on PS5. Yotei popped off a bit a few weeks ago due to a content update, which we covered here. The Last of Part Us I, a remake that we covered here, has generated $341.3M in revenue (67.2% via PlayStation) via 6.4M copies. It was also added to PS+ Extra about two years after launch, where 7.8M people accessed it for the first time. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart has made $334.9M (93.6% via PlayStation 5). It’s now passed 5M copies sold overall. It’s sold 250K copies this year, generating $13.5M in revenue. Time for another Ratchet? Stellar Blade has generated $316.9M via PS5 (59.7%) and Steam (40.3%). However, the share of Stellar Blade’s 5.4M copies sold is far closer (50.4% on PlayStation, 49.6% on Steam) – despite the Steam version releasing a year later. China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong account for 48% of Steam copies and 35% of PlayStation copies (about 41% overall). These markets are regionally priced lower than others, hence the difference. Astro Bot rounds out the top 10 with $292.6M in revenue via over 4.7M copies sold. We covered Astro’s recent performance here, covering how Astro Bot is another evergreen seller and has been a hit with families. Want more free estimates and insights in your inbox twice a week? Subscribe below! Subscribe Even these bottom five games have generated a combined $281.7M this year in catalogue sales. PlayStation wants those numbers to be bigger in the coming years, which is one of the reasons it’s killing the disc (alongside the better margins it and publishers get through digital). No more used discs means more D2C revenue for PlayStation. On that note, we recently chatted to the New York Times again about PlayStation’s digital future, so keep your eyes peeled for that! The last word Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover. Want to see why these companies (and many others) are subscribed to Alinea? Get a free platform trial! [Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]
Cook County Awards $92K for Restorative Justice and Community Power Building Initiatives - Cook County Department of Public Health
Cook County Department of Public Health recently awarded $92,270 in Building Healthier Communities grants to three organizations to implement restorative practices in schools and community power building within suburban Cook County communities. Restorative practices, such as talking circles or peer mediation, offer alternatives to exclusionary discipline in schools.
Still searching for a Zelda 40th Anniversary Switch 2? Nintendo has good news
🥳 Nintendo confirmed Zelda 40th anniversary celebrations will continue into next year, suggesting ongoing Switch 2 restocks 🚨 Want the Zelda Switch 2? Follow our Zelda Switch 2 restock tracker @mattswider on X and we’ll send out an alert when stock appears 🙏 Unlike other limited editions, the console is not expected to have a restricted production run 💰 The special edition costs $519.99 for its ornate design, but does not include the Ocarina of Time remake 🙌 Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa ruled out future console price increases due to secured memory supply Walmart: Zelda Switch 2 console Best Buy: Zelda Switch 2 console GameStop: Zelda Switch 2 console Nintendo: Zelda Switch 2 console 🚨 Restock Dashboard: Get our live, audible siren alerts The Legend of Zelda 40th Anniversary Switch 2 is hard to find right now, though we’re doing our best to help people get one using our exclusive restock tracker. However, there is some good news to share. 🚨 We’re tracking Zelda Switch 2 stock updates. If you’d like to know when more stock arrives, follow Matt Swider on X and turn on notifications. You can also become a free or paid subscriber to The Shortcut to help support our work. 🚨 Subscribe Nintendo has provided an update that suggests the console will be easier to obtain in the future. Speaking during Nintendo’s financial results, president Shuntaro Furukawa said that The Legend of Zelda’s 40th anniversary celebrations will continue into next year (thanks, Stealth40k). That strongly suggests that the Zelda Switch 2 console will continue to be restocked, and that it won’t be constrained by a limited production run. Unlike the Xbox Series X25 limited edition – where only 25,000 units have been produced – the Zelda 40th anniversary Switch 2 should be more obtainable once the initial demand from buyers dies down. Of course, whether you can wait as long as next year to get hold of the Zelda Switch 2 is one thing, but knowing that the console will eventually become more widely available should please those who are worried about missing out. The Legend of Zelda 40th anniversary special edition Switch 2 costs $519.99, but doesn’t include a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake. You’re basically paying a $20 premium over the standard Switch 2 for the beautiful ornate design. Luckily, it sounds like the price of the Switch 2 will remain at $499.99 for the foreseeable. Furukawa ruled out any future price increases as Nintendo has managed to secure sufficient quantities of memory. That also means the price of the Zelda Switch 2 won’t be affected. Up next: Zelda 40th anniversary Switch 2 restock: here’s when Target should have stock Subscribe Adam Vjestica is The Shortcut’s Senior Editor. Formerly TechRadar’s Gaming Hardware Editor, Adam has also worked at Nintendo of Europe as a Content Marketing Editor, where he helped launch the Nintendo Switch. He also runs a retro gaming YouTube channel called Game on, boy! Follow him on X @ItsMrProducts.
What many get wrong about Amish or Plain Anabaptist communities, measles, and health
The U.S. has reported three measles deaths this week in three different states. All the affected were unvaccinated, and some were too young to get vaccinated, relying on herd immunity. Many states haven’t seen a measles death in more than 30 years. Measles is highly contagious, but it mainly spreads among those without immunity. Social factors typically shape these unvaccinated pockets. Many states describe these deaths as occurring among “under-immunized, rural communities.” (In the future, it could be among other tight-knit groups.) Small signals in the news point to many outbreaks right now among the Plain Anabaptists (APA), which include communities like the Amish and Mennonite. Many know APA communities from a distance through their bakeries, furniture, and roadside buggies. But most of us don’t know enough about them, their traditions, or how those traditions actually interact with health and disease. Rumors, misconceptions, and frustration fill those voids. Tristan Sharratt, a family nurse practitioner and rural health researcher who grew up near and works with these communities in Central New York (and a YLE reader who reached out!), says misconceptions continue to create major problems. If the U.S. wants to stop a tsunami of measles coming down the pipeline, or even support health in those communities proactively beyond measles (which is ideal), we must understand how specific communities protect themselves, their values, and the role broader society plays. This starts with a conversation and some self-reflection. Here are the top five lessons I learned from my conversation with Tristan.
The 1 Ingredient This GI Doc Adds to Her Coffee Every Morning To Boost Fiber Intake
In TODAY.com’s Expert Tip of the Day, a gastroenterologist reveals her go-to strategy for people who struggle to get enough fiber from their diet.
Obituary: Jonathan 'Jon' Hurwitz, longtime Pitt political science professor, dies at 71
Jon Hurwitz and Mark Peffley could have been competitors when they met as graduate students at the University of Minnesota. Instead, they became collaborators,...
U.S. infant bleeding episodes jump as vitamin K refusals rise, two studies find
Babies are not born with enough vitamin K, an essential nutrient that helps blood clot, and vitamin K injections at birth have been standard for over 60 years.
In lecture, physicist connects dots between space-time and politics
At a Thursday talk on her new book, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a University of New Hampshire physicist explored a wide range of subjects, including space-time, dark matter, storytelling and why the night sky matters.
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When papers become currency: a Chinese debate about trust in science
Last Saturday, 31 October, I went to the University of Hong Kong’s Beijing Centre for its Talent Forum. It was the fourth stop in the series this year, following events in Shanghai’s Zhangjiang, Shenzhen’s Qianhai, and on HKU’s main campus. The programme covered a remarkable distance in one afternoon. HKU’s Xiao-Jing Wang discussed computational neuroscience, intelligence, and the prefrontal cortex—before even delivering his inaugural public lecture to students back in Hong Kong. His colleague Bing Zhang took us from the Big Bang to artificial intelligence. Tsinghua’s Xue Lan asked how AI might reshape the institutional infrastructure underpinning higher education. There were lively panels featuring industry leaders from JD.com, Xiaomi, Haier—and Kaiser Y Kuo on the closing panel discussing innovation and international connections. I cannot pretend to have followed every detail of the brain models or the astrophysics. The talk that stayed with me was closer to something we have covered before: Zhou Zhonghe 周忠和 on papers, evaluation, and scientific trust. Zhou is a palaeontologist, an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and an international member of the US National Academy of Sciences. He is also editor-in-chief of The Intellectual (知识分子), China’s leading science commentary platform. His subject was uncomfortable enough for a room full of successful academics: what happens when the system for recognising good science starts rewarding something else? Part of my interest came from our sister newsletter, The East is Read, which covered the controversy around “Geng Tongxue” in May. A PhD dropout from Beihang University, Geng has publicly challenged papers by prominent researchers through detailed online allegations of manipulated images and fabricated data. At Tongji University, an investigation into a challenged Nature paper found academic misconduct, and the dean of its life sciences school was removed. The affair brought doubts about academic integrity well beyond laboratories and university committees. How could someone outside the established hierarchy spot problems in papers that had passed through prestigious journals and institutions? And what, exactly, had all that prestige guaranteed? Zhou approached these questions through two essays published in July by The Intellectual: one by Wang Xiaodong, director of the National Institute of Biological Sciences, Beijing, and a response by Wang Liming, of Shanghai’s Shangsi Institute of Natural Sciences. Both began with the controversy over Geng. Their arguments deserve a wider audience, so I want to put parts of them alongside what Zhou said on Saturday. Wang Xiaodong’s starting point is evolution. A research system selects for the behaviour it rewards. Grants, jobs, journals, talent programmes, and prizes collectively determine which scientists prosper and which practices get passed down from advisors to students. “Whatever the system rewards is what it will evolve to produce,” he writes, citing the ancient Chinese saying: The King of Chu loved slender waists, and many in the palace starved to death. That is a more demanding diagnosis than saying there are dishonest people in science. Punishing a fraudster does not change the selective environment that made a particular kind of research profitable. His account also gives scientific success an awkward role in the story. As Zhou put it on Saturday, science became a victim of its own success. Once research became central to industry, national power, and economic growth, universities and laboratories expanded, and public money followed. That created an administrative need for rapid decisions: who should get the next grant, the next laboratory, the next appointment? The difficulty is that the true value of a discovery may take years or decades of testing and building to become clear. Resource allocation cannot wait that long. Publication counts, journal prestige, impact factors, and citations therefore become convenient ways to make an instant judgement. “The real problem is not that these indicators have no value,” Wang Xiaodong writes, “but that they are trying to answer a question that only time can answer.” Telling administrators simply to stop counting papers will never be enough. They still have budgets to distribute and appointments to make. Something has to replace the shortcut. Zhou described the consequences inside publishing. Papers acquire ever more requirements: a complete story, polished presentation, extensive datasets, and accessibility to readers beyond the immediate field. Individually, those demands sound reasonable. Together, he warned, they produce formulaic “eight-legged” papers 八股文 and rigid reviewing, while genuinely original or non-consensus work struggles to get past journal editors—some of whom wield immense gatekeeping power despite having limited laboratory experience themselves. Meanwhile, the demands for sprawling, “complete” narratives have fuelled a wider replication crisis. Wang Xiaodong uses a mahjong metaphor to describe the result: put the complex papers published by the exact same lab over several years side by side, and they often look like “Thirteen Orphans” (十三不靠)—every tile completely unrelated to the next, and none of them reproducible by outsiders. Zhou also spoke frankly as an editor who has trouble finding reviewers. Everyone wants someone else to review their work; qualified senior researchers have little time to return the favour. The labour is anonymous, unpaid, and brings almost no institutional recognition, so it increasingly gets passed down to postdocs and graduate students. And while anonymity protects reviewers from rank and personal favours, hyper-specialisation means an author’s most qualified reviewer is often a direct competitor, shielded from accountability. The protection and the problem coexist. Wang Liming takes the argument a step further. The decisive change, in his essay, is the instant conversion of academic honour into material resources. Once a paper can be cashed in for funding, a job, students, commercial investment, or even a company valuation, scientists are alienated from their work: they must keep minting this “research currency” to keep their teams alive. He is careful not to romanticise the past. The old world of gentleman scientists—financially independent figures like Boyle and Darwin who needed nothing from external funders—was also a closed club that excluded people without inherited wealth, women, and much of humanity outside the West. Professional science allowed ordinary people, himself included, to become researchers. Nobody should want to undo that. The problem, in his account, is an exchange system that becomes too uniform and too difficult to correct. His most pointed Chinese example is the “hat” (帽子): the prestigious talent designation that brings continuing access to money, laboratory space, students, and institutional influence. “If papers are the circulating currency of the research system, then a ‘hat’ is a bond that pays interest over the long term,” he writes. A paper at least requires another round of peer review. A title in the Chinese context can lock in a judgement made years ago and turn it into permanent status rent, regardless of whether its holder is still doing good science. Here, official institutions hire, organise, and evaluate scientists. Unlike honours awarded by autonomous academic communities in the West, a Chinese “hat” blends non-scientist administrative power with state authority. Once granted, it turns a past judgement into permanent status rent that is nearly impossible to revoke—because taking a hat off would imply that official authority erred in putting it on. Both Wangs see China as experiencing, at compressed speed, pressures present across global science. Research expansion, rising investment, publication growth, and elaborate evaluation metrics arrived in China within two or three decades rather than two or three centuries. Zhou agreed with that international framing—noting that recent US White House science policy documents and the new president of the US National Academy of Sciences, a fellow palaeontologist who recently visited Zhou’s institute in Beijing, have raised strikingly similar warnings about consensus-bound peer review, short-term project grants, and the replication crisis. Still, Zhou emphasised that China’s traditional hierarchy, personal networks (guanxi), and the ethos that “a good scholar becomes an official” (学而优则仕) amplify those pressures at home. So what would change things? Here Zhou’s tone differed from the call for a revolution in scientific trust in Wang Xiaodong’s essay. As an evolutionary biologist, Zhou favoured patchwork repair (修修补补). Living systems survive through accumulated adjustments; dramatic mutations are usually fatal. Science cannot return to a small, slow-moving pastoral era, especially after the successive accelerations of professionalisation after the Second World War, the internet, and now artificial intelligence. But it can alter the local environment in which researchers work. He pointed to domestic experiments designed to support unconventional research and diversify funding, including Tencent’s New Cornerstone Investigator Program, the Xplorer Prize, and the Future Science Prize. He also mentioned participating in reviews for “major non-consensus projects” under the National Natural Science Foundation of China. One guiding principle he recalled was wonderfully direct: “Failure is allowed; corruption is not” (允许失败，不允许腐败). That distinction would mean quite a lot if taken seriously. An honest attempt that fails should not have to disguise itself as a success to survive an assessment. Wang Liming’s essay adds a sharp caveat to the optimism about new domestic funders. Multiple organisations do not automatically produce multiple ways of judging science. If the same pool of senior domestic scientists makes the decisions through the same two-round review procedures, it is still “fake diversity.” He argues for three distinct kinds of money: broad baseline funding governed by fair procedures; patient funding for questions that take ten years; and non-consensus funding based on individual taste, deliberately empowering a few genuine experts to make biased, contrarian bets on eccentric ideas that would inevitably be averaged out by a committee. Replacing one monopoly with another achieves little; a healthy ecosystem needs variance. Zhou’s proposals for publishing were similarly concrete: strip papers of their resource-allocation burden and return them to recording discoveries and establishing priority; separate dissemination from evaluation, as eLife and Peer Community In do; adopt more modular “micro-publications” and real-name endorsements; recognize the labour of editors and reviewers; and give replication work proper credit rather than treating it as an unpublishable dead end. AI makes every part of this debate more urgent—and Zhou wove it throughout his talk. In his own preparation, he used AI to survey the declining influence of academic monographs, noting how tools are already changing how scholars gather information. More fundamentally, he placed AI as the latest great acceleration in scientific history: just as the internet sped up the pace of research and tightened external resource pressures, AI is compressing the cycle again. In the essays Zhou cited, AI cuts both ways. Wang Xiaodong expects large language models to erase much of the English-writing disadvantage long faced by Chinese scientists, further swelling the flood of papers coming out of Chinese labs. Wang Liming sees AI accelerating both ends of the trust crisis: it lowers the cost of paper mills and fabricated images just as quickly as it lowers the cost of automated image forensics, data auditing, and code reproduction. “Whoever builds the verification layer wins,” Wang Liming writes. His proposed alternative to the static, packaged “story paper” is a continuously versioned “unit of discovery” containing a falsifiable claim, raw data, analysis code, experimental parameters, and an ongoing log of independent checks—where negative results and failed replications are recorded rather than buried. Zhou ended his keynote by bringing AI back to the question of scientific honour and credit. Citing a recent Intellectual discussion on “What AI Means for Mathematics” featuring Fields Medalist Deng Yu 邓煜—at a moment when AI is already batch-solving mathematical conjectures, as HKU Vice-President Lin Chen noted in his opening remarks—Zhou agreed that human researchers must remain the principal agents: AI is a tool that frees scientists from tedious calculation to think about deeper, messier real-world problems. Yet that partnership creates a thorny new evaluation problem. When a breakthrough is made with AI, what is the human contribution and what is the machine’s? And since AI models distil centuries of accumulated human scholarship, is it right that the credit and value flow so heavily to the private AI companies building the tools? The old struggle over how to assign scientific honour is acquiring a whole new layer. What I took away was a serious discussion of how science can remain trustworthy as its scale, incentives, and tools change. These were scientists with real standing inside China’s system questioning how that standing is produced, and proposing changes that would affect their own institutions and peers. That made the afternoon at HKU’s Beijing Centre worthwhile. At the close, Wang Feng, Director of Communications and Public Affairs at HKU, said the value of the forum series—which heads to Hangzhou in December and cities like Chengdu early next year—would lie in the real cooperation it helped bring about. The university has plenty to celebrate: this week it topped the QS Asia rankings for a second consecutive year, alongside its 11th-place position in the QS World University Rankings 2027. For me, bringing this debate to an audience beyond the people who review papers and allocate grants was a useful contribution. Share [ The East is Read PhD dropout’s exposé forces an academic fraud reckoning in China A former doctoral student turned blogger has shaken China’s academic establishment by publicly accusing prominent university scholars of fabricating data and manipulating papers, triggering investigations at several leading institutions and drawing rare attention from state media… Read more 5 months ago · 43 likes · 8 comments · Yuxuan JIA ](https://www.eastisread.com/p/phd-dropouts-expose-forces-an-academic?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web&embedding_publication_id=47580)
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AFGHS co-signatory countries ask health care users to help fill the financing gap
Hundreds of thousands of Ugandans living with HIV on antiretrovirals could be targeted for user fees or community health insurance schemes requiring modest premium payments, according to the April 2026 version of the country’s America First Global Health Strategy implementation narrative.1 As part of the “sustainable financing for the private not for profit sector” strategy, 491 facilities will be targeted for a phased introduction of user fees and scale up of community health insurance programs.2 In the Ugandan context, PNFP facilities include faith-based hospitals and other health facilities, US missionary organizations and centers of excellence—services that are often co-located at government facilities but run with additional financial and technical resources. 402,000 people—or about 28 percent of the total Ugandan adult PLHIV population on treatment—get ART from the private not for profit sector. The selected facilities provide the majority of ART and prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) services. The plan doesn’t give the total number of clients served by the 491 facilities, so it is not possible to give a precise number. But the majority of 402,000 is a figure in the hundreds of thousands—hence the estimate I’m using.3 The April draft of the Ugandan implementation plan narrative is the only one I’ve been able to review. But the government of Uganda is not alone in turning to health care users to help fill the financing gaps caused by the abrupt withdrawal of US funds. In July 2025, the Government of Liberia introduced user fees for previously free services including “registration, accommodation, patient feeding, hospitalization, and a wide range of surgical and diagnostic procedures.”4 Earlier that year, Liberia rolled out a revolving drug fund designed to stabilize drug supplies by “allowing patients to pay a small fee for standardized, quality medications,” according to a Ministry of Health press release.5 (Both of these approaches had been proposed in the National Health Policy 2022-2031; media coverage explicitly connects the launch with the US foreign aid cuts.) The health financing strategies proposed by Uganda and established in Liberia are qualitatively different from user fees officially adopted by specific health facilities to cover funding shortfalls caused by the new US approach.6 The latter is a stopgap, adhoc change. The former is a national governmental adoption of policies that pass costs on to health care users, despite evidence that such approaches can exacerbate inequities and leave deficits unfilled. Two countries does not make a pattern, but they do point to urgent questions: Have other countries, including Liberia, included user fees or community health insurance schemes in their implementation plans? If so, do any of these narratives have what Uganda’s lacks: a fall-back plan in place in case these strategies for sustainable health systems fail to deliver—as they have before? I wonder if you think about it Subscribe Predictable pitfalls Both community-based health insurance and user fees are as old as the hills. And after decades of people climbing up these hills, duking it out, climbing back down—neither strategy has shown the results the Ugandan implementation plan is counting on. This is, in fact, a hill some folks are willing to die on. (You knew I’d get there, right?) In November 2025, an African-led team of health system experts published a paper directed at low- and middle income country governments trying to figure out how to create self-sustaining health systems. The money wasn’t coming back. It had been more than nine months since the season of freezing, waivering and wood-chippering; two months since AFGHS tumbled into the world touting co-financing requirements and reductions in future US government health aid. Governments were looking for strategies for sustainable, self-financed health systems, the authors wrote. For countries considering user fees and community health insurance to fill the financing gaps, they had a simple message: Don’t. On user fees, the paper states: “Reliance on user fees is ultimately a regressive and inequitable approach. It places a disproportionate burden on the poor and undermines health system goals of equity and financial protection. […] There is overwhelming evidence that user fees mobilise very limited resources for the public health sector, making it an inefficient mechanism for revenue mobilisation.” On community health insurance: “Attempting to shift the burden of funding previously donor-funded services, such as HIV care and management, and TB treatment, onto contributory schemes would exacerbate their fragility and fail to protect the population.”7 The WHO says that community-based health insurance “cannot be expected to provide a major source of funding or coverage,” and noted that most schemes offer only moderate benefit to individuals paying into them, and exclude the poorest segment of the population.8 And yet, the US-Ugandan implementation plan says that community health insurance is “the central pillar of this [PNFP] sustainability strategy” and that this approach that will generate “pre-paid pooled funding at facility and community level [that] improves financial risk protection for households, reduces catastrophic out-of-pocket expenditure, and generates structured, transparent revenue streams that can progressively absorb recurrent costs including health worker salaries.” Unfortunately, Uganda’s own history suggests the pillar might not be able to bear this weight. Ugandans Have Been to this Rodeo Before—and Some Want Their Money Back Uganda introduced its first community health insurance scheme in 1996 with support from international donors.9 Thirty years later, somewhere between 0.2 and 0.3 percent of the population is covered by CHI; just over 1 percent has any kind of health insurance.10 User fees were universally introduced in 1993 as a condition of a World Bank loan.11 They were abandoned in 2001, and in 2004—the year I moved to Uganda to watch the free HIV program get underway—a definitive study found that the fees did not improve health systems and outcomes.12 In 2004, most clinics and hospitals had ‘free’ and ‘fee for service’ options for getting care.13 The fee for service, or “cash and carry” programs had often been established in the years prior to PEPFAR and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. People who could afford to paid for the drugs, often at facilities in the private-not-for-profit (PNFP) sector. When free drugs arrived, some people who’d been paying kept on doing so, perhaps because of shorter wait times, greater confidentiality, convenience or other factors. But in the year that I spent visiting the same clinics around the country week after week—including a “center of excellence” that maintained separate days for cash and carry clients and those accessing free ARVs—lots of people who had been paying tried to switch to the free option. They’d paid because they had no other choice. They’d sold pieces of family land, begged family members for loans, bought pills by the week, and sometimes by the day. Or they were just cash-strapped, like most of us, and wanted the funds for other things. 14 Twenty-two years later, this hasn’t changed. Ugandans pay out of pocket for 30-40 percent of their health care costs, leading one paper to declare that “falling ill is more than a health crisis. It is a financial emergency.”15 One recent study found that up to 48.5 percent of households dealing with tuberculosis sold something, took out a loan or dug into savings to defray the costs of TB care—which is supposed to be universally free.16 The Ugandan implementation plan does anticipate challenges. It proposes a phased approach, with 187 facilities introducing user contribution systems in Year 1, 152 in Year 2, and 153 in Year 3. Willingness to pay and feasibility studies will precede roll out; fees will be tiered by region, and a waiver system is proposed to ensure that no one has to pay who is unable to. Moreover, the plan provides for quarterly reviews of epidemiological data to “ensure that user contributions do not compromise epidemic control gains, ART continuity for the client cohort, TB case management, or PMTCT services.” Alt text: A screenshot of a table included in the implementation plan narrative that is the subject of this stack. It’s got a fetching pink bar at the top. It uses the abbreviation “CHI” which is Community Health Insurance, and FBO which is Faith Based Organizations, and it details the number of facilities that will implement user fees with waivers and community health insurance schemes over the five years of the agreement. As I said in the footnote, this is a super interesting document with a lot of other rich material. Tell me what you see—and what you would have focused on. And if you’ve seen something like this, or anything else that strikes you, in another implementation plan, tell me that too. You can use the Substack message platform or try me on Signal at @endaplague_again.25 (because @mercoonfan was, weirdly, taken). But the plan doesn’t fully explain what will happen if this approach doesn’t work out. Yes, progress will be monitored, and corrective action triggered. However, there is no specified funding replacement if premium and fee revenue prove inadequate. Instead, the authors write, “Currently, COEs serve a total client cohort of over 180,000 across 28 facilities. In the initial years, the U.S. Government (USG) will provide financial support for clients; over time, user fees generated by COEs will become the primary source of funding for sustaining their services.” Failure does not really seem to be an option. Health insurance schemes are more acceptable to the Ugandan population than user fees. Members of Parliament and civil society traveled to Ethiopia to see how that country’s scheme worked. In a follow up report, a veteran civil society group recommended allowing the “health insurance ecosystem to grow organically and [to] keep reviewing the law and regulations as this growth takes root.”17 One study found that more than three-quarters of Ugandans were willing to join a health insurance program.18 However, coverage of community-based health insurance is minimal, as is coverage of any kind of insurance—including private plans.19 A national health insurance scheme bill has been stalled for several years and presently sits with President Yoweri Museveni.20 Community-based health insurance scheme that do exist are expanding in number, but losing enrollees. Between 2022 and 2026, the number of community-based health financing schemes across the country increased by 42 percent, while the number of people enrolled decreased by nearly 11 percent.21 None of this means that community-based health insurance should not happen in Uganda—or that people do not want insurance. It doesn’t even mean that user fees and waivers won’t ever work. But there is highly relevant evidence from Uganda and the surrounding region that it is quite optimistic to describe community health insurance and user fees as central supports for sustainable financing in any sector of the health system. And now for the best-case scenario In the best-case scenario22, the Ugandan approach does exactly what it sets out to do, and so does the Liberian fee structure and revolving pharmacy fund—though I’ve not confirmed that these are in the MoU. In one best-case scenario, Uganda is an outlier, and user fees and community health insurance are not recurrent pillars of self-sustaining financing in other countries’ implementation plans. In another best-case scenario, all countries that include these strategies enjoy success beyond anyone’s evidence-informed wildest dreams: reliable funding generated by health care users fees, great health care outcomes for everyone, no exacerbation of inequities, no crippling household debt. No sold land, repurposed school tuition or high-interest loans. In the best-case scenario, not one of the hundreds of thousands of Ugandans living with HIV receiving antiretrovirals from 491 PNFP facilities misses a refill or leaves care because of user fees or community health insurance premiums. This is the best-case scenario for these people for their own health, and for their families. It is also the best-case scenario if Uganda wants to stay on the path to eliminating HIV as a public health threat. According to the country’s most recent data, 96.5 percent of people living with HIV on antiretrovirals are virologically suppressed. Epidemic control depends ensuring that 95% of people living with HIV know their status, 95 percent of those individuals are on ART, and 95% of those individuals are virologically suppressed. Uganda is still struggling with the first “95"—a frankly abysmal 85.3 percent. If HIV epidemic control and the attendant prevention of new infections, avoidable suffering and premature death matter, the country cannot afford to lose any clients who are currently in care.23 As I write this a couple hours before the polls close for the US elections in the city I live in, I say with soul-deep sincerity: I am rooting for the best-case scenario. I think it’s safe to say that we all are.24 I think it’s also safe to say that if the US and co-signatory governments have inked plans that lead to successful expansion of community health insurance and strategic use of user fees, we all would like to know, now, so that we don’t miss the opportunity to celebrate when success happens. The implementation plan narratives have to enter the public domain. They are the fullest expression of a strategy co-created by two governments. There are assumptions and details that people living in the US and co-signatory countries need to understand that are not available in the MoUs or, to date, in the Congressional Notifications. Some of these details can help other countries that are, as I write this, still working on implementation plans. Others, like a solid count of how many other countries have plans for expanding user fees or health insurance, are important for regional and global health architecture reform initiatives. No matter how this election night turns out, there will be a slew of new Congressional member orientations, briefings and talking points papers in the next few months. Release of implementation narratives should be a bullet point in every context that AFGHS is discussed. These documents can be redacted so that procurement sensitive information isn’t disclosed. There is much more historical precedent for sharing such documents than there is for relying on user fees to fill health financing gaps. Let’s look at the information together so we can hope for the best and prepare for, you know, the other thing. Alt text: A substack first: a bicep selfie! It’s my arm - peachy-white skin, black shirt (flannel, notch neck, too hot for this appallingly balmy November weather, if you’re wondering) and a sticker that says I VOTED 2026. Beige letters on red for I voted. Beige on blue for 2026. You bet I did.25 In your wildest dreams. Subscribe 1 This is a really, really rich 95 page document. There are fascinating ideas and detailed plans in it. It is all worth reading AND I have, in this post, highlighted an instance of content that could pose challenges and certainly posits success of strategies that haven’t worked before. I would love to hear what readers’ see that’s interesting and should be lifted up as something to check for in other implementation plans. I will also shortly be adding a static page to the substack site where implementation plan documents will live. I will put the url into this footnote and it will also be there on emilybass.substack.com by the end of the week. Uganda Implementation Narrative Section 4 April 22 2026 Draft 1.51MB ∙ PDF file Download Download 2 User fees are costs charged for visits, labs, medicines or other health services, usually at the time they are provided. Community health insurance, or community-based health insurance, is what the World Health Organization calls “micro insurance,” which is health insurance targeted at low-income people. 3 As usual (by which I mean always), please prove me wrong. 4 https://smartnewsliberia.com/liberias-ministry-of-health-announces-2025-hospital-service-fees-for-public-facilities/?utm 5 https://moh.gov.lr/news/2025/grand-cape-mount-leaders-residents-embrace-new-community-pharmacy-program/?utm 6 https://www.christianitytoday.com/2026/09/hiv-usaid-pepfar-africa-foreign-aid-cuts-mission-hospitals/?utm 7 https://gh.bmj.com/content/10/11/e021270 8 https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/community-based-health-insurance-CBHI 9 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2827475/ 10 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10861328/#b3-jpmph-23-110 11 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC527704/ 12 Same citation as the footnote 2 - the article is called “Learning from failed health care reform in Uganda.” To which I say: If only. If. Only. 13 There is a whole taxonomy of user fees to be aware of, if not commit to memory. Out of pocket costs are everything that someone pays for themselves. In this Stack, user fees are planned and policy-supported out of pocket costs. There are also out of pocket costs that people pay to buy drugs or receive tests or health care assessments that would be free if the drugs were on the shelves, or the machines or kits were available, or the staff were on site. A user fee is usually designed to be modest, pegged to willingness to pay, and may be waiveable at the point of care for anyone who is unable to do so. The costs for things that would otherwise be free are whatever the market will bear and people either have to pay them or go without. Out of pocket costs for services and stuff that aren’t available in public facilities are different again from bribes or unofficial fees that some health workers may impose, even though most are indefatigable, tireless and tired, and devoted to their clients. 14 For the record—which really is these footnotes—I would give a whole stack of fridge magnets for a systematic analysis of the economic and social impact of the Mass Unemployment Event in AFGHS countries among the very people who used to be able to afford and cover user fees, both for themselves and vast family networks. Locally employed USAID technical staff, house cleaners, caregivers, drivers and technicians were financial anchors for cousins, friends, friends’ children, friends’ childrens’ cousins, teachers, pastors, neighbors and so many other kinds of kin. Aid recipients lost direct funding; many other people who had not been aid recipients, but parts of the elaborate care webs that function as safety nets for so many people, lost crucial support too. And that’s even before we get to the people who worked at the hotels and restaurants and bars where people employed by the US and its implementing partners used to spend disposable income. Those businesses have lost revenue; those folks have lost jobs. It will be some time coming—and someone will have to fund this work—but I do hope it happens. And I hope, as usual, to be proven wrong. 15 https://eprcug.org/blog/how-out-of-pocket-healthcare-costs-keep-driving-ugandans-into-poverty/ 16 Another straight-to-the-point journal article title. Households experiencing catastrophic costs due to tuberculosis in Uganda: magnitude and cost drivers. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32938411 17 https://www.cehurd.org/download/technical-policy-brief-on-community-health-insurance-scheme/?wpdmdl=13661&refresh=6ae9122f5d4ed1793659439 18 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10125197/ 19 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10861328/#b3-jpmph-23-110 20 https://ugandapost.news/uganda-to-make-health-insurance-mandatory-by-2026/ 21 https://shu.org.ug/download/235 22 With a nod, tip of the stack hat, and wag of the Mercoon tail to a deeply valued reader who told me that I have a tendency to speculate about the worst-case scenarios a little too much of the time. 23 https://news.mak.ac.ug/2026/10/uphia-2025-shows-ugandas-hiv-status-awareness-gap-despite-strong-treatment-outcomes/ As you’ll see in the next footnote, I’ve already written a subSubstack on another topic, so I will be brief with regard to the study referenced in this article. The Uganda Population-Based HIV Impact Assessment, or UPHIA, will never happen in this way again. For more than a decade, PHIAs have been supported by the US government as a way to generate accurate estimates of country progress on key HIV indicators. They are a holdover from the PEPFAR program that was laser focused on ensuring US taxpayer dollars subsidized progress in pandemic control. There may be other population-level surveys and the data may even be publicly released, as the entire set of FY2026 MER data have not. But PHIAs will never happen again. If you’re wondering whether the estimates of HIV progress at country level might get less reliable….you’re not alone. 24 Ooh baby, I hate “we” in almost all forms. But sometimes I go there, when I am looking for company, which I am. Because this Stack moves into the somewhat-uncharted territory of assessing what the implementation plan narratives may suggest about co-signatory countries’ roles and responsibilities to the people living within their borders. The MoUs, specimen and data sharing agreements were templates. Countries’ answers fit into pre-specified questions that did not include, “how are you going to fill financing gaps and stabilize your health system as this plan unfolds?” In contrast, the implementation narratives are open form—the product of co-creation between the two governments. Co-creation can mean lots of things, but nothing leads me to believe that implementation plans are ghost-written by the US government, or that contents were imposed by the US counterparts. Instead, I think the parts of the plans that read like country government initiatives are endorsed, if not initiated by, those governments. For instance, the Ugandan implementation plan narrative describes plans for revenue-generation through fees charged for equipment calibration, repair and maintenance provided through Uganda’s National Equipment Calibration Laboratory, and laboratory accreditation through the Uganda National Accreditation Service (UGANAS), targeting private sector, PNFP, research and academic clients. That’s super specific and also quite ambitious. It doesn’t read like an American idea. There’s also a provision for solar panels, and other stuff that feels country owned and driven. This is where it gets interesting. If co-creation is the case, then both the US and co-signatory governments are accountable for the contents and the outcomes. Most discourse about AFGHS to date has focused on the decisions that America has made, or demanded that other countries make. The AFGHS architects have monopolized the hot seat. As they should, in so many ways. America absolutely created the conditions under which countries needed to come up with health financing strategies to fill unanticipated, catastrophic funding gaps. And with not-too-long a lens, we can look back and see that America is also on the hook for its role in the Bretton Woods institutions that made user fees and health system fiscal austerity conditions of loans during the era of structural adjustment. But in the here and now, it is not at all clear to me that the US is requiring Uganda or any other country to implement specific approaches to sustainable financing. Instead, it is as the authors of that paper up in footnote 6 suggest: African governments have agency. As implementation plans roll out—whether or not the narratives are shared—it will be important to understand what this agency looks like and what it means for people, including the poorest of the poor. And it will be important to figure out how to talk about it safely, respectfully and critically in places other than the literal and metaphorical footnotes. 25 This week’s song is “Once upon a time” by the Moody Blues. (I know, this is gonna be a weird, largely banger-free end of 2026 playlist. HMU with requests.) AND please do watch the video and appreciate the truly amazing opening sequence—a drum kit wasteland, a coupla plastic bags, a bit of sand. Sort of like the hill where fiscal austerity policies that put costs on health care users might go to perish. But then there’s a lady with amazing hair. It’s worth it.
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