1st measles case of the year in South Dakota as CDC updates travel guidance
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(MEADE COUNTY, SD) — South Dakota has reported its first case of measles this year. The state is now the 33rd in the country to confirm a measles case, with at least 1,088 cases reported nationally so far this year.
An adult who recently traveled outside the country tested positive for measles in Meade County, South Dakota, according to the South Dakota Department of Health.
It comes as federal officials are urging all Americans to get vaccinated against measles before traveling abroad, according to guidance updated last week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Previously, the guidance stated that those traveling to countries with an ongoing outbreak should be vaccinated before leaving.
The measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine is part of the routine immunization schedule and has been shown to be up to 97% effective after two doses, the CDC says. Adults without immunity through vaccination or infection should also get vaccinated, the agency notes.
At least 62 people in the U.S. were infected with measles while traveling on an airplane this year, a CDC spokesperson told ABC News in part of a statement. “There has been only one situation during this period in which measles appeared to have been transmitted during air travel, ” the spokesperson added.
In South Dakota, the person infected with measles visited two medical centers where others may have been exposed to the virus.
The Department of Health says anyone who was at the Rapid City Medical Center Urgent Care waiting room on May 28 between 7:15 a.m. and 10 a.m., or at Monument Health Sturgis Urgent Care waiting room on May 29 between 9:45 a.m. and 3 p.m., should watch for signs of illness.
Health officials explain that the early signs of measles appear in two stages. In the first stage, symptoms include a runny nose, cough and slight fever. The eyes may become red and sensitive to light while the fever rises each day. The second stage begins between three and seven days after symptoms start, with temperatures reaching 103 to 105 degrees Fahrenheit and a red blotchy rash that lasts between four to seven days. The rash typically starts on the face before spreading to the shoulders, arms and legs.
“Measles is a highly contagious viral disease and spreads through the air from an infected person,” Dr. Joshua Clayton, state epidemiologist, told ABC News. “Individuals who lack immunity from vaccination or past infection are at high risk of measles infection if they have contact with an infected person.”
According to state health officials, the measles vaccine offers the best protection against infection. People are considered immune to measles if they were born before 1957, received one dose of the measles vaccine (MMR) as an adult, received two doses of the measles vaccine (MMR) as a child or high-risk adult, have measles antibodies shown by a lab test, or had a previous measles infection confirmed by a lab test.
The Department of Health notes that the MMR vaccine is typically given at 12 to 15 months of age, with a second dose at four to six years. For international travel with children, MMR vaccines can be given starting at 6 months of age.
Learn more about measles on the Department of Health website, where information includes fact sheets, frequently asked questions, and a webinar for healthcare providers.
(AUSTIN, Texas) — The measles outbreak in western Texas is continuing to grow, with 24 new cases confirmed over the last five days, according to data published Tuesday.
Almost all of the cases are in unvaccinated individuals or in individuals whose vaccination status is unknown, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS).
Three of the 505 cases are among residents who have been vaccinated with one dose of the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine. Seven cases are among those vaccinated with two doses.
At least 57 measles patients have been hospitalized so far, DSHS said.
Children and teenagers between ages 5 and 17 make up the majority of cases, followed by children ages 4 and under.
Gaines County, which borders New Mexico, remains the epicenter of the outbreak, with 328 cases confirmed so far, DSHS data shows.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORIK) — About 10,000 people across the United States Department of Health and Human Services were laid off this week as part of a massive restructuring plan.
In a post on X on Tuesday afternoon, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the layoffs represented “a difficult moment for all of us” but that “we must shift course” because Americans are “getting sicker every year.”
An official at the National Institutes of Health with knowledge on the matter, who asked not to be named, told ABC News that the layoffs were an “HHS-wide bloodbath,” with entire offices being fired.
Sources told ABC News that affected offices included a majority of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Office on Smoking and Health, key offices in the Center for Tobacco Products, most of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and the entire assisted reproductive technology team at the CDC.
Then, Kennedy told ABC News on Thursday that some programs would soon be reinstated because they were mistakenly cut.
In a video statement posted on X prior to the layoffs, Kennedy said that he plans to bring to the agency a “clear sense of mission to radically improve the health of Americans and to improve agency morale.”
In the six-minute clip, Kennedy claimed that the U.S. is the “sickest nation in the world,” with rates of chronic disease and cancer increasing dramatically and the lifespan of Americans dropping — though Kennedy did not present any data in his video to support those claims.
Smoking and the use of tobacco products contribute to both chronic disease and cancer — and the offices tackling those issues are among those that were gutted in Kennedy’s recent moves.
While Kennedy is correct in his statement that some chronic disease and cancer rates have risen, public health experts said — and data shows — that the country has made great progress tackling illnesses, including driving down cancer mortality rates, and that life expectancy is on the rise.
“Gutting the public health system while claiming to fight disease is a dangerous contradiction,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital, as well as a contributor for ABC News.
“We should be focusing on strengthening – not stripping – the public health system if we’re serious about tackling chronic disease,” Brownstein continued. “Dismantling key infrastructure will only set us back in the fight to keep Americans healthy.”
American life expectancy increasing
In a post on X, Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator from 2022 to 2023, said Kennedy was incorrect in his statement about Americans getting sicker.
“So much of what is in here is incorrect,” he wrote. “Americans are NOT getting sicker every year. After a devastating pandemic, life expectancy is beginning to rise again.”
Between 2022 and 2023, age-adjusted death rates decreased for nine of the leading causes of death in the U.S., according to a December 2024 report from the CDC.
This includes decreasing death rates from heart disease, unintentional injuries, stroke, chronic lower respiratory diseases, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, kidney disease, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, and COVID-19.
Additionally, age-specific death rates dropped from 2022 to 2023 for all age groups ages 5 and older, the CDC report found.
The report also found life expectancy in the U.S. is beginning to rise again after it dropped in every U.S. state during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Life expectancy in 2023 hit its highest level since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the CDC report. Data showed life expectancy for the U.S. population was 78.4 years in 2023, an increase of 0.9 years from 2022.
The drop in age-adjusted death rates was largely attributed to decreases in mortality from COVID-19, heart disease, unintentional injuries and diabetes.
“Claims that Americans are getting sicker every year simply don’t hold up,” Brownstein told ABC News. “Life expectancy is rising again post-pandemic, and we’ve seen declines in cancer, cardiovascular and overdose mortality.”
Obesity rising in children, decreasing in adults
Kennedy has said he wants to tackle the obesity epidemic, including childhood obesity.
Research does show that obesity is rising in children in the U.S. and is occurring at younger ages, with approximately one in five children and teens in the U.S. having obesity, according to the CDC.
A 2022 study from Emory University that studied data from 1998 through 2016 found that childhood obesity among kindergarten through fifth-grade students has become more severe, putting more children at risk of health consequences.
However, Jha pointed out in his post on X that “even obesity rates have plateaued and are beginning to turn down” in adults.
For the first time in over a decade, adult obesity rates in the U.S. may be trending downward, with numbers dropping slightly from 46% in 2022 to 45.6% in 2023, according to a study published in JAMA Health Forum in December 2024.
The study reviewed the body mass index, a generally accepted method of estimating obesity, of 16.7 million U.S. adults over a 10-year period. The average BMI rose annually during that period to 30.24, which is considered obese, until it plateaued in 2022, then dropped marginally to 30.21 in 2023.
“Recent research I co-authored in JAMA shows that obesity rates in adults have plateaued and are even starting to trend downward,” said Brownstein, a co-author of the study. “That progress reflects the very kind of long-term public health investment this reorg puts at risk.”
Chronic disease on the rise
Kennedy has made tackling chronic diseases a cornerstone of his “Make America Healthy Again” platform.
Over the past two decades, the prevalence of chronic conditions has been steadily increasing, according to a 2024 study conducted by researchers in Iowa, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Texas.
“An increasing proportion of people in America are dealing with multiple chronic conditions; 42% have [two] or more, and 12% have at least [five],” the authors wrote.
However, the study also found that the prevalence of chronic disease varies by geographic location and socioeconomic status. Residents who live in areas with the highest prevalence of chronic disease also face a number of contributing social, economic and environmental barriers, the study found.
A 2022 study from the CDC found chronic diseases linked to cigarette smoking include respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, as well as cancers and diabetes.
Rates of cancer have ‘increased dramatically’
Kennedy is correct in stating that cancer rates in the U.S. have increased, with incidence rates rising for 17 cancer types in younger generations, according to a 2024 joint study from the American Cancer Society, Cancer Care Alberta and the University of Calgary.
There has been a notable increase in incidence rates for many cancer types among women and younger adults, research shows.
Incidence rates among women between ages 50 and 64 have surpassed those among men, according to a 2025 report published in the journal of the American Cancer Society.
Additionally, cancer rates among women under age 50 are 82% higher than among men under age 50, which is up from 51% in 2002, the report found.
However, while cancer incidence has increased, cancer mortality has decreased.
A 2025 report from the American Cancer Society found that age-adjusted cancer death rates have dropped from a peak in 1991 by 34% as of 2022, largely due to reductions in smoking, advances in treatment and early detection for some cancers.
However, there is more work to be done and disparities still persist. For example, Native Americans have the highest cancer death rates of any racial or ethnic group in the U.S.
Additionally, Black Americans have a two-fold higher mortality rate than white Americans for prostate, stomach and uterine corpus cancers, the latter of which is a cancer of the lining of the uterus.
Dr. Jay-Sheree Allen Akambase is a family medicine and preventive medicine physician at the Mayo Clinic and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
ABC News’ Dr. Niki Iranpour, Cheyenne Haslett and Will McDuffie contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Governors in several states have recently announced plans to eliminate some unhealthy foods from their food stamps programs, creating momentum for a key component of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.
The governors of Arkansas, Idaho and Indiana on Tuesday all said they would submit a waiver to the United States Department of Agriculture requesting permission to prevent Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipients from using the money to buy candy and soft drinks.
The move follows a similar announcement from the governor of West Virginia last month.
Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, whose department oversees SNAP, has said she would approve such waivers. She appeared at a press conference Tuesday alongside Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, as Sanders announced her submission of a waiver.
The same morning, Kennedy appeared with Indiana Gov. Mike Braun for a similar announcement.
“You’re setting the stage at the federal level,” Braun told Kennedy.
“This isn’t a usual top-down one-size-fits-all public health agenda,” he said. “We’re focused on root causes, transparent information and real results. We’re taking on big issues like diet-related chronic illness.”
Eating too much added sugar can contribute to health problems such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. Guidance from the USDA suggests that added sugar should not represent more than 10 percent of the daily caloric intake for children or adults. Based on a 2,000-calorie intake, that would be 200 calories or approximately 12 teaspoons. However, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children are eating 17 teaspoons of added sugar per day on average as of 2017-2018.
Kennedy and Rollins have promoted changes to SNAP and have publicly encouraged governors to submit waivers.
Kennedy appeared last month with West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey as he announced he would submit a waiver to ban soda from SNAP.
“The message that I want to give to the country today and to all the other governors is, get in line behind Governor Morrisey and apply for a waiver to my agency, and we’re going to give it to you. That’s the way we’re going to win this,” Kennedy said that day.
As it stands, according to the USDA website, SNAP recipients can use the money to buy fruits and vegetables; meat, poultry and fish; dairy products; breads and cereals; “other foods such as snack foods and non-alcoholic beverages”; and seeds and plants.
SNAP money may not be used to purchase alcohol or tobacco, among other things.
Experts say the state efforts to add soda and candy to the prohibited list is likely to be effective in shifting SNAP recipients away from junk food.
“If they have to spend their own money on junk food, they’re not going to buy as much junk food,” Marion Nestle, a professor emerita of public health at New York University, told ABC News.
But Nestle indicated it could be difficult for states to define what should be excluded from SNAP benefits.
“Candy can have nuts, it can have raisins, it can have other kinds of things in it that are real foods and are healthier,” she said.
An Idaho bill signed Tuesday by Gov. Brad Little defined candy as “a preparation of sugar, honey, or other natural or artificial sweeteners combined with chocolate, fruits, nuts, or other ingredients or flavorings in the form of confections, bars, drops, or pieces.”
The bill’s definition of candy does not include “any item that contains more than ten percent flour by weight or requires refrigeration.”
Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, told ABC News, “We need to try a lot of different things” to make Americans healthier, and expressed optimism about the state-level efforts to overhaul SNAP.
“If we make the program meet all its goals, including nutrition, which is in its name, then that strengthens the program,” he said.
Vani Hari — a healthy food activist also known as the Food Babe, the founder of Truvani and a front-facing leader of the MAHA movement — called this “a do-or-die moment” for American health.
“We need to question any legislator that doesn’t sign these bills, there is no legitimate reason to allow high fructose corn syrup water in government funded nutritional dollars. Governors who stand with Secretary Kennedy’s vision of MAHA will change the course of history of American health – it’s a do or die moment and we’ve never had momentum like this before,” Hari told ABC News in a statement.
